Jay Blasi on Golden Gate Park and Hot Topics in 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.

00:00:06
Speaker 2: In a bride egg Friday egg, the dreaded Frida Egg Friday Frida Egg Egg, Frida Egg, bride Egg Lie.

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Speaker 1: I'm about ready to run off of the golf course game. Welcome to the Friday eg Golf Podcast. I'm Garrett Morrison, and today we're talking about the reinvention of Golden Gate Park golf course. We'll also touch on some hot topics and golf architecture, including rollback and AI and other things. My guest is Jay Blasi. Jay is the golf architect behind the redesign of Golden Gate Park. Other points on his resume include serving as project architect at Chambers Bay for RTJ two and designing the Patriot in Oklahoma as well as the Stanford University practice facility. Jay is a talented and relatively young architect, and he always has interesting thoughts on the business. He's also gotten quite a bit busier recently, as a lot of golf architects have. He was first on the Friday Golf Podcast way back in twenty seventeen, I believe. I think it was like episode forty four forty five, so it's really about time for us to have him back on. Really looking forward to chatting with him. But first a word from our sponsor for this episode, Club Champion. You know about Club Champion, They help any level of player get better through custom fitted and custom built equipment. They have extensively trained master fitters who guide you through the process. They use an in depth, data driven tour level fitting process. They have fifty five hittable head and shaft combos in their shop as well as sixty plus brands. They use industry leading technology like track Man and sam put Lab. This is a really reliable fitting process, and then they also build the clubs that they fit you to. They build to the tightest tolerances in the industry, so these fittings produce real results for every level of player. There are averages of twenty two yard increases off the tee and ten yard improvements in dispersion. That's meaningful stuff. It's really important to get fit to good equipment, and we love what Club Champion has done for our games at Frida Egg Golf, and we really think they can help you improve as well. So for Friday golf listeners, here is the deal that Club Champion is offering right now. You can use the code Frida Egg just one word Frida egg to get fifty percent off the cost of your fitting with the purchase of a club. So go to club champion dot com and book you're fitting today again. That's called Frida Egg. All one word check it out. All right, let's get to my interview with Jay Blossie. All right, I am here with j Blasi. Jay, thank you for being here. How are you doing.

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Speaker 2: I'm doing great, good to be with you.

00:03:19
Speaker 1: The PGA Tour is at Riviera this week. I know you've been there a couple of times. I thought we could start with just a little bit of discussion of what makes this design special. I think it's the best time of the year for people who watch the PGA Tour to think about architecture. Probably, So you know, when you've been to Riviera, what has impressed you particularly about the architecture.

00:03:42
Speaker 2: Well, I think what's so unique about it are special about it is that the setting is quite unique and that you've got the clubhouse high up on the hill. But the vast majority of the golf course is kind of down in the flatlands, and some of the things that Thomas did are somewhat unique. If you think about, like the two par threes on the back nine fourteen and sixteen, they occupy what you might consider the least interesting ground on the property, whereas more often than not par threes often occupy maybe the most dramatic or are used to bridge elevation changes or things like that, and so there's some unique aspects to it. Obviously there's the kind of barancas that we've through the property, so it's just very unique there. I can't think of another golf course that really feels like it in any way. Obviously we talk a lot about the cokuya and stuff like that, but it's just a brilliant design from start to finish. There's wonderful aspects to the routing, the bunkering and the angles that are in play, some of the green complexes. It's just a wonderful spot from start to finish and unique and that's one of the things that's special out of as well.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, you think about the two par threes on the front nine, you mentioned the two part three is on the back nine, and how they're kind of in that the least interesting part of the property is the middle, but the whole property is kind of difficult because when you're not in the middle, you're on these sides of a canyon, and you can't play golf on the sides of a canyon. That's severe. But those par threes on the front nine, four, and six are kind of built into the sides of the canyon, and Thomas and Bell just did an awful lot of construction there, but you don't really notice it when you're walking the course. I mean, they built so much there, but it's so well concealed.

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Speaker 2: It really does again because the surrounding land is so high, and then the valley floor is there. The edges is where the excitement is, right, So that stretch of four through six is really dramatic, And to your point, how they crafted the golf holes into those edges was really brilliant. And some of the most exciting parts of the golf course are the edges.

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Speaker 1: Is there a hole out there that you think goes underappreciated. Everybody talks about ten, Maybe there's another hole or two the people obsessed about at Riviera. Is there one that you think is kind of underrated.

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Speaker 2: Well, I again, I have limited time there, just been there a couple of times, but I think my initial takeaway was I just fell in love with the fifth hole, which is a medium no longer part four again kind of in the western I guess the northwest corner of the property on one of those edges, so you've got the big hillside to the right, and then there's kind of a bisecting ridge line within the hole, and so just very interesting landforms. And then you know, maybe some of the others are the holes on the southern end of the property where the wash is in play, So that'd be a seven, eight, and thirteen I think all relate to the wash.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and to an extent twelve and twelve and thirteen maybe not as much twelve, but those are all kind of at that At that it's like the low end of the property, so that's where the water would naturally kind of course through the property on its wrap down to the ocean.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, there's the big kind of Baranka wash that weaves through.

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Speaker 3: And then you know, there were I think.

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Speaker 2: Two examples of split fairways that he had where you could go to either side of the wash and you know what they are today probably isn't what they were originally. I'm sure there's a lot of us that would love to see some form of kind of restoration of some of those aspects and what it could be. But just again, at thirty thousand feet, it's really interesting stuff and great golf throughout.

00:07:50
Speaker 1: You're preaching to the choir when it comes to a restoration of Riviera, particularly the Baranka. You know, one interesting thing about the history of Riviera is, and I learned this from Jeff Shackelford, the Baranka as it now appears, though it's mostly covered in turf, so you can't really see that it's a baranka, but it used to be a lot shallower. It used to be you've used the term wash. It used to look quite a bit more like that, kind of like what they have at Rustic Canyon. But there were the floods in nineteen thirty eight and that it obviously deepened that watercourse quite a bit, and so it is different from what it was in the mid to late twenties, but there could be you know, I just think about can you naturalize that baranka? Can you do something like what they did at Los Angeles Country Club, and really kind of rough that up in there.

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Speaker 2: Well, there's so many wonderful examples just down the street, right. I mean, it's pretty night and day to go to lacc and then go to Riviera and see kind of the difference in presentation. And I think I would put Rivia and Pasa Tiempo. I'd lump those two together as golf courses to me that are probably greater than the sum of their parts. And the reason I say that is when you go to Riviera you go to Pasa Tiempo, there's all sorts of things that you could find that are objectionable. They both have full length concrete cartpaths that are kind of in the way and ugly. Right, Riviera is right, there are houses around. Riviera has got Riviera's got this driving range in the middle with these giant nets and poles. It's littered with eucalyptus trees everywhere that you know they've done a better job maintaining them there than most, but you know, aren't necessarily what you want to be interacting with. The kakuya really does limit the playability in particularly around the greens. Pasa Tiempo's got that, the houses, road crossings, all this stuff trees.

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Speaker 1: Probably trees and weird places.

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Speaker 2: Trees and weird place, but understandable.

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Speaker 1: Places like to keep people from being killed and yeah, that kind of stuff.

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Speaker 2: And yet at the end of the day, both of.

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Speaker 3: Them, in my opinion, are you know.

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Speaker 2: Some of the greatest golf courses in the world. And so, you know, there's other examples of golf courses where maybe the sum is less than you know, the whole is less than the sum of the parts. But those two in particular, you've got all these little things that you could nick pick about, and yet they're just unbelievably great golf courses that you'd love to play day in and day out and would never tire of, and have stood the test of time.

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Speaker 1: They might be the two best designed golf courses in America. Now I haven't played every course in America, but they're up there in terms of like just pure this course was masterfully, you know, almost perfectly designed for this piece of property. Pasa Tiempo and Riviera. I'm a homer, I grew up in California, so you know, take this with a grain of salt, but I think those two courses are really up there just in terms of what the architect accomplished with a particular piece of land. In both cases kind of a difficult piece of land, but difficult in different ways. I wonder if you have any thoughts about, like if an architect were given a site like Riviera today. You know, just that kind of weird box canyon right flat in the middle, but but there's slope from from one end of the property to the property to the other. But there's not a whole lot of like you know what we really like to see out of golf contour. There's not like a huge amount of natural undulation on that property before Thomas and Bell got there. There's that interesting little watercourse, dry water course, and so you have some stuff to work with, but but really it's it's kind of a weird, awkward, in some ways, less than optimal property. How do you think a modern architect would approach that today if given the same kind of site, do you think like the result would be really different from from what George Thomas and Billy Bell did.

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Speaker 2: It's a really great question. I might I might agree to disagree on how good the site is. I think it's all a matter of perspective, right, I mean, to me, the site at Riviera is pretty damn good in terms of it's a core golf course. You know, you don't have roads and houses bisecting it. You do have the interesting wash that works its way through the property. There is elevation change to it. Obviously, it's in a wonderful kind of climate, so you can play golf three hundred and sixty five days a year and things like that. So I think there's lots to like about it. To your point, I think the biggest question would be un routing right, and so you know, when did the decision to put the clubhouse high on the hill come about? Would everybody today choose to put the clubhouse way high on the hill. Thomas brought the ninth hole back. I mean, it doesn't get all the way up to the clubhouse, but it does get back to the clubhouse, which he did at Lacc and bel Air and other places. So that would be one question is would a modern architect have returning nines or would you lay it out in such a way that the ninth hole might have been at the far end of the property. It's not a huge site in terms of you know, it's not like Aaron Hills where you had six hundred and fifty acres to find golf holes wherever you wanted. They were going to end up running parallel to each other. So simply fitting the golf holes onto the property as an exercise in itself, and then at least for me, you know, I would be kind of probably starting with the wash, how do we want to work with the wash and figuring out some of those aspects to it. So I think it'd be a fascinating routing exercise. Obviously, much of what we love about Rivier today is what he did after the routing was established, and setting up bunker patterns and working with landforms and creating great green complexes and things like that. But to me, I'd love to be a great armchair architect routing exercise Tiian to see how how would people deal with that site today?

00:14:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, and in what spots on the property would they rely on built features, because you know you mentioned those part three's in the middle of the property before that. I mean, those are constructed holes, but they're not like massively reshaped portions of the property. They just kind of sit on the land more or less. A lot of the big building at Riviera was on the sides of the canyon to make the holes playable. I wonder if a Mardern architect would look at the middle of the property say that's not interesting enough and really try, really try to fancy that that portion of the property up a little bit.

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Speaker 2: Well, you know what would have happened in the eighties and nineties. There'd be lake staff there, right.

00:14:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true. For drainage. Yeah, forget about the natural drainage at that end of the property with the baranco. Let's build some ponds.

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Speaker 2: When I talked to Jeff Shackelford and asked him about Riviera, I was a little bit surprised my understand and based on what he said, and I could have this wrong, and maybe why fourteen and sixteen are very much lay of the land is I believe those sycamore trees are original and have been there from the beginning and are kind of the oldest trees on the.

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Speaker 3: Property, and so that would kind of.

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Speaker 2: Lead to tying in with the lay of the land in that area. So I'm not sure what kind of environmental regulations they had back in the twenties, if they were required to keep the sycamores or not, but they did.

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Speaker 1: I very much doubt it, but maybe it was just difficult to remove them, or they didn't want to. That's a good point about sixteen. It is one of the things you don't see when it's on TV is that that hole is kind of surrounded or in this little like micro environment created by those sycamore trees, and it's really beautiful and you look at it and you're like, yeah, these are better than those eucalyptus trees that are all over the course, by the way, which are you know, they're all over California, as you know, but not native to California. Those are for Australia, where I believe they call them widow makers because they shed branches and things and and can be a safety hazard for people, stuff falls on people.

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Speaker 3: I think we're at a you know, a reckoning in.

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Speaker 2: California as it relates to eucalyptus in terms of, you know, they are dangerous. They are now old enough where they are at the end of their useful life and they are falling all over the place. You know. We had one fall up not on the golf course, but up in Golden Gate Park a couple of weeks ago and fell out a car and and so I mean it's a serious issue, and to your point, they are. They are literally all throughout California, and we would be well served to remove many of them.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I don't think golf architects and many golfers would would shed much of a tier if there were some sort of disease that were just to affect eucalyptus trees on on golf courses. I don't think anybody would would be that bummed to hear to hear that. But you mentioned Golden Gate Park that offers a good segue into your project. There one of the most interesting projects that's happened in California in recent years. In my opinion, this is a short course housed within one of the great parks in the world. And again I say that was some bias. I used to live right next to Golden Gate Park up by the University of San Francisco. I had an apartment there when I was in my early twenties and living the San Francisco life. But I love that park. Golf course has has a you know, a place in my heart for sure, and to look at it now, it's just a lot different. So let's go to the beginning. Here of your experience with Golden Gate Park golf Course. You're from Wisconsin, originally, you didn't grow up playing this course? When did you? But you live you live in California. Now, when did you first encounter Golden Gate Park golf Course.

00:17:57
Speaker 2: I moved out to California in two thousand and one, and so I don't remember the specific date, but it probably would have been some time between two thousand and two and two thousand and four that I first kind of wandered over there and stumbled upon it and saw it, and you know, it's just a magical setting, right, So there's these wonderful kind of heaving dunes within the cypress trees. At that time, the golf course was very much kind of overgrown, not only in terms of the vegetation. You know, the trees had become so big and there were so many that they were almost kind of touching each other on these corridors. I mean, everything was very narrow, and the golf course had been maintained kind of all at rough height, so the whole place was two to three inches. It was wet and soggy, and so it in terms of what all the greens were small, simple, little circles or whatever. So it felt very rudimentary, overgrown on multiple levels. But the landscape itself and the area is just really magical. Somebody described it almost like being part of a fairy tale and it's a special place, and so those that was the kind of the initial takeaway was, Wow, this is Golden Gate Park as a whole is really magical. This little golf course within it sets on a cool spot. It's too bad that the golf course that's there is kind of is presented as it was.

00:19:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, really really nice land. And also, you know, the proximity of the ocean is a big big deal here because I don't know, I've been there in the morning before, and often there's this kind of nist and this ocean influence. You can smell and hear the ocean and it definitely adds to the ambiance of the place and this mystical character that you referred to earlier.

00:19:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's four hundred and fifty yards away from the ocean. Between the ocean and the golf course is a windmill, and so you know, there's there's just neat stuff going on. Right. So it's within the city and about ten years ago, the first Tea of San Francisco took over operations of the golf course and became the entity that operates the golf course. It's still maintained by the City of San Francisco employees, but First Tea took over operations. They felt that it was a strategic move on their part in order to have a green grass facility for the kids in their program to be able to have access to and make use of. They're headquartered out of Harding Park, which is just a few miles away, and they have a great facility over there for the First Tea. There's also a nine hole little part three course at Harding Park known as the Fleming Nine. And so when they took over operations, it became a really strategic part of kind of their portfolio and what they offer to the kids and their programming. Their lease was coming up and due to be renewed and negotiated, and so that's how this project came about, was that they were working with the city on renewing or redoing their lease, and the First te came to them and said, we are willing to privately fundraise the money we would like to renovate the golf course. And it was in desperate need of a new irrigation system. We talked about kind of the overgrowth in terms of the drainage wasn't really working even though underneath all that stuff we're pure sand dunes, right, It was really kind of a quagmire out there. And so they came to the city and said, hey, if we'd like to stay, we want to have a long term lease and we're willing to invest. And so that's kind of how this whole thing came about.

00:21:44
Speaker 1: And then like how did the money all come together? Like what were the I don't know if we can identify particular sources of it, but I think people are curious in their own cities. They want to carry out a project like this. I think it's doable, but you need to find the money money somewhere. So, you know, you said it was privately fundraised. You know, how did that happen?

00:22:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, And ultimately it was about two and a half million dollars.

00:22:09
Speaker 3: And you know that came about.

00:22:12
Speaker 2: Dan Burke as the executive director, the head of the First TA San Francisco, the first Tea chapter in San Francisco is very well funded on an annual basis. The board of that organization is a who's who of CEOs of fortune, five hundred companies and things like that. So in this particular instance that the fundraising obstacles were probably fewer than maybe other places in terms of the rolodex that could be called upon was right there, and the numbers that we were talking about might have been lesser in the grand scheme of things here than other places. So that part probably, you know, shouldn't be understated, but you know, it's probably a bigger issue to be some other places. So we identified what the needs were, what we thought the ask was going to be, and then the First Tea called upon their partners and friends and they were quick to step up and Scott Solers, who's part of the First Tea, was kind of led those efforts. And so we were very fortunate that that came about fairly quickly and wasn't the hurdle that it could be in some other places. Our hurdles had had to do with ultimately the city approving of the lease negotiations. You know, we were under the impression that was going to happen in November.

00:23:36
Speaker 3: Of twenty twenty two, and.

00:23:40
Speaker 2: That didn't happen in November, and it didn't happen in December, and it didn't happen in January, and we had been talking about a project that needed to start in March of twenty twenty three because the clubhouse was being redone. The clubhouse burned down about five six years ago, the city was rebuilding the clubhouse, and so they'd been rebuilding the clubhouse for five years and we were told that clubhouse was going to reopen in October of twenty twenty three. So when the first tea went to the city, they said, hey, this is the perfect time to do a project. While the clubhouse is being redone. We think we can get the work done in such a way that we can open the golf reopen the golf course with the clubhouse in October twenty twenty three. In order to do that, we need to start March one, twenty twenty three. So we've been kind of working planning, thinking how are we going to do this. It would still be a very tight schedule, and we didn't get approval until February fifteenth of last year, when we thought we.

00:24:39
Speaker 3: Were going to get it in November, so we were.

00:24:40
Speaker 2: Trying to have contractors lined up ready to go without officially having a project that was quite the song and dance.

00:24:50
Speaker 1: Can you give me the basic outline of your plan, like what was the scope of the work and what were the basic intentions and vision of this redesign project.

00:25:02
Speaker 2: For sure, you know, the golf course has been there since I teak fifty one. It's been a treasured asset in the community from day one, and so it's not like this was a failing golf course that needed to go it was going to go away or die or whatnot. But there were definite opportunities there. We talked about the irrigation system, how the whole facility was kind of rough, height and a quagmire and wet, and so we really wanted to address the drainage. Probably our biggest task and the most challenging aspect of the whole project, was to remove about six to twelve inches of organic material that was residing on top of the native sand dunes. So again, the whole western part of Golden Gate Park and western part of San Francisco were all sand dunes one hundred and fifty years ago, just big heaving sand dunes, and so at Golden Gate Park golf Course, we believe that when they built it originally, they actually brought in soil and put that soil on top of those sand dunes, and so our biggest challenge was to remove all of that and to get that off to the sides. And it's a little bit of an interesting situation because the golf course resides within the park, but it's like its own little entity. There are property boundaries, so we had to lose all of that material within the golf course property. And so we joked around that we felt like the guys in Shashank Redemption trying to lose material.

00:26:30
Speaker 3: Out of our out of their gene pockets or whatever.

00:26:35
Speaker 2: We were. We were looking for any possible little corner that we could we could tuck it into to lose it. We ended up losing it kind of as you play the golf course today, what's the backside of number two, number five and number SEVN T complex uh is where we lost it all. But so we scraped down, we got to those native sands. We wanted to really open up the property and remove any vegetation that was impacting turf quality safety. You know, there there were a lot of different species that were maybe non native, So we focused on trying to open up the property, and then we wanted to have the golf course be more fun and more playable for everybody. You know, one of the things that's really awesome about Golden Gate Park is this is a place truly for beginners. Most San Franciscans who start their journey in golf while they're residing in San Francisco start at Golden Gate Park. It's the home of many people's first round of golf, which I think is so so special. And so when you think about that and who's going to play the golf course, we really wanted the golf course to be fun and playable for those players. And there were a couple of things about the old golf course that just weren't really conducive to that. There was only one set of teas and so, and many of those holes were well over one hundred and fifty yards and again at all rough height. If you top a shot, it goes ten feet. What sounds benign to an avid golfer as one hundred and fifty yard hole. You know, if you're out there playing your first round of golf and topping it, you know you're not getting there for ten shots, right, So we thought that what would be great would be if the entire facility could be maintained at fairway height, so everything is going to be tightly mown so the ball will bounce. We talked about those native sand dunes conducive to great drainage, opening up the property, more sunlight, more airflow. So now we think we're going to have a golf course, and we're utilizing fescue turf, and so we think we have all the ingredients for firm, fast golf. We're going to have multiple sets of tees so that if you're a beginner, maybe you play at seventy yards or eighty yards, and if you're an avid golfer, you're back at one twenty to one fifty throughout. So that we think is great. And then with the green complexes, you know, they had all been basically very very small, maybe two thousand foot circles, without a lot of interest. And yet the native the natural landforms out there were really wonderful, just wonderful, perfect terrain for golf, and so we just tried to create much more interesting green complexes that are bigger and can handle more traffic and give you more variety in terms of the whole locations that kind of fit that land. So those were those were the big tenets of what we did.

00:29:22
Speaker 1: And the result is a kind of seamless looking golf course. If it's hard to portray this stuff on a podcast, but if people want to envision what Golden Gate Park looks like, now there's sort of this seamless sword of turf, you know throughout the golf course, the fairway height, and then you have the big undulating greens. It looks to me like you could play the golf course with a putter if you were if you were so inclined.

00:29:50
Speaker 2: Very much, is it? Yeah, one of the goals we talked about and on holes two and whole eight we would encourage people to use a putter that might be your best route to the green. So yeah, definitely, there's no real forced carries, there's no big hazards there are. One other element that we did really strive to incorporate was we wanted to highlight those native sands, and so we wanted to kind of do that in a way that would be conducive with who's going to play there. We didn't want it to be a great obstacle where people were losing golf balls or spending lots of time, but we did want it to have a visual impact. We felt like that would help kind of capture the sense of place, and so in areas that were between golf holes, we incorporated those native sands. We created some big sandscapes. It kind of looked like blowout waste bunkers, if you will, and we think that those will really work well in terms of, you know, highlighting what's unique and special about the property without beating people up from a golf perspective.

00:30:55
Speaker 1: And he managed to get some trees out we did.

00:30:58
Speaker 2: We were very fortunate, you know, we had had a lot of success on that front. Again, you know, there were reasons for that. The turf health was compromised in a number of spots. There were a number of non native species. There were situations where there were safety issues in terms of trees that were dead, dying and dangerous could fall over. We still have a couple We have an issue on the second hole, to the right side of the second hole as a eucalyptus grove that's actually not on the golf course property and it's really really restricting sun and it's a pretty big issue and one of those trees has already kind of fallen over within there. So we're hopeful we're going to have a ribbon cutting on Friday.

00:31:38
Speaker 3: The mayor is going to be there. I'm hoping we can.

00:31:40
Speaker 2: Maybe usher her out there and convince her that a few more eucalyptus could come down. So wish me luck on that.

00:31:48
Speaker 1: What is it that that Mike Young likes to say, Mike Young, the great Georgia Architect, talks about like hammering something into the trees in the middle of the mord.

00:31:57
Speaker 2: We are not going to go We're not going the rusty, We're not going.

00:32:00
Speaker 1: To the record that Jay would never do that.

00:32:04
Speaker 2: We would not do that.

00:32:05
Speaker 1: That is not that kind not that kind of guy.

00:32:08
Speaker 2: That does not fit with the San Francisco vibes. You know. One of the other things that that we are really proud of is that we feel like this golf course will be as sustainable of a golf course as you're going to find anywhere in America, and that the footprint will be really, really light, which I think does tie right into California and San Francisco and there and Golden Gate Park and so again that was another thing that we think is a real benefit of this of this project.

00:32:34
Speaker 1: So who was on the ground executing this project? Shapers, contractors, How did you arrange all that?

00:32:40
Speaker 2: So, you know, the probably the bigger, the biggest challenges as I touched upon we're the execution. We knew we had this unbelievable canvas. We felt like there was an amazing opportunity architecturally to have something really special and dynamic. But executing the project in such a short window without knowing when you're going to get to get started, was real challenge. So my first phone call was to a good friend of mine, Josh Lewis, who I think you know. Josh was a longtime agronomist. He is longtime superintendent, grew up in Oregon, started at the Bandon Dunes Complex, worked at PASITIEPA. He was the superintendent at Chambers Bay for the US Open and so Josh lives in the Bay area. Now. He and I have become friends. We've worked on a number of things together, and so he was my first call. He's with a group called Gratival and Hertzing. They serve as as project managers basically and helped pull together all aspects of the project and execute it. And so Josh was really served as kind of point man. He helped identify who we could get in as a small mom and pop irrigation contractor, a guy named Brett Staples and did a wonderful job and his team was really flexible and helped us in so many aspects. He identified a local earth moving contractor that could help us scrape away all of that material. And then even though it was such a small project, because of the timelines, we ended up having three shapers involved. So it's such a small project, but just because of people's schedules, we were trying to find people for a week at a time, if you will.

00:34:13
Speaker 1: And so, you know, they did something similar at the Loop at Shaska, which is a short course that you know, Ben Warren oversaw the project as the architect, but you know, kind of a parallel or similar project in some ways. And they they were also just like sort of borrowing really good shapers from other projects for you know, a couple of days. Somebody would come in and shape a green in a day and a half and then and then go on to you know, the the whatever Core and Crenshaw project. They might have been working on it. So it was that kind of that kind of like vibe, just bringing in good hitters.

00:34:53
Speaker 2: Josh and I spent lots of time sitting down trying to figure out, Okay, if we could get this guy in here for the six days, then we could let him go, and then who could we get to come in? So it was a real it was conducting an orchestra, if you will. But we had three really talented guys. Brett Hockstein I've worked with before. He worked on at Santa Ana with me. He's a Bay Area guy, and so he came over and helped us on the front end on some of the stuff, and then he actually came back at the very at the very end and helped us with some stuff. Another guy who has Bay Area roots, this guy named Robert Nelson, younger guy, but he's got Bay Area roots. So he was excited to come back and he just fell in love with the property and did a great job. And then one of the more interesting stories was we were looking for somebody and struggling to find somebody in a different shape or friend of mine gave me a name and somebody I kind of followed on Twitter but never met, a guy named Justin Carlton, who was out of Florida, and I called Justin on a Wednesday, and he was on property on Thursday, coming from Florida, and so he dove in and really helped us out a lot, uh and came back a couple of different times. And so we had we had this great group and and and you know, one of the fun things is on a property like that is is trying to make sure that it all ends up pretty seamless and doesn't look like you had three different guys doing three different things. So hopefully that that got executed well. And nobody knows who.

00:36:24
Speaker 3: Did what, but it was.

00:36:25
Speaker 2: It was a great group, and everybody had the right attitude and kind of fell in love with the property. We were very lucky to have them all.

00:36:32
Speaker 1: Could you choose one hole on the redesigned course that you're particularly proud of? Just one?

00:36:40
Speaker 2: Uh? Yeah, it's like asking your favorite kid. Uh.

00:36:43
Speaker 1: I never liked answering this question, but it's good for coming.

00:36:46
Speaker 2: We always we always try to hedge. I think probably the most dramatic transformation is the sixth hole. The sixth hole, uh, for those who maybe played there a couple of years ago, would have been the first hole. So all the stayed in the same location. We weren't allowed to kind of reroute anything, and we didn't really want to. We did renumber the golf course, and when we renumbered it, we actually took it back to its original routing from nineteen fifty one. So what is the sixth hole today. Two years ago was the first hole, and it's one of the longer holes. It can be stretched to maybe one hundred and sixty five yards a place uphill, and two years ago it was cypress trees on both sides of the whole, very narrow corridor with kind of a tabletop green with a bunker kind of front right, and then immediately to the left of the green was a huge hillside of shrubs, fifteen foot tall shrubs that massed the view of anything. And so it was just a very very claustrophobic hole. And so we were able to thin out the trees on both sides of the hole. There's still trees there kind of framing the hole, but that entire hillside we were able to remove all the vegetation, and then that became one of these big kind of sandy blowouts, and we don't have the bunker in front, so if you want to bounce the ball up, you can bounce the ball up. And so in terms of a transformation, that one's a pretty dramatic transformation, pretty special, uh, and I think people will take note of that. And to your point, the proximity to the ocean and stuff. You could never see the ocean before when you're on the golf course. Now when you get to the seventh tee, after you walk off the sixth green, you can see the ocean. There's numerous spots where you can see the ocean, where you can see the city of San Francisco, you can see the famed Cliff House and the headlands beyond. So those are some aspects that are exciting about opening up the property.

00:38:46
Speaker 1: Very cool. So what's the uh, what's the plan for the opening at this point? I know it's a little tricky.

00:38:52
Speaker 2: With so the delays. Yeah, so you know, we've the golf course has been in a playable condition since October November, and quite frankly, it's been really really awesome to have kind of our own little playground here for a couple of months.

00:39:07
Speaker 1: We did you want you want to make this a private course, do you, Jay.

00:39:12
Speaker 2: Well, I'll tell you what if what? Oute Lots of people ask, you know, what, what would you have in your backyard if you could have a backyard golf. Golden Gate Park would be a pretty awesome backyard facility to have. And you know, we've played some cross country golf out there. It's been pretty pretty neat. But the delay in terms of the official opening and the golf course has been related to the clubhouse. We've been waiting for the clubhouse to be finished. The clubhouse is now finished. We are going to have a ribbon cutting on Friday, February sixteenth. In terms of how they will ultimately roll out the golf course, we have a pretty nasty weather forecast coming up for Saturday through Wednesday. Looks like it's supposed to be nasty rains and atmospheric river or whatever. So in within the next few weeks, people will public will be out there playing golf. They are going to be somewhat strategic about it, you know. And we're still in a we're in a very wet spring. The golf course has handled it beautifully, but you know, so they'll limit play a little bit.

00:40:10
Speaker 3: I think they want to.

00:40:11
Speaker 2: Keep it to maybe eighty rounds through the spring. And then in the summer they might open it up to even more. But so we're we're we're on the precipice. It's time for the public to get out there and enjoy.

00:40:22
Speaker 1: Looking forward to it. Very cool project and looking forward to seeing it myself. I haven't been out there yet, and I've got to got to fly down at some point. So you've got a number of irons on the fire right now. Jay, there would be a number of projects we could talk about, but I wanted to zero in just real quickly touch on it briefly. You're going to do something at Poppy Ridge, which is a public golf course. In jeez, I've never been there. It's it's vaguely in the Bay Area, but it's also kind of toward Napa almost like it's out is it? Where is it?

00:40:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's great question. It's it's a it's what we refer to as the East Bay. The mailing address is livermore So, if you think about the Bay Area, if you think about it like an upside down triangle, you have San Francisco to the west, Oakland to the east, and San Jose to the south, and so this golf course would be kind of between San Jose and Oakland and maybe twenty miles east.

00:41:22
Speaker 1: And it's an NCGA, a Northern California Golf Association property public golf course right correct.

00:41:31
Speaker 2: The Northern California Golf Association owns two golf courses, Poppy Hills down on the Monterey Peninsula and Poppy Ridge here out in Livermore, And it's a twenty seven hole facility that was built in the nineties.

00:41:44
Speaker 1: What are you doing out there?

00:41:46
Speaker 2: So the moving forward where it'll essentially be operated like an eighteen hole championship golf course, and then they'll have kind of another nine, which is I don't know if executive is the right term or whatever the right term. Maybe I think we refer to it as a flex nine, but I'll be doing what we're going to refer to as the championship eighteen and it'll be a complete re routing of it'll be a new golf course, and it's going to occupy the northern two thirds of the site and the eastern third of the site, So it will I believe it's going to encompass holes that were part of all three different nines that were out there originally, so it's not just kind of redoing two nines because of the rerouting. To your point, you talked about kind of wine country. Livermore in this area is wine country. There are vineyards kind of around the property, and it's a very dramatic site. There's two hundred and fifty feet of elevation change. It's a big, heaving, rolling site, and the golf course that's there today is not really walkable. There's a number of instances where you play a golf hole, drive three hundred yards maybe past two other golf holes, and then play a whole, and you do that multiple times. I tell people I could offer you a million dollars and say, if there's no signage out here, I don't think you could start on the first tee and get to the eighteenth green and.

00:43:11
Speaker 1: Forget where the next hole is. This is what I've heard about about Poppy Ridge is that you finish a hole and you look around and there are a number of options for where you can go, because there's quite a few holes packed into the property, But for the life of you, you can't guess where you're going next for sure. It's not intuitive.

00:43:32
Speaker 2: So my goal was to reroute the golf course in such a way to make it walkable, and so we've been able to reduce the overall walk you know, if you think about it, you know, let's say the golf course is sixty five hundred yards, but in order to play those sixty five hundred yards, you have to walk nine thousand yards today right now, to play that same sixty five hundred yards, it might be a seventy eight hundred yard walk. So we've been able to drastically reduce the green to tea transitions. You know. Now the new golf course, you'll walk off of a green and pretty much flow right onto the next tee, and so that's been really exciting exercises to figure out, Okay, how do you take an unwalkable golf course and make it walkable through routing and then obviously in terms of what's on the ground, it very much today feels like a nineteen nineties golf course. There's a lot of artificial mounding, there's kind of bunker left and right of each green. Each green is kind of broken into three sections and very kind of repetitive, and so we really want to build in as much kind of variety and flexibility knowing that this is kind of the Northern California Golf Associations their home of golf. They have a huge kind of membership throughout all the Northern California, So we really want this to be a great place for that to play over and over again.

00:45:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a pretty good deal. You know, not to make this an advertisement for the NCPA, but I used to be a member, and I used to live right next to Poppy Hills, which is the course in modern Ay which has been much improved in recent years. The project that RTJ two did. There a firm that you used to work for, but you weren't working for them when they did this project at Poppy Poppy Hills. They made that course quite a bit better. You can nitpick things here and there, but you know, on the whole, a much much, far superior golf course than from what it used to be. So it's good to hear they're bringing another property up to date. So when you do a project like this, it's not your re routing, right I mean, And so when you do this, you've got to take out cart paths, you've got to put the irrigation system in a different place. So is all of that on the table for this project. You're basically treating it as a new property or are you using elements like cleverly using elements of the past infrastructure to construct something new.

00:46:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a great question, and for the most part, yeah, it's all new, and so it's far more complicated than just building a new golf course. You know, if you go out and build a new golf course, you find the appropriate land and when you go to build it, you're not having to undo anything else.

00:46:26
Speaker 1: So you're just custom building the irrigation, the drainage, the car pass, all that stuff that goes under the golf course. That stuff is deeply rooted in the land, and when you build a new golf course, you're just putting it in. When you're doing a rebuild like this, yeah, as you say, you got to tear a lot of it out, I guess, or maybe decide to keep some of it. It's a tricky.

00:46:48
Speaker 2: Balance, right, So you know what you do is the golf comes first. Right, We've got to figure out where where should the golf course go and how should that work? And then if there are elements that can or should be saved, you know, what are those and how do those work? Some of it boils down to what kind of condition is and then to begin with right, And so after thirty years, there are lots of elements out there, whether it's the card paths, bunkers, greens, all that kind of stuff that we're very much due for reinvestment, So there wasn't really a desire to save much of it in this instance. For example, Yeah, all the paths will come out. If there's an instance where the paths were not in play and they're not going to be in play and they're in a condition, that's okay, we would leave those so that they could be used as a service path or something like that. But but by and large, it's it's a new golf course with all new elements.

00:47:46
Speaker 1: Cool, all right, what's the basic timeline for that project if you can? Yeah, information, No, we.

00:47:52
Speaker 2: Want to get we want to get started this later the spring, and then we'll try to go very quickly. You know, that's the one thing with these projects, whether it's at private clubs or particularly in the case of the NCGA, you know, there's a desire to go quick. Nobody likes downtime, and I think if that's one thing that you've really noticed in the business over the last decade or so, as these timelines have shrunk, so we'll try to go as quickly as possible and then reopen next year. And so it'll be Last year was a weird one for me because we had Golden Gate going on and I was doing a big project in Houston, and so I flew to Houston every week last year and was going back and forth between Houston and San Francisco. At least this year, my big project is Driveable, So let's I want to do thirty eight red Eyes this.

00:48:37
Speaker 1: Year, right, Yeah, And you've got a kid and everything, so i'd imagine it's it's it's good to be near home base.

00:48:44
Speaker 2: It's really nice to do tuck in or school drop off in the morning and be able to still do your job. It's great.

00:48:50
Speaker 1: So I can I can relate with that, all right. So, Jay, I have got some hot topics questions for you. There are there are few hot topics in golf architecture, and I always like your takes on things. I think you speak really well to a number of different topics and and so I just want to hit you with some things that people have been discussing in golf architecture. Recently and see if you have some thoughts about about each subject matter. So the first one obviously has to be rollback. So you know, what, if anything, do you think the impact of the proposed golf ball rollback will be on golf architecture on the way that you do your job.

00:49:34
Speaker 2: I think it'd be very minimal. You know, it was interesting. I was in a I was meeting with a club in Texas a couple of weeks ago and meeting with the membership, and somebody asked, you know, how is the rollback going to impact you know, what kind of design you come up with, and you know, my drives are going to be going, you know, thirty yards shorter, and how does how are you going to account for It's not.

00:49:55
Speaker 1: Going to be thirty yards, folks. Whoever was saying that is probably going to lose, you know, maybe three or four yards.

00:50:02
Speaker 2: I spent a fair bit of time trying to explain that, at least in my opinion, I don't see this impacting John Q. Golfer in a significant way, right, So it seems like it's very minimal. You know, for most fifteen handicappers, they're trying to make consistent, solid contact with the golf ball. They can't tell you if their seven iron goes one hundred and fifty eight or one hundred and sixty two yards, and if the ball goes a yard different with their seven iron. I just don't see that being a big deal. So to me, this golf ball debate really relates to professional golf or championship golf and the impact that that has on the courses that they play and they're set up and things like that. To me, the golf ball's less of an issue as it relates to everyday golf, and so I probably would have been a proponent of bifurcation or a tournament ball. I can be behind the rollback as I think, you know, we were probably long overdue.

00:51:06
Speaker 3: For something like that, But you know, for John.

00:51:11
Speaker 2: Q Golfer, I just don't see it having an impact suprofically and as such, outside of championship set up golf, I don't see the impact on architecture.

00:51:21
Speaker 1: And a follow up to that, how much of a rollback do you think would have been necessary in order for there to be a discernible impact on the way that you design golf courses or not so much design as like you know, figure out the space for golf courses, like you know, those those important considerations of safety and the size of the court or you know, we're at this this rollback right now, that might for Rory McElroy have an impact of twelve to fifteen yards and for the average golfer might have an impact more around that, you know, five to seven yard range. If that, what do you think would be necessary in order for there to be a difference in the way that you approach golf courses.

00:52:08
Speaker 2: Well, I think when you think, you know, if you think about the yardage of again kind of championship golf courses, right, So we went for one hundred plus years having championship golf courses be somewhere between six thousand and seven thousand yards, and then as time went on and then golf ball goes further and people hit it further or whatnot, in pretty rapid fire succession, we went from seven thousand to eight thousand, right, And so to me, that is where there was this real challenge because when you stretch the golf course length wise, you also need to stretch it with wise and so therefore, you know, you think about all these great golf courses built around the turn of the century, and their footprint might have been somewhere between ninety five and one hundred and twenty five acres. Well, you know, you're not putting a seven five hundred yard golf course one hundred and twenty five acres. Now you need two hundred acres. And so then you get into sustainability questions about how much does it cost to build a golf course, how much does it cost to maintaining a golf course. Those costs are then passed on to the golfer and all those different things. And so really I think, you know, if we were to have a serious, high level convention to discuss this, you know, if we could say, once and for all, hey, we feel like, you know, seven thousand yards as a maximum length for a golf course is a really good idea for the next one hundred or two hundred years. Then we know that, Okay, then the footprint for golf can fit within one hundred and fifty acres, and we know what that means as it relates to building and maintaining golf courses and those different elements. But so how that relates to that rollback, I mean, it's it's probably more significant than people talk about. I mean, there's two different games being played. Rory McElroy could play a nine thousand yard golf course and not have an issue, right. And I don't know about you, Garrett, but you know I've played a few seven thousand yard golf courses, but I don't want to anymore. You know, that was that was ten years ago, right, you know it's.

00:54:18
Speaker 1: Well, it's because you're still using that driver from twenty thirteen or whatever it is. Yeah, you're a you're a bomber. Don't don't undersell yourself. But but yeah, I mean clearly, uh you know, right now Rory and his compatriots are playing a bunch of golf courses that are way too short for them. That's the thing is that even if they're playing a seventy five hundred yard golf course, it is at this point way too small for them.

00:54:42
Speaker 2: They're not using anything over a six iron, right, that's crazy. So maybe if I could get to Club Champion or something like that, I might I might have a chance of getting back to a seven thousand yard golf course. You know that.

00:54:56
Speaker 1: They're they're the they're the sponsor for this episode. Actually before where we came on. I want to clarify for people that I did not do that ad read in front of Jay. He just guessed that, which is very smart. All right. Speaking of technology, another kind of technology is significant in golf architecture in the twenty first century and becoming more so. So. Some new tools have become available to architects recently. Light are right, the light ranging and something or other technology somebody else knows, but basically it allows you to produce these really accurate digital maps of topography and to reproduce them. There's GPS bulldozers, which provide some more precision in trying to replicate a digital model. There are various AI tools right becoming available, and we're just at the beginning of that. But I would imagine it's going to have an impact on the way that architects come up with renderings and maybe at some point deal with topographical maps and things like that. So, of this new kind of set of technologies, which one or which ones do you expect to have the biggest impact on the way that you approach your business?

00:56:08
Speaker 2: Well, I think I could already speak to it because I've been incorporated.

00:56:11
Speaker 1: You're already doing it. Okay, tell me about.

00:56:14
Speaker 2: It the last probably five years now I think about. And a friend of yours and a friend of mine, Peter Floory, is integral to all this. So Peter, for those who don't know, was kind of the guy behind the lido at San Valley, did a lot of research.

00:56:30
Speaker 1: The digital model of lido, did the research that allowed that golf course to be so you know, kind of exact.

00:56:36
Speaker 2: When he was in that process. So I don't know, maybe five six years ago prior to the lido occurring, but him doing all of his work as it related to it. I had reached out to Peter, I had not met him before, and I said, Hey, I'm fascinated by what you're doing, and I'm curious could that relate to what I do if I were proposing to a client. Here's the routing that I think would best. Could you create that? How do you do this? You know whatever? And he was explaining to me how he basically builds it. He builds it in a in a video game. He uses PGA Tour. It used to be twenty twenty one now it's twenty twenty three or whatever, right, So he created he takes all this data and then and then builds a three D model into the video game. So I was fascinated by that. We kept talking and so I have I think five or six times now. When I will come up with a plan, I will then have a three D model of that proposed plan built and use that to share with the owners a membership at a club if we're proposing a renovation, and I just find it to be a magical tool.

00:57:50
Speaker 3: I mean it really.

00:57:51
Speaker 2: First in particular with memberships, right, so here they know their golf course, they play there fifty times a year. You're proposed using change, which never goes over well, and so they need to wrap their arms around what does that mean. And the number of people who can see that on a two dimensional plan and recognize what that's going to be in real life and get excited about it is limited, and so therefore it's become just a really wonderful tool. So what we will do is put together that three D model, will share that with them, and then what I've found to even be better is to take them out onto the golf course and we'll do tours. So we've done this a number of places where we'll take our three D model, will rig up a golf cart, with a giant flat screen TV attached to the back. And then we'll take thirty people at a time and we'll go out and we'll stand on what would be the fourth hole, and we'll show them the video of Okay, here's what this would look like from this spot, and you can watch in real time as the light bulb goes on for people, Oh okay, now I understand what Wow, that would be cool. Yeah, And you can literally watch a no vote transition to a yes vote in real time. So to me, that's been by far the most meaningful advancement, at least as it relates to my particular.

00:59:18
Speaker 1: Business, and it's going to become an essential thing for getting jobs too. I would imagine if somebody comes in with, you know, a PowerPoint presentation versus an architect coming in with a compelling three D model, where you can actually almost provide an experience of what the work would look like when done. There's no comparison between those two.

00:59:42
Speaker 2: It's very powerful. Now, the challenge is that it's expensive, right, those things to get the time consuming and expensive, and so to your point, when you're making a pitch, when you're trying to win a job, more often than not you might not have three months to put together presentation, So if you've got a week, it's very hard to you know, accomplish that in that amount of time.

01:00:07
Speaker 1: And back to PowerPoint at that point.

01:00:09
Speaker 2: Well, and it's you know, a huge expense, not knowing.

01:00:12
Speaker 3: If you're going to get it whatever.

01:00:13
Speaker 2: So those are the challenging.

01:00:16
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, the standards for visualizations and renderings are going up and it'll be interesting to see how how architects respond to that now, you know, when it comes to AI stuff, it seems like the impact of AI tools has been really acute in some industries and not in others. And right now there's not, as far as I can see, like a lot of penetration in golf architecture. You know, maybe it's helping some golf architects come up with with renderings. You know, maybe there's an AI engine out there, especially one of these rendering engines that can help architects. But have you thought about what the potential impact of some of these you know, large model AI things, what you know, can you can you reckon the impact that could potentially have on the way architects do their business?

01:01:11
Speaker 2: Well, you touched on the rendering side of it, and I think there's probably similar to that three D model creation. I think there's probably it's it's highly likely or realistic to think that the AI assistance in rendering will will become somewhat standard or commonplace in terms of Okay, I want this hole to look something like this other hole somewhere else, and obviously it can pull it from there and incorporate it, so I can certainly see that becoming more more more commonplace. The thing that I'm I've looked into a little bit or am most interested in is routing. And you know, can you load an algorithm to say, okay, I want the golf course to be you know, sixty five hundred yards to seventy three hundred yards. I wanted to be a par seventy two thirty six thirty six. I wanted to have returning nines. I want to move less than three hundred thousand yards of earth, no blind shot. You know, whatever your your model is, and can it spit out routings and how quickly could it spit it out? And how many could it spit out? You know? Obviously, to me, I find routing to be maybe the most romantic part of the job, and the really, if not the most fun, you know, one of the two or three most fun elements of the job. I consider it to be a real skill and something that I love. So the idea of AI doing this instead sounds terrible. Having said that there there could be a place for it. Whereas, if you get stuck in a certain spot, could it help you unlock certain areas? Could it show you different alternatives? And therefore then you it's your job to sift through those and determine what's best by getting out there and walking the land and studying the things that it comes up with. But to me, that's the that's the one that's out there that's interesting.

01:03:23
Speaker 1: Absolutely, I have thought about that specifically. As soon as you mentioned routing, I was like, yes, this is exactly what I've contemplated with AI. I am sure that you could do it. It would just be such a you know, such a niche usage that you know, maybe it wouldn't be a product that people would invent, but I'm sure it's possible to give instructions to an AI engine and have it just spit out a bunch of like functional routings of a golf course. And and so the process of coming up with the routing would be one more where you using kind of process of elimination as opposed to creation or inspiration, which is kind of the what routing is about. Now. It's one of those mysterious aspects of the job that you know, some architects are really great at and they have their own individual artistic tendencies with it, but there's there's also, you know, a scientific or engineering type aspect to it, where you're just trying to find a golf course that would work. And I would assume that an AI could help with that, though I'm i echo your kind of hesitation about it. I'm not sure I want AI to help with this, but it just seems like with the large language models in particular CHAT, GPT, Bard, et cetera. What these what these tools do really well is kind of surprising. They they are really good at writing poetry. You know, maybe maybe not at an Elizabeth Bishop level, but they can write much better poetry than a tenth grader can write. No offense to my former students, and they can do really creative, whimsical things. They're good at that stuff. They're maybe not as good at recalling facts or giving you accurate information. Right, there's a lot of a lot of mess that happens there. But they're great at the creative aspects of writing, which is kind of freaky. You wouldn't expect a robot to be great at creativity, but that's kind of what's emerging with AI stuff. And so I wonder if some of those more creative or romantic aspects of the job are ones that AI might prove to be good at. With golf architecture, it would be weird, but it wouldn't be unexpected at this point.

01:05:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, And you know, I think to your point where you talked about our market is so niche that we're not likely to drive that. But if you think about it, I have to believe, and maybe it's already happening. If you are the federal government building roads and trying to identify, you know, we need to get a new interstate from point A to point B. What router are we going to take that's going to you know, require the least amount of earth moving or land acquisition or you know whatever whatever they have to deal with environmental constraints, avoiding environmental constraints or whatever. You know, they might be creating a model or an algorithm that's very very similar and we may end up as an offshoot if something something like that. And so how maybe it's already out there.

01:06:31
Speaker 3: I don't know.

01:06:31
Speaker 2: I haven't seen it, but it is. It is interesting, and I think what would be most interesting to me is whether or not it would be better do a better job, or be more helpful on a really constrained small site. You know, if you had one hundred and twenty five acres and you had some environmental constraints where really the first task is fitting eighteen holes onto the property that are going to work well. Yeah, Or if you had a situation where you were given you know, three thousand acres of the Montana countryside and you know, the probably the biggest hurdle or challenge. You know, there's great golf holes in every direction, but the biggest challenge is where do we start right? How do we pick a starting point or whatever to.

01:07:24
Speaker 3: Go from and whatnot.

01:07:25
Speaker 2: So I'd be very interested to understand would it do better in one situation or another? Uh, in terms of helping out or being a tool to use.

01:07:37
Speaker 1: Well, I've got a bunch of other hot topics, but I'll save them for a later date, because we're kind of coming up on our on our time here. But one last one, one last question I have for you is should the US open go back to Chambers Bay?

01:07:53
Speaker 2: Easiest question I've ever been asked. Yeah? Absolutely, Yeah, it is. You know, it's I don't know when that's going to happen now now that we see how far things have been stretched out, and to me, it's really unfortunate how that's unfolded. I understand why they do it. It makes their life easier to go back to repeat venues. I have no beef with any of the venues they're going to.

01:08:18
Speaker 3: They're going to.

01:08:19
Speaker 2: Great locations and things like that. But I do think there are other places, whether it's Chambers Bay or the country Club or Southern Hills or you know, others that are missing out that really are worthy venues and would add to the overall experience I wrote about and have talked about. I think there's a solution out there. I think the USGA should create a new Major, which would essentially be a match play version of the US Amateur that would be open to pros and amters alike, and that if they did that, it would solve their venue problem. It would it would allow for places like Marion, which would probably be better suited to match play than the Open itself. They would have two different places to go, and therefore, rather than having eight venues, if you had sixteen or twenty or even twenty five to rotate through. I think that would be to the benefit of the US Open, the USGA, and golfers alike.

01:09:27
Speaker 1: So whether I love that, I love that, And it would just be a great little, you know, fu to the PGA Tour. For the USGA to create another major that the PGA Tour doesn't own and operate.

01:09:40
Speaker 2: I think it'd be awesome. And to me, it's the perfect time to do it, right with all this infighting between the tour and Live and.

01:09:45
Speaker 1: All that kind of stuff.

01:09:47
Speaker 2: Nobody I have yet to meet anybody who cares anything about the FedEx Cut playoffs, right, So put it in August. The PGA moved out of August into May, so August is sitting there. So if you take it August August at Chambers Bay for the US Match Play Championship would be ideal. There's a number of other venues that would be ideal in in August. I uh, you could, like you said, you could have a nice little f U two to other championship golf. If the USGA didn't want to jump on it, I think the RNA or the p g A could could jump on it and do different than take it around the world. A match play going around the world would be would be great, but we need more match play in championship golf, and I think it would solve the venue.

01:10:39
Speaker 1: Issues and Chambers would be a great match play in August. Chambers Bay fiery, that would be. That would be a cool.

01:10:49
Speaker 2: I think it'd be great. It's proven to be a great match play venue.

01:10:52
Speaker 1: And with the US Women's Amateur, which I one of my one of the greatest days of even though it was a shortened match because Saki Baba absolutely crushed the competition there. But I had a wonderful day walking that golf course during the final of the US Women's Amateur a couple couple of years ago. So so that was really cool.

01:11:17
Speaker 2: Well, we have trades and all sorts of professional sports, So maybe Pinehurst or Pebble Beach wants to trade a US Open to Chambers Bay for something else.

01:11:25
Speaker 3: I don't know.

01:11:26
Speaker 1: They've got They've got plenty, They've got.

01:11:27
Speaker 2: Plenty, and they've got a lot to choose from. They've got all these draft choices, right, can we have a can we have a trade.

01:11:33
Speaker 3: At some point?

01:11:34
Speaker 1: Exactly? All right? Well, Jay, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I we'll have you back again sooner. You know, last time was twenty seventeen. It's been a while, so yeah, I can't.

01:11:45
Speaker 2: I can't wait to hear all the list of all these other questions that we didn't get to.

01:11:48
Speaker 1: So yeah, I've got some juicy ones. But I'll but I'll you know, that'll be an incentive for people to tune in next time. Thanks, James, sounds good.

01:11:56
Speaker 2: Thanks so much for having good to be with the game.

01:12:07
Speaker 1: This episode of the fridagg Golf Podcast was produced by Matt Ruschis. Thank you, Matt. If you'd like to support Friday Golf on another level, check out Club TFE go to the Frida Egg dot com slash membership. There's all sorts of stuff that you get with this membership, which is one hundred and twenty dollars a year. You get early access to registration for Friday Egg events. You get an ongoing discount in the pro shop, all sorts of stuff like that, But really the core of the offering is exclusive content. We've really been rocking on this content this year. We've been putting a lot of stuff up on the member site that I'm really proud of. We have our weekly designed notebook feature. We have our weekly course profiles. Those course profiles are some of the most in depth I think that you'll find anywhere. They have photos, they have of extensive write ups of great golf courses. And we also have a new feature called Tour Guide, which is being quarterbacked by Brendan Porath and Joseph Lamania. Will Knights also contributes to that, and that's basically a weekly feature that allows you to be a smarter consumer of pro golf. And then just yesterday we posted a video where Andy Johnson goes through one thing he likes about every single hole at Riviera, and I said one thing he likes, he also mentioned some things that he doesn't like or that he thinks can be better, and it's just truly fantastic. So check out our membership CLUBTFE at the Friday dot Com slash membership. Join us in the club. Hope to see you there, Thank you for listening. We'll be back against it

01:14:01
Speaker 2: Ny