Yolk with Doak 39: Ballyneal and Listener Questions

00:00:00
Speaker 1: I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset.

00:00:02
Speaker 2: When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset. And when I find my.

00:00:05
Speaker 1: Ball in a brid egg Frida egg, the dreaded Frida egg, Frida egg, frigg bride egg Lie.

00:00:11
Speaker 2: I'm about ready to run off the golf course. Welcome back to another edition of the Friday Egg podcast and another episode of the Yoke with Doak. Today's podcast is with Tom Doak. We recorded a couple pods last week, and this one will center around listener questions. We got a lot of great submissions, sifted through and picked out a few of those as well as we discuss bellly Neil. It's a golf course they built in Holyoak, Colorado that we haven't really discussed in detail on the podcast yet, so I figured it'd be nice to chat with him about that golf course. Hey, I gotta apologize. I misspoke. Last podcast. I was talking about Club tfe our new membership, and I said that it was one hundred and twenty dollars a month. That's not right. It's one hundred and twenty dollars a year, ten dollars a month, so it's one hundred and twenty dollars per year. We are posting almost daily on their blogs and great discussion in the comment section with members as well as we're doing a ton of cool stuff. So we had a video last week. We have a video every month as well as weekly course reviews and daily blogs pretty much, maybe not every day, but close to it five days probably a week, we will have a new blog up there. So without further ado, let's get to Tom Doak and thank you guys for listening and the club TFE support to date. Tom, We're back, and I'm excited. I of course I've visited a few times now that we have never talked about is bally Neil. And I think it's one of the courses in your career that people have, people talk about the most in America and and I'm excited to kind of chat a little bit about it, you know, in terms of kicking off talking about this a little bit, I'd love to hear about. You know, two thousand and six is when it opened. Uh, what how would you describe this time in your career?

00:02:45
Speaker 1: It was the busiest I'd ever been till until right now. You know, the year after Pacific Dunes opened, you know, we started getting calls about all these great projects. But but you know, it took a little while for that pipeline to happen. It took a year for people to really have seen it. And then, you know, like I was telling me before, like you know, from the time somebody calls me until they actually building golf courses, at least a year, usually two years. So you know, Pacific Dunes opened the end of two thousand and one. So by like two thousand and four, two thousand and five, I'm We're super busy, and you know, I think we built we were working on Stone Eagle, ballet El and Sabonic all at the same time, all big important projects, really different pieces of ground, really different situations, and you know, all exciting and you know, you know, ramping up, you know, had it. That's when a bunch of young people started working for us, and you know, they were they were starting to do some cool stuff. You know, it was a really good time. Uh And there were just a ton of new golf courses opening then, and even though Pacific Dunes was a hit, it was like, you know, some of the golf courses I built then were like just overlooked or you know, like the year Ballly Neil opened, it was the sixth best new private golf club in America according to Golf Digest.

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Speaker 2: What was number one? Do you remember.

00:04:24
Speaker 1: That? I do that year? I do not remember what was number one. I don't think it's rated higher today than it was than Bali Neils, but you know that's you know, Balli Neil was sixth, and Tumble Creek was seventh, and what was the other one? Something else we did was in there? Sabonic was the next year. Sabonic was the best new course. The next year, said stone Eagle, was like ninth.

00:04:52
Speaker 2: I gotta I gotta find that list. I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go digging through the Golf Digest archives and see see, uh see what was was put ahead of it? What the land obviously is called the Colorado chop Hills. What were your first impressions when you saw the land and and this project came up?

00:05:14
Speaker 1: So, you know, I got a call about in two thousand and two. I think, you know, uh, the O'Neill brothers, Jim and Rupert were the clients. You know, Jim was a golf pro, so I think I talked to him first and you know, he you know, he told me that they you know, they they had always like, you know, growing up out there. You know, they'd watched the British Open on TV and you know, look at the land out in their backyard basically and go that that is really that's that kind of land. There should be golf out there. And of course, you know, they were in no position to do anything about that. And then Sandhills opened and it was like, yeah, we were right, but they still were in no position to do anything about that. And then I think their father had passed away, and so that you know, they had to decide, you know, or are we just you know, or are we still in the farm business as a family, or what are we doing? You know, Jim was obviously removed from that. He's a golf pro out in northern California, but but you know, they were what do we do with the land? Should we should we actually go for trying to build a golf course? And I don't remember for sure if whether Jim had played Pacific Dunes at that point or not, but he certainly knew about it and knew about me. So I was the first person that called about talking about doing a golf course, and I think I was the only one they talked to about doing the golf course, and you know, they didn't have a lot of money, and you know, it wasn't very clear if the thing was ever going to happen when we when we were starting out, So you know, I never it took me a long time to work on a plan for it because I would only be there for like a day or two at a time when I had some time, and that was never enough to process it all in my brain how much was going on out there. You know, I was around sand Hills a little bit when they started that because I knew Bill and Ben really well, and I knew Dick young Scott from my days with Pete Thott and you know sand Hills. The thing that the thing that kind of surprised me about it, but but I but that I understood about it pretty quickly was was that the golf course is actually on pretty gentle land. You know, if they'd have gone anywhere else, but they did, it was starting to get more steep and rugged, and they didn't do that. They just they stayed to the gentler stuff. You know, every time you open up the grass and have a bunker. It looks really dramatic. You don't have to be on really wild, crazy ground for that to look really sexy. So they stayed to the more gentle part. And you know bally Neil, from the first time I was there, it was clear that you know, now you couldn't do that here. There's some really severe stuff that's the right scale for golf, and that you would want to use that. And you know that was also what would make it a little different than sand Hills. I mean, I was keenly aware that whatever we did, you know, it was going to be seen as a follow up to sand Hills, and it was always going to be compared to sand Hills, And of course it was never going to be better than sand Hills. But you know, I didn't want it to be the same as sand Hills. You know, I wanted it to have a different character than sand Hills. So whatever people said about it, they wouldn't say, oh, they just ripped off sand Hills.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and the land obviously people draw comparisons, they say it's similar, it's similar, but the land at bally Neil, I would say, the formations are much more abrupt.

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Speaker 1: They are, And then you know, you're seeing the afters. It was even more abrupt when we started. You know, there's three or four holes there. We had to do a signal significant amount of work to make them playable. But you know, because they're all kind of down in a valley, you don't know what was in the middle of that valley when we started. You're just seeing the sides are still the same. So as far as you know, it was all the same.

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Speaker 2: The so with the you had the abruptness as a way to differentiate. Were there any other things that you looked at sand Hills and said, hey, this is how we can make bally Neil really stand apart from sand Hills.

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Speaker 1: Well, you know, I mean I I love the you know, Jim or Bean and I walked sand Hills after they'd laid out a golf course and mowed down the native grass, but before they had done any construction work at all, and it was such a natural golf course. We hit balls around the back nine, you know, we kind of made the turn and I'm like, why don't we just hit balls? So so we did that the vac nine and you know, got in a car and we're driving back to North Platte and I was like, we're counting there were like fourteen greens at sand Hills that they didn't have to shape anything. I think they shaped them very gently, but there were I mean, there were most of the greens there. They were there, which is you know most sites, if you have two of those, that's amazing and you're really not getting you know, in most architects would never because they're so used to having to change them anyway. The two that would be good to go, they'll they'll tear up anyway just because. But you know, so I never so I didn't think going into Bally, you know, it's like we're not we're not gonna have that. This is too rugged for that. And you know, and not to say this in a negative way about sand Hills, but because that was like that, you know, they didn't they didn't want to, you know, they wanted to find the perfect routing where they could leave that stuff alone and not change anything. But you know that also kind of limited what they could do. They they didn't. You know, Number two is one of the only greens that wasn't like that, and that's the wildest green on the golf course. But you know, they they they weren't gonna, you know, make conscious decisions about I'm gonna do this kind of green or this kind of green that I haven't done somewhere else before, because they because they had so much there to start with, you know. So for Ballet Neal, I thought, Okay, you know, we're going to do some really different greens than sandhills because we don't have perfect natural greens here. And you know, to me, what makes the golf course different and really cool is that probably more than anywhere I've worked. It's like, you know, the contours around the greens have everything to do with playing golf there. It's like, you know, you're playing off the side of a hill into the green and it just comes right down into the middle of the green. That you know, that's not only you can do that, but some polls you should do that. That's that's the way to you know, make the whole easier for yourself. And you know it's not it's not you know, and and really there's not many you know, I wasn't thinking so much about all the courses in the UK, but none of them have really have hardly any of them have greens like that either, you know, I mean the best links in the UK. There's only a handful of places like Macrahannish and Saint Andrew's And yeah, I'm not thinking I haven't thought about in advance, but there's I can maybe named six or seven that there's some really cool kind of wild natural green sites there that they just left alone. You know, most of them are shaped up, you know, by by men without machines a very long time ago.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, you know. The greens I think are an interesting topic there. I the first time I played it, it was at the end I had done sand Hills for a couple of days and we played bally Neil. I was tired and we played it and I enjoyed it. But the greens, they are I mean, there's a lot going on, and I think, like you know, you can get if you're in a mindset of fair and unfair, you can get you can get hit shots that end up really far away that you think we're very good shots. But the thing that I've kind of realized, and this goes with some other courses, are in the same bucket. I think like Kingsley Club that Mike Devrees built is in a similar bucket where the more you play it the more you realize, like, well, like that's not the place to aim. The place to AIM's over there, right, And it's an interesting you know, for somebody that's a member at bally Neil, this is probably one of the most rewarding qualities of a golf course. But for somebody who's a one time visitor, one time, who might play it once or twice, Yeah, that is the tough thing about those greens, right, is that they don't know where to hit it to get that to funnel it in. But it's you know, you know, it's a tough thing about being an architect. It is like are you you know if you think about like and I doubt that this is at the top of mind when you're designing, but like a ranking like what we we opened this podcast about, like it was the seventh best rated course or whatever on the on the year. If you're only playing at one time, that's probably going to be the way you feel. But if you if you if you're a member and you play it ten times, you feel completely different about the greens.

00:14:40
Speaker 1: Right. So a lot of that the golf course being underrated originally was just that it was a bunch of guys who came once and it was wildly different than what they expected and they hit a shot straight at the flag and it wound up way not anywhere close to the flag, and they thought, this is crap. Plus it wasn't in really good shape when it opened and that didn't help either. But yeah, I mean, you know, of all the golf courses I've built, I would say that yeah, by far. You know, bally Neil is the one where the members are so they love the golf course. They're really engaged with it. I hear from them all the time about you know, how they played and what they did, and you know how certain holes work out and how they you know, they didn't like this hole before and now it's their favorite hole, which is really fun. You know. That means it's working for the long term and it's a membership club, that's what it should do.

00:15:36
Speaker 2: It makes you think that like it's almost and I guess like this is you know what you were talking about, you know, working with Mike Kaiser in the last podcast we did, and how do you really need to do that? It's almost like there's a different a different mentality for a resort course versus a private course.

00:15:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, I've tried not to be like that and not to be so conscious of you know, you know, when I was when I was just starting in the business, Jack Nicholas did an article for Golf magazine and and like how we would approach building a par for for different clients like private club, tournament golf course, resort, public golf course, and you know, they're all different. The resort had lots of flashy bunkers and the public course was just as dumb down, hardly any bunkers as you could get. I was like, God, I mean, you know, it's like, we don't you know if the public course we're not trying very hard. It was like, no, don't do that. You know, build, you know, build good golf courses for public consumption too. But there is you know when you build something, nearly everything I build, you know, I'm I don't want it to be all straightforward where you figure it all out the first time you were there. So you know, anytime I do that for a resort, I'm thinking, you know, I'm thinking, okay, you know, there's some people that aren't going to like that and they're never coming back. But is that going to be okay? Is client going to be okay with that? Is? Are there going to be enough people that like it and come back that you don't care that some people don't like it? You know that at the end of the day, that's the important question is are some people going to like it so much that you don't have to you don't really have to care about the people that dismiss it right off the bat. But yeah, it is a conscious decision. And so you know, Ballely Neil, the issue was, like, you know, I said to Rupert O'Neill before we started, I was like, you know, this place will fail if it's not one of the top fifty golf courses in America. I mean out here where it is. You know, sand Hills is another couple hours down the road. Realistically, you know, you're only going to get people to keep coming back here if it's a really great golf course. And I and I said, and I said to him, and it might not even succeed if it is. And you know, sure enough, it went bankrupt in the recession because you know, they didn't they didn't have enough financial backing to get through when it was impossible to sell a membership. You know, the way the bankruptcy worked out was was kind of awkward, and you know, it's still sort of in the family. But but I mean, it wasn't that the golf course failed exactly. It was just like they didn't have the resources behind it, and.

00:18:33
Speaker 2: It opened it like the worst time it could open too.

00:18:36
Speaker 1: Pretty much, you know, maybe you know, maybe not, you know, if they if you know, they had just enough time to sell a bunch of memberships, but unfortunately, politically they had messed up and they you know, they weren't able to set that. They pissed off somebody in Denver pretty hard, and so the word was on the street in Denver, don't do business with that. And like, you know, if they couldn't sell memberships in Denver, they were doomed.

00:19:04
Speaker 2: With the Greens, I guess, like one of the things out there, I think one of the virtues of the place is this walking only and then you have the you know, the ability, you know. I think one of the stark contrasts between sand Hills and bally Neil is the agronomy and the you know, you really if you go there on the symbol on a trip together, you see how you have to maintain a golf course with cart play, and how you don't have how you have to maintain, how you can maintain a golf course without cart play is one of the amazing you know, things that you can see. And I think one of the things that all everything that goes on around the greens and the way the golf courses maintain accentuate these greens. And I'm curious, you know what, what's the you know, as greens have gotten faster and faster, has that taken anything away from the greens of bally Neil Oh.

00:20:00
Speaker 1: I'm sure in the you know, when they get the greens fast, you know, the greens, greens aren't the natural way of doing things. Greens aren't consistently fast all through the season. It's like in the spring, you know, they're slow, and in the summer maybe you know, when it's one hundred and ten degrees out there, you back off a little bit and let the grass get a little higher, and then in the fall they can be fast because there's no you know, you're not worried about about disease pressure and you're not worried about they're just going to burn up and you can really cut them tight and get them fast, so there's a range through the earth. When they get their fastest, you have less options of where you can put the whole. I mean, there's still whole locations on the greens that work, usually in the lower areas, but some of the edgier whole locations that you might see in the spring or early in the summer, No, they're probably not using those very much. You know, when the greens are really fast, so you know think you know, bally Neil is not the kind of place. You know, there's a lot of private clubs in America now that are like it's in the superintendent's contract that the greens will be eleven for six months straight, and that is ridiculous. And yet the superintendent's encourage that because now at least they know what the standard is. You know, you can't fire me if the greens are eleven in this. If you know the greens are eleven, that's what you said you wanted.

00:21:26
Speaker 2: It's a green speeds The thing I think it does too. If the greens get fast at a place like bally Neil is like the balls all end up in the same spot, which is what you don't want, because the slopes become so big and so fast, and I think that's a thing that you see across the board with what's happening with green speeds, is they just like I mean, I think back to when I played junior golf and it's like the place I grew up playing was. I mean even I go back there and the greens are fast. I mean it's like that that course. You know, they had to be six or seven when I was growing up, and it was like, you know, you learned how like you had so much slope in greens and everything. But now you know, you just start to see greens get muted because of the speed. Because the balls all end up in the same spot, it gets impossible to get it to certain spots.

00:22:18
Speaker 1: Yeah and yeah, I mean fifty years ago when I started playing, like you know, even the good clubs at the green speed on an average day was seven or seven and a half or eight maybe, you know, I mean a place like wing Foot, they could get it. They get them to ten, but they weren't ten all year. They were ten for the club championship. You know that they didn't want to. Nobody would spend the money or resources that I mean, the grasses themselves would have been hard. It would have been really hard to do that for a whole season back then, but nobody wanted to spend that kind of money back then, even if you could have.

00:22:57
Speaker 2: What aspects of bally deal do you look back up on most positively? Like what what are your favorite memories like when you think about bally Neil, what were your favorite memories of that?

00:23:07
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, you know, one of the coolest, one of the cool things about it was, you know, I mean Jim O'Neill was a golfer, but he was a you know, he's you know, we're we're building a golf course in the summer, and he's a golf throw he's got something to do. So, you know, I didn't figure out until just as we started with you know, Jim's not going to be really be around here at all. It's Rupert that I'm dealing with day to day. And you know, Rupert was kind of unpredictable to deal with every day. But he wasn't really a golfer, and so he took the attitude that, you know, just make it fun. You know, he had no preconceptions about that's not fair, or you should try to do this or that or the other thing. You know, it was just all about making the golf course fun. One other it was the same right then Richard Satler who we did Barnboogle for. Richard wasn't really a golfer, and he's just like, you know, make it fun, make people want to be here. You know, Richard was in the hospitality business, and so you know, I felt like I had more license from them to do some wild things. And then you know, as it turns out, both jobs I had. Brian Schneider shaving greens. He wasn't the only one, you know, Bally Neil. We actually had like, you know, everybody was there for a little bit. I'm told a couple of people have told me Jim Orbina takes a lot of credit for Ballymeal, which is interesting because he was building Sabonic at the time and he wasn't there really at all. He was there, he was one of the he was he was the one who like walked around the property with me in the beginning when we were routing the golf course, but he had almost nothing to do with building it. Kai Goldby and Brian Schneider and Bruce Hepner lived in a house in Holyoak all summer. You know, the three of them were the main part of the crew. And then you know Eric lives in Denver, but he was working on Stone Eagle, so he only he built one or two greens there and I shaped one or two and those other three guys did most of them. But you know, they were all you know, we built a lot of courses in these really small towns with like nothing, there's nothing else to do. There's there's hardly any place to go have dinner. There's really nothing else to do but talk about golf all night and then go out the next day and try to build something even wilder than you did yesterday. And you know, I don't know, and you know, if it was today fifteen years later, I don't know, those guys might not be having the same kind of fun that they were then. But at that time, it was like, you know, we were all still pretty young, and it was like we were not jaded to any of this, and it's like we're just having a blast out here, and let's see what crazy things we can do. And I think the golf course really benefits from all that.

00:26:09
Speaker 2: Explain one hole where this kind of dynamic played out. If you are one green or a feature that got built because of this kind of you know golf, I mean as somebody who loves golf, but you just think about being a fly on the wall at night and then going out. Can you remember a specific example of this happening.

00:26:31
Speaker 1: Well, I mean the green I always think about the most on Dally neilis number seven. But it's not it's a good example of collaboration. It's maybe not exactly the story we were just talking about. I'm trying to think if there's a better example of that, but I'll tell you the story on seven. So number seven, originally the green was going to be up to the right more where eight is now. And you know, and I didn't have a really good green site up there, and that was the perfect place for number eight t because eight, you know, that eighth fairway kind of pinches to that one point on the left, and the higher the tea was and the further it was to the right, the better that was going to present itself. And you know, at some point I'm just like, well, if I don't really have a great green site for number seven up here anyway, I might as well put the tea where that was going to be and then put the green for seven down below there somewhere. But I didn't have that figured out either. So you know, we're building all these other holes and I'm still trying to figure out how am I going to get a good green in here for number seven? I didn't know what I was going to do. And then finally, you know, we've been trying to build a green kind of like the seventh that crystal downs at Sabonic And so I'm out at Dally and Neil and you know, I'm looking at the green was just like in a you know, like a half pipe valley. You know, if you look at what the landform actually is there, it's just it's just a narrow bowl and with you know, fairly high on the left and even higher on the right. And I was struggling with like, how am I gonna build a good green in here, because like everything's just gonna funnel down into the green unless I leave some long grass in the face of the hill, and then you're either gonna funnel down to the green again get stuck up there. That's gonna suck. And then after staring at it for a long time, I was like, well, the one on the left isn't so high. I could actually like take the short grass all the way up over that and then just let the let the right one come down up. And you know, once I, once I thought about that, the shoulder on the left, I was like, oh, that's like the the kicker thing on the on the green, a crystal downs, you know, so we can we could just dig a little bunker to the right to keep stop those long grass on the right from coming into the green. That's where it stops. And then you could play around the bunker using the slope on the left. So Brian Schneider was up on number he was up the hill, so he was on number two or three or something like that, and I, you know, I called him down and I told him the idea, and he he dug out the bunker for number seven and he slopped the material into the green to make the little step ups that are there. And you know, we built it in like an hour hour and a half. You know, I looked at it for like ten hours over two or three trips, and then it's no time to build. Once I really had a good idea that was you know, you know, we Brian Slanik was there too. I left him out, but he shaped greens there as well. We all did and you know, a lot of cool stuff and a lot of different stuff.

00:29:44
Speaker 2: What was the hole that you had to create the most, so you talked about how you had to You know, there are some that was just too severe that you had to do significant earthwork and to your eye you wouldn't know because of everything around it being existing, But there was significant at work in the landscape.

00:30:02
Speaker 1: Well, the big ones were number two, the you know where the fairway goes down the slope. That was way more severe than it is now. If you can believe that, you know, it's hard to the ball wouldn't have stayed anywhere. It just was all topsy turvy and then crashed into the bottom and then you couldn't you know, it started out even higher in the landing areas. You couldn't see anything down the rest of the hole. So a lot of work there. Number number nine we had to cut through more where the hole goes through the neck one hundred yards short of the green. That was the first. You know, that was like the leap of faith. Okay, we have to do this to get back to get back to the other side, So we did that the fall before we started construction actually, and then number fourteen, you know, we had to cut through dunes there and we kind of built the green where we cut through the dunes, okay, and then but the biggest one was number seventeen, and I think that turned out the coolest because you know, the green site's natural, but the fairway was so much more severe. You know, there's there's you think, now, well there's that. You know, it's kind of high on the left, and then there's this big slope going down to the right, and that big slope was there, and we didn't really change that, but that big slope just was like where the where the middle of the fairway is now, the dunes were eight or ten feet higher. You know, it was just like warmp up and over. So you know, when we started, everything was either going to be down the right or over to the left and blind. So you know, we had to pick the point to like cut all the rest of that away and fill in the left side and tie it in so that you had the upper left side that was that you could see where you were going, and you know, so you had the opportunity to bail to the left and still play the hole and it worked out great. And you know, people don't see that stuff. You know, it's just like again, anything that's in the middle of the hole. You can make a ten foot dune completely disappear because you don't see the you don't see the slope that it was tying into. But it, you know, it was it was pretty hard to get that, you know, just to to start changing it part way up that big slope that's still there. That was the thing that was like, yeah, that's going to be tricky to do that and have it not look like we changed it.

00:32:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's like tying it into the big thing is the hard thing. It's not what goes on inside, because it's that's those big dunes kind of obscure everything else because they're so big that your eye kind of draws that way. And that's the most that it makes a lot of sense. Now for a quick word from our sponsor, Cozy Earth. Cozy Earth they are a new sponsor and they make really great stuff for this time of year. It's obviously winter. It's it's been kind of gnarly out here in California. It's been raining a ton. I've been really forced indoors, and what's been awesome is having cozy earth. They make really comfortable stuff. They have men's loungewear, women's loungewear, pajamas, you know, sheets, towels, stuff like that. It's, you know, as the name implies, it's really comfortable stuff. I've really really liked the sweatpants that they're like the joggers that I've been you know, wearing a ton because I've been really just sitting inside watching it rain. So this stuff is it's naturally breathable. Besides being comfortable, well, it's temperature regulating and it's made from there from bamboo, so it's really good stuff. I can't recommend this enough. Person that's really into it is missus fried Egg. She's been, you know, she's been looking at the website trying to find more stuff to buy. But you know, if you're looking for a good Valentine's Day gift for your partner, this is it. This is great stuff. If you use the promo code fried egg, that's just fried Egg, you get thirty five percent off site wide, so incredible deal. Thirty five percent off site wide if you use the promo code fried egg go to Cozy Earth coz y e a r t h dot com and you can look through their immense catalog of comfortable stuff. So thanks to Cozy Earth. And now back to Tom Doak. The idea behind it, like who came up with the no T marker idea? And how did that run with? And was that you know what, what were your thoughts behind that? Obviously it's become a kind of an ethos of the club.

00:35:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, I don't remember all the details. I mean, we you know, we've talked about that for years. You know, we've we certainly talked about that on projects before bally' neil. But again that's where you know, that's where Rupert O'Neill, not being from the golf business, whoever said it to him, and I don't know which of the guys said it to him, He was like, yeah, we'll try that, why not? And you know, and some of the people that he that he got to join early on, they just took it and ran with it, and it's like that's their thing now. You know, it makes all the sense in the world. But you know, it'd be easy to operate every golf course that way if it weren't for the handicapped system, and you know, the handicap system, it is like, no, you got to report a score and it's got to be from right here. And Ballionio is not sand Hills before Ballly Andel they started the thing. They don't even they don't have a USGA course rating. You can't. You can't return scores from sand Hills and Ballly and Neil and sand Hills, even though you're playing from team markers. It's like, you know, they just they're just realistic. It's like, you know, in the morning it's calm and in the afternoon it's blowing forty, So yeah, your scores are gonna be like six shots different if you played the same. It doesn't make sense to report scores out here.

00:36:34
Speaker 2: It's uh yeah, I mean that's one of the constraints of the handicap system, right is what it does to the to golf. It's it's a it's a really neat golf course, and it just it's always fun to think back on those holes. And thanks for talking to us about that. But uh, let's go to some listener questions and we got a bunch, so I want to get through some of these and uh one that's prescient, that's in the news. The ghost tree. This is the winter storms have not been good to the ghost tree at Old McDonald, and Riley Wayland wants to know how, if so, would you replace the ghost tree if something happens to the ghost tree on the third hole at Old McDonald.

00:37:18
Speaker 1: You know, I only heard about I saw it on social media somewhere. Nobody called me and said, it's gonna fall. What are we gonna do.

00:37:27
Speaker 2: You know?

00:37:28
Speaker 1: And there wasn't there. There actually was a tree at the in the back of the left bunker on the eighth green at Pacific Dunes when the golf course opened, and if you were in the back left bunker, the tree was kind of overhanging the bunker and you could have to play a bunker shot like up over the lip and under the tree again. And that blew down like yere one, and they tried to guy wire it back up, and it you know, lasted about a month and then it blew over again, and you know, it was already it was pretty controversial, so they just took it out and nobody remembers that anymore.

00:38:01
Speaker 2: I want to see this tree.

00:38:04
Speaker 1: Kind of iconic now, But you know, you can't replace that. I mean, you know, it's it's iconic because it's big, and it's got this gnarly shape and you can tell it's been there forever. You know, it's up to them. And you know, my understanding is mister Kaiser is like, no, you know, we can't, we can't replace that. But you know they might, they might get pressured to try. And personally, now, I mean, it's it's a very cool thing. I'll be sad to see it go. But even dead trees die and get replaced eventually.

00:38:49
Speaker 2: Was there ever discussion when you design the whole of doing anything but leaving the tree?

00:38:54
Speaker 1: Well, there were two trees. There were there were two trees there. Originally there was a there was a there was a dead pine further to the right that was it didn't have the gnarly shape of the one on the left. You know, but you know, when you looked at the when you looked at the during construction, it looked like you were trying to kick a field goal from one hundred and fifty yards, And you know, it was clear that at least one of them was going to have to go. And you know, it was very hard for us to like figure out, like you know, when you stand on the tee, it's like, what is the line to the green here? You know, we had trouble lining it up to understand, like you know that the ghost tree wound up being more on the bee line to the green than I actually thought it was when we were building the hole. But you know, but we've you know, the one to the one to the right was more in the middle of where most people would want to go, So it was like, nah, that plus it didn't look that great, so you know, we we kind of I mean, you know, Jim was really attached to the tree. I don't think Mike really was at that point, you know, and I was just like, well, we'll see if it works. You know, we'll see if it works. There's no reason to take it down now, you know, if people keep hitting it, then probably it's going to get taken out in a couple of years. But you know, it just it's, you know, there's nothing else quite like it, so and it's it's had a good run, but I don't know how they'd ever replace it.

00:40:25
Speaker 2: While we're on the subject, and this is from your friend Peter Florey. He wants to know what the most underrated hole, Old Mac.

00:40:32
Speaker 1: Is the most underrated hole.

00:40:37
Speaker 2: Your favorite kind of question, and by answering this, it's going to become the least underrated hole. You know, yeah, I mean.

00:40:48
Speaker 1: The first is a very underrated hole. You know that that double Plateau green that's pretty severe. You know, you're not hitting a very long approach shot into it usually unless it's dead in the teeth of the wind in the summer, then it's pretty hard. But that that green is tough, and you know it's underrated because they don't use the wings of the green for the pin very much at all. Mister Kaiser thinks it's too hard for the first hole with those whole locations, so he just tells them put it in the middle of the green. Don't use those whole locations. You know. The few times they've had like a tournament there, you know, when we had the Renaissance Cup there, the pin was back right and uh, you know we wound up having a playoff for the championship, and that you know, that decided it. Somebody missed that to the right and couldn't get up and down for par and sure enough when they had like the was it the was it the pub links that they had the I think both. It was either the publinks or the mid Am that they had the final on Old Mac and it went to extra holes and that decided it same hole location. It's like, as good as those guys were playing making four to that whole location, they couldn't both do it.

00:41:58
Speaker 2: I really like how you know, if you play a traditional like an Old MC or a CB McDonald seth Rayin or double Plateau, you get that that principal's nose thirty yards out and at the time it's right in the approach where your landing ball's running it in. One of the things I really liked about that hole in a modern form was pushing that up to the green edge because it makes you think if if it's not into the wind, it really makes you think, like, do I want to push this up here and have to hit a fifty yard web shot off tight a tight, firm surface over a little bunker that I want no part into to hit it end of the screen. And I thought that was like a release.

00:42:41
Speaker 1: At the green either it's it's kind of that awkwardly little bit short, yeah, and it hides the ground in between, so you're down. You know, you're down there on that shot. That's all feel and you can't really see all.

00:42:51
Speaker 2: It's right where you want to land it too, to that front right. Part part of the green is you want to kind of just kind of cozy that in and let it release out there. You don't want to trying to hit that that hard spinner early in a round. Moving on, Bradley Peterson has a I think a prescient question with I think rising construction costs obviously are big thing in design. What's the future of new public daily fee courses you can play under sixty dollars? Can such a thing be built?

00:43:22
Speaker 1: No? Not in America, you know, not with all the standards and expectations we have for a new golf course. No. I mean, you know, so the rule of thumb is this is an old thing. I don't know why it still wouldn't apply. The rule of thumb I always heard in the golf business in my early days, was like every million dollars you spend to develop the thing, you're gonna have to charge ten bucks to break eat, you know, to break even. So you know, if you spend six million dollars, that's a sixty dollars golf course. So you can build a golf course for six million dollars, but you can't all up a project for six million dollars, you know, with a with a clubhouse and a meat is building full of maintenance equipment. Used to be you could do all that for six million dollars. Now it's more like ten. So that's one hundred dollars golf course. Opening a brand new sixty dollars golf course. If anybody does that, it means they're failing right out of the gate and sixty dollars is all they can get.

00:44:23
Speaker 2: They're they're running the costco business plan with the rough history chicken. If they're doing that, it's a loss leader. You know, they're they're trying to trying.

00:44:30
Speaker 1: To Yeah, but a lost leader for what I know.

00:44:32
Speaker 2: That's my point, the.

00:44:34
Speaker 1: Expensive stuff to sell them.

00:44:38
Speaker 2: That's that I'd never heard that rule of thumb, and that's uh, that's valuable information. So the way to have I if I think about it the right, If I think about a way, the best way to go about that would be defunct courses, yes, that have infrastructure, and.

00:44:57
Speaker 1: Only affordable golf courses are old golf courses or you know the really screwed up thing about capitalism and the golf You know, this is a big part of the golf business too. Is the golf course that could be a sixty dollars golf course is the one that's already failed and gone bankrupt and somebody you know, you spent twenty million dollars to build it, but the next guy buys it for five You know, now he can charge sixty bucks and make a profit because he didn't have to pay for all the construction stuff. He bought it for twenty five cents on the dollar. And that's what you know that I mean the screwy thing about that the bit business in general. It's not just the golf business. It's like, you know, you can have a responsible designer and responsible client. It's like, we're trying to do this at a reasonable thing, and you know, we managed to get it done for ten million dollars, and your competitor down the road does it, does it for twenty and that like they're an idiot. So they go bankrupt and then somebody comes in and buys that for less than you spent and then they kick your ass.

00:46:01
Speaker 2: Yeah that's right, because once you've put the money in if you buy that property for pennies on the dollar, then you're at a huge competitive advantage exactly.

00:46:12
Speaker 1: So yeah, a lot of times the places that are successful are places that failed and you inherited all that shit for free.

00:46:20
Speaker 2: All right, here's a question. This one I like because Zach Blair and I had a side discussion the other day about this kind of topic, and I'm very curious what makes a good strategic Part three? This is from Peter Cannon and my follow up question. Zach and I were discussing can a par three even be strategic?

00:46:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, he texted me about that too. Maybe he was in the middle of his conversation with you.

00:46:48
Speaker 2: I had like a hundred I had like one hundred and three fever at that moment what he was and I was like sending him voice memos back because I couldn't even like text. So it was it was a it was a discussion, but I I, you know, the only thing I could really think of is like a sixteenth Cypress situation where you have the option kind of lay left in and play in there.

00:47:13
Speaker 1: There's a handful of holes like that in the world. The sixth at West Sussex in London in England is another one. But you know there's not many holes like that. I mean, it has to be really long, you know. I mean the reason those holes are like that is because they're two twenty from the back tee and to ten from the middle tea. You know, so most people can't go for the green and they have to consider a fair way. You know, if you move the t up to one sixty, everybody, you know, if you could put a tee for the sixteenth all at cypress point it one's sixty, everybody go for the green. But you know you're you can't do that. So so yeah, that kind of strategy, yes, it's very rare. But you know, when Zach texted me, I was like, you know, I have an answer for you, but I'm more cureious as to what you think any any sort of I could look at it. I'll look up the decision.

00:48:06
Speaker 2: I don't think he doesn't he doesn't think par three's can be strategic because like by one thing, I was like, well, like a Verdan, you could aim right at it, or you could play it like short right and bounce it in. And he was like, yeah, but if that that's the way to play it is playing it short right and bouncing it in. There's not it's not strategic, So I, you know, I I have a hard time figuring out strategic.

00:48:31
Speaker 1: Here's my text conversation with Zach. I was like, I'm actually more curious to hear what you think. Do you always aim at the middle of the green? Do you always aim at the pin? He said, well, I certainly don't always aim at the pin sometimes because something is so penal it's not worth making four or worse. But there is like a dance strategic you're aiming towards the kicker to help the ball feed somewhere, or obviously you can forgo with a kicker and hit it at the pin. I guess gun in my head, I would say, yes that that would be strategic. And I said, you know, you know, I don't know whether it's strategy or it's tactics. But yeah, there's a lot of hole. You know, there's a lot of par three holes where you know, do you go you know twelve in augusta, do you go for that sucker pin? Is that strategy or is it just tactical? Now, you'd never go for that. I think that's strategic. So there's a lot of holes that like, you know, if the green's got enough going on, Pineer's number two, any of the greens on the Part three there, it's like, where can I afford to miss this? Am I just gonna play for the very front to make sure I don't get you know, because if I know, if I miss right with the pin back, there's no way I'm getting up and down from there. You know. It's whether you define that as strategy or not. But I think if you do, then yes, Part three's are strategic.

00:50:06
Speaker 2: I think that almost you almost have to have like the it has to have significant slope in the green. I The way I would describe it is like.

00:50:17
Speaker 1: Well, honestly, most Part fours and Part fives do too. I mean, yeah, you get a more open approach this way than the other way, but what really backs that up is there's enough going on in the green that you can't you can't just go over there that's going to kill you.

00:50:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, It's like if you have the one one hole I'm thinking of is like six at National Golf Links a short Part three right, where like if you know that green well enough, there are multiple places you can hit a wedge to get to certain pins. You know, it's not that one that one.

00:50:52
Speaker 1: I would say, it's like there's different places to aim there, but I don't. I'm not sure there's much strategy to that. I mean, you know, when the little bulle, it's like, you're not going to aim at the wing on the right, you know, whatever section you could at that section.

00:51:10
Speaker 2: I guess. Well, one of the other things about that green is I've been in a position on that green where I'm can I laid up on a putt. Yes, I think that's maybe some strategy too, and people would say it's unfair, but I remember it's like one of the shots I most vividly remember in the last five years of playing golf was laying up for a putt and making like a fifteen footer for par and feeling like I like ran out. I was like, if I put it this way, it's going in the bunker. I have to lay up over here, and I have to And I made the fifteen footer and I felt like I like robbed a bank.

00:51:50
Speaker 1: I've done that a couple of times too in my life, but it's been a while.

00:51:53
Speaker 2: But it's like that that's strategy because you could go right at it, and I could have made the putt for two potentially, but if I don't make it, it goes in the bunker. I chose an alternate route. But you know, most cases, you build a greed, Like nobody would ever build that green today because it would be deemed unfair.

00:52:13
Speaker 1: I'd build that green today for the right if the client would let me.

00:52:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's uh all right. Uh, Joe Colangelo, I think you wrote a little bit about this in Getting to eighteen. You did write about this in Getting to eighteen. I'm curious if there's any other projects that would fall into this bucket, he asked, project that never came to fruition that you most wish you could have done?

00:52:36
Speaker 1: Oh my god, Yeah, there's a lot. I did a threat on golf Club Atlas once, and I had like eighteen of them and everybody was like, you know, And one of the reasons I did it was because, like all the young architects that are on there, you know, oh my big break just fell through. Oh my big break just fell through. And it's like, that's the business man. I mean, half the things that you sign up to do happen, and you know you've got somehow you have to power through all that because it's still gonna happen to you even if you're more successful. That's just the nature of it. So like, you know, I got a list. There's there's three of them that I'm still dying to do. One of them's Punta Brava. Maybe I get to do that now, you know. One of them's the second course at Cape Kidnappers that Bruce Heppner and I laid out, which we were gonna do very minimalist and just like put sheep fence around the greens and only irrigate the greens and let the rest of it be grace. And you know, Julian Robertson being a billionaire just you know, didn't understand that at all. And maybe maybe I maybe that was the wrong thing, that maybe the it would have been better to pitch that to them. It's just like a full on another eighteen holes for the resort, which makes no which would make no sense. I mean they you know, they got twenty five rooms. They don't need thirty six holes for twenty five rooms. But you know, it's such a beautiful sight. It's so different than the other golf course. It's you know, two miles further on and it's down in the valley and there's like you hit over these hundred foot ravines that cut through it. I mean, it's a spectacular thing. And you know, Bruce and I hit balls around it because it was all grays down anyway, and it's like, that's some of the most fun I've ever had. And it wouldn't take much to build it. So I hope you left a little money in as will so we can go do that someday, but I'm not counting on it.

00:54:31
Speaker 2: What are your thoughts on holes with two greens from Dan Haynes.

00:54:36
Speaker 1: Holes with two greens? Yes, I'm trying. I guess I've done that once. You know, the Pacific Dunes has alternate greens. You know, it depends on why you're doing it. You know a lot of places when you read that, it's just like it just sounds like a gimmick. You know, we're doing it so we can talk about that we have a hole with two greens, you know, is there you know, instead of like these are both cool green sites and we really couldn't decide, you know, in Pacific Dunes, it was a combination of they're both cool green sites. And then there are also two teas I want to build for the next hole, and one of them's by this green site, and one of them's down the hill more by that other green site. So that would actually make sense to like alternate the greens and then you know, play ten from low one day and high the next. That didn't make much sense to mister Kaiser because he likes the high tea on number ten. He thought everybody should be there all the time. So, you know, for a while they weren't using the lower ninth green at all. There was like a couple of years there they barely used it, and I think they're back to using it every other day now because I really like that one. But you know, in general, you don't need to do that. Why would you do that? The one the one application I've seen this pretty good. Tom Fasio built several golf courses when things are booming twenty years ago that had you know, he'd built usually it was a short part four and he'd build two greens, and the reason was so he could build some a really small green because he was a stickler for not you know, I can't build a small green because the superintendent can't deal with the traffic on an everyday basis. So his minimum green size was like five thousand square feet. He never had a hole that was like I don't know if I can hit this green. But you know, he started doing that, I think inspired by eight at Pine Valley. So he had two fairly you know, he had two fairly small greens that you were alternating between, and you know, then he felt like he could make a really small green.

00:56:43
Speaker 2: That makes I guess that makes a little sense, like right, it gets the wear pattern out. But you know, I go to the old adage, you know, for most parts. In most cases, if you have two greens, do you really have have one green?

00:57:02
Speaker 1: I'm not sure I understand that.

00:57:05
Speaker 2: It's like if you got two closers in baseball, do you actually have one? Do you have one close? Do you have one closer? No?

00:57:13
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, I mean that's that's the same as the loop. Like if you're gonna build something that plays two different ways, they both better be really good or one of them is going to be the favorite and the other one is going to be defunct in a few years.

00:57:30
Speaker 2: With the rise in simulator golf popularity, do you think there's room for GCA to go digital with real world limitations stripped away. What ideas might you pursue if you were to design a fictional golf course And this is from David Flynn.

00:57:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's there's already guys doing that. And you know, I mean Brian Zaeger, who's who helped us with the Leado. You know, he's been doing courses for games and for simulators for years and yeah, he's also so design things on his own. There's a ton of guys that are out there designing their own courses for like golf games. You know, not many of them actually like do it so you can put it on a simulator and play it. But you know, there's it's it's easy enough to do now, so yeah, there's is there a market for that? Absolutely? Am I interested in doing that? Not really. You know, if I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna want to do like you know, the only the only thing I would do is something that you literally you can't do in the in the physical world. You know, what would a golf course on the moon be, like, you know, what it would be like to play through a city and hit balls off a building to get get around the corner, you know, that sort of thing that you're not you know, you're never gonna actually physically build that, and you're not gonna go out and do it and get arrested. You know. That's for a game. But you know, I mean I don't really want to. You know, I'm not a video gamer. I don't have a simulator. I'm not gonna do. You know, I'm not gonna do that for myself. And and honestly I don't. I mean, I really worry that someday that's all we're gonna have left. Yeah, nobody's gonna want to, you know, not nobody. But you know, most golf courses gonna go away. And the only you know, you, as an average person without a lot of money, aren't going to be able to afford to play real golf anymore. You're only going to get to be playing on a simulator. And I would hate that because to me, it's all about being outdoors.

00:59:36
Speaker 2: Yeah. I do like the idea of street golf. That's you could call it my street. Here's another one.

00:59:48
Speaker 1: Here's here's your golf course right here, golf in Machu Pichu.

00:59:54
Speaker 2: There you go, just crazy craziness. If golfers deem it. I forgot to write down the name of this question. Uh uh, And I apologize for that ahead of time. It's the one name that I forgot to put down. So I feel like that's an achievement in itself. If golfers deem it an advantage to play a hole on an alternate fairway for the sake of a particular angle, is that a sign of bad golf architecture. So you know, if you just choose to play down another hole.

01:00:26
Speaker 1: I think more and more, it's it's it's a sign that things are changing and it and it's it's it's going it's about to be a real problem. You know. The place where it's a problem today is Oakmont. You know, the last Amateur, they had guys hitting down the ninth fairway to get an angle at the first green, and guys hitting down the what was it, the eleventh fair way to get an angle on the tenth green, and and so on and so forth. And at the US Amateur, where the crowds and a following the players, you could do that without killing someone. But the next US Open, you can't, you know, they can't let guys be doing that in the us open hitting over the gallery to go any other fair way to hit back over the gallery. And you know the only reason, you know, Oakmont's been there for one hundred and ten years. The only reason guys are doing that now is because they're so long. They can give up fifty yards for a better angle and it doesn't matter because they're all so long anyway, you know, they can go over there and still hit wedge. Fifty years ago, you weren't going over there because you couldn't even get to the green in two if you did.

01:01:40
Speaker 2: I was talking about Henry Shimp who is has a podcast. He played in that am and he played he played at Stanford, and he was talking about the other huge advantage of playing in the other fairway was that you didn't have to deal with the bunker lips. So if you ended up in a bunker, you were hitting out of the back of the bunker as opposed to the really high bunker lig.

01:02:02
Speaker 1: And you probably didn't have to worry about being in a divot because it's not where everybody goes.

01:02:07
Speaker 2: And he was like, it was so firm, the fairways were so narrow you had you know, it was just a crapshoot as to whether you could hit the fairway so and you were probably gonna roll into a bunker, and then you're you're not being You're not able to hit it at the green. So if you hit it over here, at least if you missed the fairway and you end up in a bunker, you're not contending with the high lip. It was. It's a fascinating thing because it makes sense and it goes to but at the end of the day, you're just spout on I think is like the real issue here is how far the ball goes and how far these the players have been able to get the ball to go.

01:02:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, that's not a design flaw of oakmot that's finally being revealed after one hundred and ten years. It's like something's changed and now this doesn't work so well anymore. And you know, I'm sure that it's not the only golf course. It's just the only course that all those guys playing in a big event, we're like, yeah, uh, you know, this golf course is so difficult that we really need to get it. You know. I mean everybody says angles don't matter. Why are they doing that? If angles don't matter. Yeah, they absolutely matter.

01:03:20
Speaker 2: Do you think a course can ever be a go over the edge of being firm and fast? And this is from Sandy Smith.

01:03:28
Speaker 1: Uh No, because it's only gonna you know, that's only going to exist for like a few days at best, where you know, nobody's gonna deliberately keep a golf course way over the edge for like all year. You know, it's just gonna be. There's a drought and it's kind of getting out of hand and there's only so much we can do. Do you want to go play under those conditions or not? And the funny thing is most people do just like they would, you know, when when the wind's blowing fifty miles an hour, they're like, yeah, let's try it, and you know, and they don't, you know, and they don't like try it and you know, shoot a hundred and ten and go this golf course is so unfair. They accept that, you know, we played in ridiculous conditions just to try it, you know, and that's that's not a flaw. So, I mean, you know, do some clubs go too far? Sometimes? Yes, they do. Oakmont, you know, Oakmond having the greens, it whatever they whatever speed, they have them every day for the members. To me, that's not fun, you know, it's it's part of their culture. They all think that's great, you know, but but in general, no, you know, people aren't. You know, you could do it, but it's not like sustainable. So I don't worry about it much.

01:04:51
Speaker 2: I think speed can be over the top, but firmness is hard to be over the top, right.

01:04:59
Speaker 1: Well, it's hard in the state because nobody ever lets it get anywhere close to that. I've certainly seen it in the you know, when when we started, when we were starting on Saint Patrick's, they had a really drowdy year and I went to kind of drive up past where County Louth is and then go on the diagonal up to Donegal from there, so I stopped through. One time, I stopped through County Louth to go see the golf course and it was kind of you remember how Hoylake was for that one open. It was just browner than brown. This was like straw colored, and like the ball would not stop rolling until it got in a little pocket. Those fairways are pretty flat and it's still it had to find a little six inch pocket or it wasn't stopping and it was gonna be like that for the rest of the summer, even if it rained again. Was that half that grass was dead and it wasn't coming back until they seated it. So you know, that was extreme, really extreme, you know. But you would never there's no way you would ever see that in America. They would never let a golf course go anywhere near that.

01:06:05
Speaker 2: Well, it's interesting, you know. Sahithagala is a professional golfer who was playing well at the old course and he grew up in sent in the Central Valley of California. And I asked him about and he goes, you know, hitting I learned growing up hitting off hardpan and you know, drought fairways effectively fairways that don't have a lot of grass. I learned how to hit all these web shots, like these cut web shots in different shots because he grew up playing a public golf course in central California. Like that is it's an interesting like that's where I would push back. It's like the whole thing with golf, and one of the issues with where golf is gone with maintenance is like, you know, the whole ethos of golf is overcoming what the natural challenges that you encounter on a golf course, and sometimes those challenges are imperfect turf.

01:07:02
Speaker 1: Right, And you know, I mean you used to have players, you know, see heath is a rarity now, but you know you used to have Lee Trevino and Chichi Rodriguez and Seve. They grew up on very difficult conditions. That's why they were such good shot makers. And you know now it's like they never see those conditions. The equipment is different. You know, if those guys were around today, they probably wouldn't be stars because you don't use that kind of shots to play the tour very much these days.

01:07:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, last question from David Meyer. What course was surprising in how it settled in and or evolved over time of yours of mine?

01:07:49
Speaker 1: Well, I'm struggling with that one. I mean, you know, it has to be one of my older courses, the ones I've built in the last five or ten years. You know, the surprise hasn't happened yet. Maybe it's gonna happen, but I haven't seen it yet. I'm trying to think back, you know, and some of my early courses, I'm surprised that they're gone. That was the surprise. Unfortunately, it closed. Well, I don't know that there's one that just it really didn't play like I thought it was going to play, you know, I mean, you know we talked about baling.

01:08:26
Speaker 2: It could be one that got better too.

01:08:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, it could be. But I'm trying to think, is there one that's really a lot better than I thought it was going to be, or just different, really different than I thought it was going to be. And yeah, there are always holes or shots, but the golf course as a whole, I can't think of one that's like, it's really not the way I thought it was going to.

01:08:52
Speaker 2: One question i'd have, what what about the grass change at Pacific Dunes with the with the just like I can't imagine. Did you know when you guys built that that the Poeanna was going to take over at the Green and the Greens?

01:09:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean you know, we figured it was inevitable that twenty years down the line, the Greens would probably be poe no matter what we did, just because it rains so much there. Yeah, you know you have well there's two things. One it rained so much and two you know you've got customers that expect it to be good. You know, you can it can rain all winter and you can kill all the poea the next summer if you let it go really brown and let all the poet die. But you know they're they're full of golfers charging two hundred and fifty dollars around at that point, So are they going to do that? No, they're not going to do that, And that's why eventually you wind up with pope, you know, So there's a you know, they fought the good fight for as long as they could. Ken Nice was really good at it. But eventually it's switched over. And you know, I wasn't shocked at it, or you know, you know, does it I haven't, And honestly, you know, I haven't played it a lot the last ten years. You know, I've seen the change happen, but I played it a bunch more when the conditions were still the way it started as opposed to the greens now, So I don't know if it's really that different or not. You know, I think it's a little easier to just fire it at the greens and hold them than it used to be. You know, it's not as firm as you know, the green surfaces are not as firm as when we first as the first four or five years.

01:10:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, I noticed it when I was there last year, just in terms of the difference between the really trails band and Pacific Dunes from Old Mac which still has you know, you can start to see some poets creeping in, but it's still primarily like end up playing conditions were way different.

01:11:01
Speaker 1: You know, one interesting thing that's more of a turf head thing than than most of your readers will get. But you know, so so the first golf course was planted with fescue and colonial bent grass in a like an eighty twenty mix. And Tom Mead, who was my turf guru at the time, and Dave Wilber, who consulted on the thing too, we weren't sure that the putting the colonial bent grass in the mix was really the best thing. You know. We our first inclination was to do straight fescue. But you know, Band in Dunes was a year old. Everybody loved it. You know, they had supposedly done all these test plots and turf research and this is the best thing. So you know, we're like, okay, we'll go with that. We're you know, we're not gonna We're not gonna fight tooth and nail for what you're what for what's really successful. But but you know, I talked a lot about that with Ken Nice at the time and afterwards, and it's like, the colonial bent grass is the grass. They have problems with the colonial bent grass out there and they lose it, and that's where the poem gets in. And so when they built Bandoned Trails, I was having lunch with Ken over there like just as they opened it, just after they opened it, and he took me out to the eighteenth Green. He said he wanted to show me the eighteenth Green. He took me out to the eighteenth Green and said, what do you think? And I looked at it. I was like, you didn't put any colonial bent grass in this one, did you? And he was like no, he said, I just thought i'd try it just on this one green to see if it made any difference. So Old McDonald is, that's pure fescue. And I don't believe that it will be pure fescue in twenty or thirty years time, but I think they'll they'll maybe be able to hold out the poem a little longer because they didn't put the colonial bent in.

01:12:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think that's the course that plays the best out there in terms of yeah, you know, it's.

01:13:03
Speaker 1: Not an advantage. It's still it's still new, exactly newer. You know. The sheep branch is newer too, but those are different soils. I think they'll have problem keeping that because the soils aren't. It's not so sandy. Mm hmm.

01:13:16
Speaker 2: All right, well, hey, this does it for another another episode here. I appreciate the time, and uh and and we'll talk again soon. You're you're super busy, so we'll have a lot to talk about, I think in the in the coming year.

01:13:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe we'll do this at a construction place somewhere this year.

01:13:37
Speaker 2: I would like that get with some of.

01:13:39
Speaker 1: My crew like we did at bell Air bit way back when.

01:13:41
Speaker 2: Maybe uh maybe sand Valley, maybe, uh maybe Pinehurst. I got to get to Pinehurst. And this year I'm.

01:13:49
Speaker 1: Probably only making you know, sand Valley's going to happen really fastest spring, so the timing will have to be perfect on that, but minor and we'll be around.

01:13:57
Speaker 2: All right, We'll talk soon, and safe travels. Tom. Thanks for the time, Heidi, you take thank you for listening to another edition of the Frida Egg podcast and another episode of The Yoke with Doke. Today's episode was edited by Matt Rusius. Thank you Matt. As a quick reminder, we've got Club TFFE. This has been something we're really excited about. Early feedback I think from all the members has been really positive and we're really just pumped to put together a lot more content for you guys. So if you're interested in joining, it's one hundred and twenty dollars a year it you can go to thefridagg dot com slash membership and you can learn more there and sign up there. But you know, we've got a Pebble Beach review dropping this week, as well as a number of other blogs. I've been writing a of about a lot of the new projects that are new golf courses and renovations that are coming online. I just part two of that series will be up this week. So if you want more from us on top of our free stuff, the podcast and newsletter and website posts that we're putting up regularly online, sign up. It's the Frida Egg dot com slash membership and I think it'll you'll look back on it after a year and say, man, that was a really good deal, so thanks and we will talk soon.