U.S. Open Thursday Thoughts and the Philadelphia School of Golf Architecture

00:00:00
Speaker 1: I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset. When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset. And when I find my ball in a bride egg Friday Egg, the dreaded Frida Egg, fridagg, Frida egggg, Frida Egg, bride Egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the course.

00:00:34
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Frida Egg Podcast. I'm Garrett Morrison, and it is US Open Thursday. I'm recording this right now in the b Draddy House on Wednesday afternoon. Actually, I just came back from the golf course. I walked the back nine out there with Saha Figala and a few other players, and I definitely have some thoughts on what I saw that I hope will kind of provide some information and maybe some context insight for your viewing of the tournament that's happening right now and in the next few days. A little bit later in this episode, I'm going to bring on golf historian Wayne Morrison.

00:01:09
Speaker 1: We're going to.

00:01:10
Speaker 2: Talk about the Philadelphia School of Golf Architecture. This was a group of golf architects that basically changed the course of American golf course design in the nineteen tens. And twenties, and they were a massive influence on George Thomas, who was the most important architect behind the North Course at LA Country Club. So that's coming up a little bit of a historical deep dive with Wayne Morrison. But first I just wanted to sort of empty my notebook on the back nine at LA North, which I just walked. As I mentioned, I think it's probably the more underappreciated nine at LA, and that's for a good reason. You know, the front nine at LA is one of the best collections of golf holes anywhere, but obviously on the telecast this week, the back nine will probably be more prominently feature, at least on the weekend, right, So I thought i'd go through the three specific parts of the back nine that I'm looking forward to. I want to boil it down. I had a bunch of notes on the back nine. I really want to kind of narrow it down to three specific things to look for, three specific spots on the golf course that I think you should keep an eye out for when you're watching the tournament. And I'm not going to talk about the very famous par three's on the back nine eleven and fifteen. Eleven is the downhill reverse radan that's going to play very long, and fifteen is the extremely short little par three. Those are going to be covered plenty this week. You'll hear a lot about them. I'm looking for some spots on the back nine that are maybe a little more under the radar but might show up in some form on the telecast. So going in order, my first spot on the back nine to watch is the approach to the thirteenth hole. Now, a lot of people are going to talk about the drive on thirteen. Basically it's a very wide fairway, but if the pros hit driver, they'll have to hit a plateau on the left edge of the fairway that's about twenty to twenty five paces across. I actually went out there and paced this or earlier today. That's exactly the kind of nerd I am. I went out and checked out exactly how far across the plateau is. It's going to be very hard to hit, and it's hard to tell exactly where the ball needs to land in order to stay up on the plateau because it just kind of gradually slopes down. Now, that slope down is the big factor on the T shot because if you're somewhat center or right of center. With your drive, your ball is going to roll down to the bottom of a hill on the right side of this hole, and that's just going to be fun to watch, right. So that's the drive. But what happens after players get in those funky positions on this hole is really what I'm looking forward to. The roach from the bottom of the hill is super tough. Not only is it blind, but you have to carry a green side bunker and somehow get your ball to stop on the green. And you know, balls are kind of rolling into the rough at the bottom of this hill, so there's not gonna be much spin being produced on these shots. It's gonna be really tough to carry that bunker and get it to stop close to a pin. So I think we're gonna see a lot of players end up in the rough to the left of the fairway. They're not gonna want to mess with the right side of this hole. I think if they miss, they're often going to miss to the left. Now that's not a great spot. There are a few trees over there and you could end up blocked out. But it's in line with a big short grass run up to the green the green opens in that direction, so I think we'll get a lot of punch shots from the left rough, you know, kind of under tree limbs, around tree limbs, and these shots will have to land well short of the green and then roll up there. There are some feeding contours on the green that should help these shots if they're reasonably accurate, but there are also some rejecting contours on the exterior of the green that could accentuate badly judged run up attempts. So it's just going to be really cool to watch. I think that'll be a very interesting second shot because players are going to get in funky positions, you know, they if they hit the plateau, if they hit that one section of the fairway, that's good, then good for them. But I didn't see that much out there today. I didn't see you guys really getting in that position. I saw them missing left, missing right, and that's when some of this interesting stuff starts to happen on thirteen. All right, My second part of the back nine to look out for is the fairway on the par five fourteenth hole. This is a really tricky tea shot. The fairway kind of turns to the right around a huge bunker. The pros aren't going to have much trouble carrying the bunker, but they're going to have trouble not running through the outside of the dog leg on the other side. You have to get really far to the right off the tee to avoid doing that. But if you go too far right, there's a big drop off into some trees. So I think pros are going to be a little bit leery of that. So a lot of drives are going to run through the elbow of the dog leg. And some of the thickest rough on the course is right there. It's really really kind of wispy and weird in spots and really thick and hairy in spots in you know, sort of like a Brillo pad effect. I don't know if I'm describing this right, but it's this Bermuda rough and in that particular spot it's just kind of inconsistent and in some places so so thick. So that's there, and then what's also there is a big hospitality pavilion that's pretty close to the fairway. That place is going to get absolutely shelled, you know, So you know, it's a little bit ridiculous. But in a couple of ways fourteen should be fun to watch off the tea, and then if players manage to hit the fairway, they'll have to decide whether to go for the green, and you can get in some really hairy spots around that green if you have kind of a fairway wood or long iron approach, players aren't going to always hit it. I saw a Saia Thigala just try a bunch of different variations of chips and pitches around that green, and I think what he was testing out was what's it like if I go for this green and miss, And that presumably would be part of his calculus when he decides whether to go for the green or not. Right, he knows the bad positions that he can get in, and that's going to factor in how aggressive he is on the whole. So really interesting set of decisions and dynamics in the fourteenth fairway. That's my second spot to watch on the back nine. Okay, final spot to watch on the back nine. Anytime players miss the seventeenth green, there's just so much happening around and on that green. The short game shot, the recovery shots are just going to be so varied and just weird. The green is basically this narrow strip that runs on a diagonal in relation to the fairway, and there's a set of bunkers right in front of the green. The fescue around these bunkers is absolutely brutal. You would definitely prefer to be in the sand, then be in the long fescue around the bunkers, But then in front of the bunkers is just closely mown bermuda grass. So if a player misses left and short of the bunkers, he'll have to hit a chip with a lob wedge off a tight line over those scary bunkers to a very shallow green. The nightmare scenario. Obviously he's leaving that chip in the fescue around the bunkers short of the green. That's just a recipe for an automatic double bogie.

00:08:52
Speaker 1: So that's just.

00:08:53
Speaker 2: One side of that green. There's all kinds of interesting mounds and runoffs and stuff on the other sides, and then the green it has all these little slopes and ripples and shelves. It's just a fascinating green complex. And if you miss the green, if you get in a weird position around it, there are just a ton of possibilities. So I think that's going to be something very fun to keep track of. All right, So those are the three parts of the back nine that really stood out to me today. I'm sure you've heard enough praise and hype about LA already in the past couple of weeks. Right, it seems like everybody really loves this golf course and is emphasizing how great it is. But this really is a special course, a special US Open venue, and I can't wait to see the world's best golfers compete on it. Let's take a quick break and then I'll be back with the historian Wayne Morrison to talk about the Philadelphia School of Golf Architecture. Episode of the fried Egg Podcast is brought to you by B Dratty. We are in the B Dratty House here at the Fried Egg at the US Open. We're up in the hills above LA Country Club. When I was out on the course earlier today, I was wearing the Sport Polo as well as the Champ hoodie from Zero Restriction. Zero Restriction is part of the B Dratty family. Tomorrow, I'm planning to wear a Sanders Polo along with the Russell quarter Zip. Really excited about the Russell Quarterzip. I just tried it on. It's just the best quarter zip I've ever put on. Like, I don't think there's any competition for it. It really is kind of classy. Like usually I'm not a big quarter zip guy. I'm more of a sweater guy. But this quarterzip just really delivers on the style element. And then like all b dratty products, it's just so so comfortable. So big b dratty guy here, I'm very excited about this stuff. Here's the deal for Friday listeners. If you use the code TFE thirty, you can get thirty percent off at b draddy dot com. That's a pretty good deal. TFE thirty at b draddy dot com thirty percent off. All right, thanks to b Draddy. Let's go back to the episode. All right, I'm here with Wayne Morrison, no relation. Wayne is a golf historian and the author of The Nature Faker, a biography of the golf architect William Flynn, And today we're talking about the so called Philadelphia School of Golf Architecture. This was not an actual school, but instead a group of golf architects centered on the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania area during the nineteen tens and twenties. This group included the likes of George Crump who designed Pine Valley, Hugh Wilson who designed Marion aw Tillinghast, William Flynn, and the architect of LACC North, George Thomas Way. Maybe you could start by telling me why you think the Philadelphia School is important to know about.

00:12:07
Speaker 1: Well, I guess Jeff Shackelford in his book wrote about it. Several schools of golf architecture, I guess there was the Ross School and the National School and things like that, but the Philadelphia School was I think the earliest pure American school of approach to golf architecture. Well, some of the members of the so called school had experienced in the old world playing golf. It was really an innovative approach to golf, especially inland golf on some of the heavy clay soils that we have, but also some of the sand based soils like Atlantic City Country Club and Pine Valley and the like. But it's pretty interesting, you know, the the evolution of how this group of friends came together was all golf related. Golf started in Philadelphia a little bit later than some of the other cities like Boston and New York and Chicago. It was a bastion of cricket, and cricket had a deep and stronghold on the upper classes in Philadelphia. The baseball was in the other classes. But once golf really sort of germinated in Philadelphia, it really took off quite a bit, and they were at a competitive disadvantage in terms of golf prowess and also golf architecture. So these guys got together because I guess they got tired of getting beat by New York and Boston. The Leslie Cup was a was a platform for those kinds of competitions, and they figured out that we better designed better golf courses to build better golfers, and that was sort of the genesis of where these guys collaborated. I think collaboration is a really you know, it's an underpinning of the success of the Philadelphia School in terms of the work output. But they were they were friendly in competition, uh, you know, they played a lot of golf together. The Golf Association of Philadelphia was the earliest regional golf association and to this day that it's been a real important platform for golfers to compete against each other, you know, team competitions against other clubs, and I think that was sort of the you know that that was a part of the process of excellence or trying to achieve excellence in golf design because they were all in the philosophy that better golf courses produced better golfers.

00:14:36
Speaker 2: That's an interesting philosophy to start with, we want better golf courses.

00:14:41
Speaker 1: Because we're getting our kicked. Yeah. I think they got along fabulously well, kind of interesting from a you know, so sociology standpoint or whatever. That Flynn, as a you know, blue collar guy out of Boston came to Philadelphia to work, but he was accepted by the group of high society types like Tilling, Haskin, Trump, Crump, and Wilson and Thomas. Certainly Thomas's father was a very successful banker. And actually the wealth of Philadelphia helped create the opportunities to develop clubs and courses and have these really wealthy gentlemen golfers practice golf architecture.

00:15:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it was an incredible collection of people who produced an incredible collection of golf courses. Now, they did not call themselves the Philadelphia School. That's a label that we've put back onto them because there was such an exceptional concentration of golf architecture talent in this place at this time. So if we now see this as a school, were there kind of founders or leaders of the school among this group of architects that we've started talking about.

00:15:58
Speaker 1: I think we could try to sort of analyze and predict what, you know, who might have been the leaders. But they never really talked about you know, they never created a hierarchy. They treated each other very equally. I think the fact that Pine Valley was an assembly spot for all of them there was They're seemingly no egos or anything like that. So it's kind of hard to say, but clearly I think the two places that were the laboratory or the classrooms, let's call it. Since we're talking about a school, we're Marion and Pine Valley Mary In first, then shortly thereafter Pine Valley.

00:16:39
Speaker 2: These two golf courses, incredibly important golf courses, Marion and Pine Valley kind of evolved over the course of many years, so starting in the early nineteen tens and really continuing to come together over the next decade and more. And so the Philadelphia School, if there's a starting point of it. It might be somewhere in those early nineteen tens. So could you give me an idea of what the state of golf architecture in America was in the early nineteen tens and how these individuals might have educated themselves to the extent that they could produce courses that were as advanced and as brilliant as Marion in Pine Valley.

00:17:30
Speaker 1: Right. If it was a school of golf architecture in the United States and the you know, the turn of the century and through the early nineteen tens, the textbook would have been pretty thin because there wasn't much. You know, golf was only fifteen to twenty years in the making. Golf courses were mostly associated with polo and riding clubs, so a lot of the hazards were sort of steeplechase like cop mounds, you know, you know, burms of dirt stone that were covered with grass and then flat bunkers like you would ride a horse over them. You had to try to hopefully hit a with hickory clubs and got a purchase, try to get the ball in the air over these features. So they were pretty rudimentary, kind of Victorian architecture is what we call it. And I think the courses were short because of the technology in the and I guess the the lack of sophisticated training, you know, or teaching of golf. But you know, there were some pockets of excellence, and some of it that I think had a lot to do with people traveling to the UK to see the courses there. So Herbert Leeds for instance, at Myopia and then down in Aiken with Palmetto Golf Club, Garden City Golf Club. You know, it was McDonald that went to I guess a university at St. Andrews and he knew Tom or met was introduced to Tom Morris and took lessons from them. So McDonald came back with the idea of template holes, you know, the well, you know, replicating concepts either rigidly or conceptually of famous holes in the past. But you know, like I said, Philadelphia started a little bit later and got you know, it was on the on the shoulders of these early golf architects and saw what they were doing, and uh sort of figured out, let's, you know, let's let's do things in an American sort of way. And that's innovation and creativity. I guess one of the founding principles of the Philadelphia School is naturalism. You know, Quaker Philadelphians, they didn't like spending a lot of money, and so they would use the land as much as possible and fit the golf courses into the land as much as possible. Of course, you know, with horses and scrapers, it was a pretty tough thing to move heavy clay soils. We weren't talking about sand soils and national so there was a you know, as sort of an efficiency of construction also component to it. But it just happened to work because if you use the natural features of the land, no two holes are alike, because no grounds for golfer are exactly alike.

00:20:13
Speaker 2: Now, the McDonald you mentioned earlier is, of course Charles Blair McDonald, the architect behind the National Golf Links as well as the Lido, which eventually went away. I think people know that story, but he was an enormously important figure in the transition from kind of early rudimentary American golf course design to something a little bit more sophisticated. But as you mentioned earlier, he had this idea of template holes, essentially adaptations of ideas that he saw in his travels in the UK. And what I hear you saying is that the Philadelphia architects were aware of McDonald obviously, I believe had visited McDonald as well in god and to know him a bit, and so they saw what his work was. No doubt they were impressed by what they saw at National Golf Links because it was sort of unlike any other American golf course at the time. But they decided to take things in a different direction. And I think that's pretty interesting. So what do you think were the things that they learned from McDonald and what do you think the things were that they decided to do differently?

00:21:27
Speaker 1: Great question. I think one of the things they learned from McDonald. One of many things they learned from McDonald was trying to achieve the ideal golf course. And what was the ideal golf course. That philosophy sort of varied, but in McDonald's mind, it was to provide eighteen great holes that challenged you all aspects of the game. Now the game sort of changed, with balls and implements changing. I think they also recognized McDonald's stressed the importance of agronomic you knows as well, So a more scientific approach to golf design, designing on paper and using topographic maps and things like that. I think that in that regard, McDonald was very influential. I think, uh and some of the guys were, you know, in the Philadelphia School, we're utilizing templates of a sort. If you look at Tilling Hasts, Somerset Hills, there's Principal's nose, there's Dan, there's all kinds of things. If you look at William Flynn, you know, five or six years later, you know, he had a conceptual holes. You know, he had his idea of what over dan is. It was different than McDonald's redan. I mean even THEMDAN that Flynn did at Chinnakok Hills was different than the McDonald dan very much on the same site. McDonald's for Dan was below the tea and used the natural right to left slope of the ground. Flynn built the green well above the tea and it was an aerial shot. The other thing, I think that where the Philadelphia School may have, you know, refined architecture was not having out and back routings. If you look at National's routing, it's out and back. The wind is pretty much in. You know, it doesn't change direction from hole to hole very much, except when the wind changes from morning to afternoon. But then you look next door and you look at Shinnacock and there's a series of triangles. That wind is coming at you from all sorts of different directions. I think they, you know, they just they had a sense of how they could use the wind to increase the challenge, increase the variety, and shot testing. Shot testing, I think is an important result of the Philadelphia School. William Flynn wrote about it, talked about it, and if you think about playing his courses, he tests your shots. Huntington Valley you had to hit. You were rewarded if you could hit a draw off a fade law or a fade off a draw line. So there was you know, a really increasing, uh sort of demand on the golfers to be able to play, you know, very subtle in a way strategy, you know, being able to think about, yeah, you know, the shot, but also really highly evolving the the demand on the you know, both mental and physical demand of the play.

00:24:32
Speaker 2: You know, something that's so interesting about what you're saying about the Philadelphia School is that you know before, a lot of this architecture, American golf course design was very directly indebted to other models. The architects often came from Scotland. We're just sort of golf pros who came over from you know, the the British Isles and and were you know, there because they knew about golf in a way that not many Americans knew about golf, and they designed some of the very early courses. And then McDonald's work well, obviously incredibly inventive, creative and still holds up today, brilliantly was directly intentionally inspired by old world models. And it seems like some of the members of the Philadelphia School were trying to figure out what American golf course architecture looked like. Do you think there was something like that going on?

00:25:32
Speaker 1: And absolutely, Garrett, you bring up a really good point. Not only was it in the architecture, but McDonald was held bent on making sure that the rules and regulations of golf were a staff were anchored in the rules and regulations of the RNA, Where some of the Philadelphians and others were trying to you know, the USGA was going to be something it was going to be a golf association for American golfers. And interesting, you know, rules changes, rules differences don't do have an effect on architecture, and uh so I think that you know, they sort of there are links in the same chain that that that created. You know, what we know today is you know, an American style of architecture. And you see it. I mean, look at you know, if you look at Chicago, the original Chicago Golf, in the Chicago golf that evolved later on by you know McDonald and Rayner, and you look at National there were conventions and uh, if you if you think of some of the stuff that Thomas was doing out in California with tunnels, you know, going through mountains and elevators to get to certain locations and really trying to find the best holes no matter and and and uh hurdles beware, you know, be damned. It's pretty impressive. How not radical, I won't say radical, but you know, really creative. Some of the routings and and uh and whole designs were We.

00:27:00
Speaker 2: Could certainly devote an entire podcast each or series of podcasts each to Marian and Pine Valley.

00:27:08
Speaker 1: Alone one day.

00:27:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, someday I mean, the Pine Valley story is one that I've been I've been fascinated with for for a long time, and I can't get enough of it. I'm sure there's equally compelling material about Marion. Obviously, we are going to give a very kind of short synopsis here of either of those projects, but maybe we can just focus on Pine Valley for a second and the importance of that course as as you said earlier, a classroom of golf architecture. So tell me about the process that created this course and some of the things that were unique that were being done there.

00:27:51
Speaker 1: I think it's a great idea, Garrett, and I think it will also leads to you know, I don't want to exclude some of the other guys in the Philadelphia school. Yes, I guess if you I've left my and I talk about Flint quite a bit. But Pine Valley was it was a sort of a solution to all these really avid golfers that wanted to play golfy around Philadelphia would get you know, is you know, just because of the soil. When the temperatures dropped, the soil and the snow would stay on the ground much longer, and it was a bit colder, there was a little higher elevation, and in New Jersey they had the sandy soil that would keep he would retain the heat a lot more. So you could play golf many more days in the shoulder seasons that you could in Philadelphia. So these guys would take the train from Philadelphia to Atlantic City, which was sort of, you know, their haven for getting away for golf. It was a lot of Quakers went there in vacation there and played golf there. So the interesting thing, you know, there's a you know, the story is, you know, how did George Crump find Pine Valley? You know, did did he hunt and did his father hunt there or did you know when he was on the train with Tilling, Hass and Flynn and Thomas and Wilson and all, do they just you know, did he look out the window and see this unbelievably you know, tumbling terrain that in South Jersey is you know, really rare, and say, you know, and decide to see, you know, to see if that was suitable for golf or you know, probably both reasons, I guess. But anyway, he lived in he was born in Philadelphia, lived in Merchantville, which is not far from Clementon, New Jersey and bought the property. He bought enough acreage to have two golf courses, one of which was going to be for women, which is kind of interesting because until recently, Pine Valley was an exclusive domain for men. Women weren't even allowed to get out of their cars in the parking lot. But Trump Crump started to design. You know, he lived on site, lived in a tent or a cabin or something, and started crafting the golf course. Had his friends come by and they all happened to you know, they were all the you know, the Tilling Hast and Thomas and Flynn and Wilson and the like, and they he started laying out the golf course, but at being an amateur, and you know, he really sort of painted himself into corners. Then he, I guess Cult was coming over to do some work in Detroit and elsewhere in Chicago, and he stopped by in Philadelphia and Crump engaged him to help him figure it, figure out the h the problem where he painted himself into and that was pretty much the fifth hole. If you've been to Pine Valley, that's the really iconic uphill par five over.

00:30:42
Speaker 2: Water and you know with Part three over sorry Part three long par three, Yeah, long par three. If you've seen the Shells Wonderful World of Golf at Pine Valley, one of the players came to grief on the right side of of that hole. So that's that's something worth looking up. But in any case, sorry, it was awesome, little thing. It wasn't lost and little it was Gene Littler. Just who it was, Yeah, yeah, I was. I was brand yeah, by Ray Nelson and Gene Littler. I think I intentionally didn't say the names because I wasn't quite remembering who was in that match. But I've completely sidetracked us. You're talking about the the fifth hole.

00:31:20
Speaker 1: Is sort of the the the solution that sort of, you know, all the other puzzle pieces came together. Unfortunately, uh, George Crump passed away without with with five holes remaining, and there's a you know, some researcher found out that he committed suicide. So they got together some of Crump's friends, you know, very close associates, Simon Carr I think he was a reverend and a h Smith and they sort of wrote down what they thought Crump wanted to do. When they matched up the two remembrances. They were very similar. Hugh Allison was brought in and you know they finished the you know with with Hugh and Alan Wilson overseeing the the finish of the of the five incomplete holes. The they finished the golf course. But in any case, uh, these guys collaborated and and and and saw Crump's vision to fruition. They've they've solved the agronomic issues and today it's it's it's you know, one of the I mean, if it's not, it's the second best course in Philadelphia, but it's the number one course in the world.

00:32:33
Speaker 2: But now you're you're ranking Mary in the best course in Philadelphia.

00:32:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean there's a little home or homer Ism there. Maybe.

00:32:41
Speaker 2: So when you consider a figure like George Thomas, who was part of this group, though not necessarily a leading member of this group, he wasn't He.

00:32:52
Speaker 1: Went to California for the weather and the.

00:32:55
Speaker 2: And the roses. Yeah, and and also to recuperate after the war.

00:32:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true.

00:33:00
Speaker 2: So you know, George Thomas had been to Marion, had been to Pine Valley, had seen the processes that created those courses, and so you know, although the LA courses are not your area of expertise. When you just look at those courses from AFAR, do you see certain carryover characteristics from these Philadelphia courses in George Thomas's work?

00:33:25
Speaker 1: Well, I certainly see the strategy, you know, strategic nature of golf design, you know, exemplified in what Thomas did, maybe not the look of the bunkering, but the placement of the bunkers and utilization of hazards. I guess they could in some cases they were dry washes.

00:33:43
Speaker 2: The what do they call those, the barancas.

00:33:46
Speaker 1: Barancas, Yeah, you know, the way the way they used angles I think is really reminiscent of some things that I see here in Philadelphia. You could easily say that the stuff that he did in California was really, you know, it was genius and it was concepts or at least you know, philosophies that were transplanted from the Philadelphia school. Yeah.

00:34:10
Speaker 2: You know, something that Jeff Shackelford said to us during our interview that we did with him about George Thomas is that one thing that seems to have impressed Thomas. I don't know that there's historical confirmation of this or anything like that, but one commonality between a Pine Valley and an La country Club or even a Riviera is just the sheer ambition of the architecture, to use the word that you used earlier, the scale of the features of the bunkers, of the greens. They're built to match the landscape. And that's something that Pine Valley had that was not necessarily unprecedented in American architecture, because McDonald had some ambitious constructions of his own at his at his courses, but certainly it was unusual to see a course that was just that spectacular and impressive in the way that it came at you visually. And so you know, La country Club after Thomas and Bell's renovation there in the late twenties, and from the beginning Riviera maybe had some of that, some of that character of just the ambition and the scale of the project.

00:35:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you and I learned one thing from watching some of your podcasts and interviews, was it bel air where Thomas had the really interesting notion of multiple pars or courses within a course.

00:35:48
Speaker 2: That's La country Club.

00:35:49
Speaker 1: Oh, La country Club. Oh so I'm really looking forward to seeing this stuff on TV. Yeah, that to me, I don't know where he got that. I mean that that seemed to be something, you know, out of his own brain rather than a you know, something that he discussed and was formulating when he was back in Philadelphia. You know, there was a notion of elasticity being designed in courses that were coming out of Philadelphia, because if you think about the era of golf, you know, transferring the technology of a gut approach a ball to a Haskell ball, and hickory shafts to steel shafts and things like that, balls were getting in the air. More elasticity was being designed into courses you think about. You know, it may not be that evident, but if you look at the bunkering at Marion, it's really the same today, you know, except for the second hull where Gil moved the green back to where Flynn wanted to put it, and some of the bunkers were moved a little bit downrange thirty yards or so, and in the case of bunkers that would have come into play on the second shot, the bunkering is the same today as it was when the course opened, but some of the bunkers that were carry bunkers off a second shot, you know, so that was misplayed, you know, if you were coming out of the rough or something like that. Now that bunker is now an effective bunker for long hitters that want to hit a driver. So it's they're kind of repurposed in a way. And I think that's because these guys knew that the technology and better athletes were going to be playing golf. I mean, Flynn wrote in nineteen twenty seven that if we don't do something about the ball, we're gonna have to design seventy five hundred and eight thousand yard golf courses.

00:37:29
Speaker 2: He's pretty good saw the future there.

00:37:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, so there was this philosophy especially rooted into designing championship courses, and that's one of the things that make these courses stand the test of time.

00:37:42
Speaker 2: So well, yeah, well that's really interesting. Clearly what we'll see this week at LA Country Club during the US Open, there are some some little tendrils that go back to the Philadelphia School and some of the exceptional architecture that came out of that. So it's been really interesting to hear about that stuff. And thanks for coming on the podcast, Wain.

00:38:04
Speaker 1: Ok. Thanks, that's very great. It's very gracious for you to have me again. And you know, if you are interested in talking about specifics down the road, I'd be happy to be involved in that. Yeah. I mean, I'm going to continue to enjoy the work you guys do and it's fun to be a part of it and fun to listen to it. So thanks.

00:38:32
Speaker 2: To This episode of the Frida Egg podcast was produced and edited by Matt Rushis. Thank you, Matt. The single best way to support the Frida Egg is to join Club TFE. We've been doing some fun stuff in Club TFE. This week. We did a profile of Rustic Canyon golf Course, which is a public golf course that is nearish to the LA area. We also did our monthly video on La North where Andy basically went through every hole at the golf course and picked out one feature of each hole that he thinks is interesting. Really great video, and I could say that because I didn't have anything to do with producing it. That was in Andy and Cameron Hurtis production. Really good stuff that is exclusive to members in Club tf If you're interested in joining, go to the Friday Egg dot com slash membership and check out what we're offering there. All right, thank you for listening, and we'll be back again soon