A Preview of Oak Hill (ft. Andrew Green and Fred Beltz)

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.

00:00:06
Speaker 2: A bride egg, Friday Egg, the dreaded Frida Egg, Frida Egg, Frida Egg, Brian Egg, Frida Egg, Bride Egg, Lie.

00:00:11
Speaker 1: I'm about ready to run off the the.

00:00:34
Speaker 3: Welcome to the Frida Egg Podcast. My name is Garrett Morrison and I am here with Andy Johnson.

00:00:40
Speaker 4: How are you doing, Andy, Garrett, I'm doing wonderful.

00:00:42
Speaker 1: We are.

00:00:43
Speaker 4: We're in California. We just finished the Boomerang, one of our events. It was a great day out there, and looking forward to talk about ok Hill and uh the upcoming major. It's it's right here. We're in the peak major season now.

00:00:57
Speaker 3: The PGA Championship is coming up in a couple of weeks, and we thought we'd get in early and talk about Oak Hill Country Club, which we saw late last year. We played the course and talked to the club historian, talk to Andrew Green, the consulting architect for the club, and so we have some thoughts about that course as well as some information from from Green and Belts that we're going to play for you but yeah, we are face to face here actually, which is an unusual circumstance. So we'll see how this podcast goes. I think there'll be a different dynamic here.

00:01:29
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's always nice doing them in person. There's a you don't have to deal with any internet issues, any any lag and it's just it's much easier, you know, you all of a sudden get the the in person natural conversational gestures that that lead you to a little bit less interruptions, I feel like, and just a little bit more real conversation, a.

00:01:52
Speaker 1: Little bit more back and forth.

00:01:54
Speaker 3: So we will come back with me and Andy giving our take on oak Hill. Well, after a little bit of tape from Fred Belts. First of all, the club historian at Oakhill and Andrew Green, who led the recent renovation slash restoration of Oakill. I think we can call this a historical renovation, right, which that's the hands term. I'm not sure if Andrew necessarily embraces that term himself, but he also he talks about the renovative things that he's done at this course, he wasn't just looking to purely restore exactly what Donald Ross built here.

00:02:33
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I think you know, while we're at the top here I mentioned I think we have our Oakill preview video, yes, coming out on Wednesday of this week. So the day after this podcast drops on YouTube, you can find a is this about seventeen minute video with Fred and Andrew that will put some visuals to the words that are you know, these are different words, I believe, some of the same, some some different.

00:03:02
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's some overlap, but yeah, right, the edit the video is is more kind of edited and a little more concise, whereas we're gonna play you a bit more of the conversation that we had with Fred and Andrew about okill. But yeah, the video we Cameron and I worked on, you know, making it kind of a streamlined narrative, so I think people will enjoy it.

00:03:24
Speaker 4: Yeah, So that that goes up on our YouTube channel on Wednesday, and it'll give you I always, I always like the visual aspect of those videos, being able to see what everybody's talking about. So check that out. Garrit and Cameron did a wonderful job putting it together. So that'll be out and we'll start our kind of march towards the PGA in Rochester and and hope for good weather yeah, looking good.

00:03:50
Speaker 3: Actually, it's looking all right. I mean, unbelievably, if this works out and they get through this PGA Championship without it being super soggy and gray in Rochester, that would be unbelievable. So I'm really hoping for that because you know, certain aspects of this course will come alive a little bit. If it's nice and firm and dry out there, it'll play a bit differently if it's if it's wet, then you know, I mean, I think there'll be a sort of predictable set of potential winners who are out there at Oakhill. And we'll talk a little bit more about that later in this podcast. So first though, we're gonna throw it to Fred Belts again, club historian at oak Hill. He's gonna talk to you for about, you know, five minutes about the history of the course, how it was founded, and some of the interesting things that happened in its early history with regard to trees. Trees are a big part of oak Hill's history, and Fred Belts is going to tell you a bit about that, and then we'll go to some tape from our interview with Andrew Green. And Andrew is going to talk about Donald Ross, and he'll talk about the course design, and he'll talk a bit about how it evolved and what he tried to do with his recent work at the course. So those are the two things back to back that you're going to hear right now, and let's just go to it, all right.

00:05:23
Speaker 5: So getting into some of the history, sure, could you tell me a simple version of the founding of this club and how it eventually came to occupy where we are. It's a land that we're sitting on right now.

00:05:36
Speaker 6: Happy too. So the oldest club in Rochester is the Country Club in Rochester. It was founded in eighteen ninety five. A number of years later in nineteen oh one, and it could be you know, that was also the year when Harry Varden did the tour of the United States, and so there was a lot of excitement about golf. Anyway, a number of business individuals and professionals in Rochester decided they wanted their own golf course, and in October of nineteen oh one they leased roughly ninety acres in an old farmhouse with a barn along the Genesee River. And to the best of my knowledge, there's no record of who designed the course. I sometimes joke it was just some guys with shovel and little flower clay flower pots, you know. And you know, it was very simple. It was kerosene lamps. There was no running water in the clubhouse. The guys changed their clothes in the barn out back, and it was just nine holes, very simply laid out. Well. Over the next decade the club was very successful. It grew and the decision was made to expand it to eighteen holes and have a really nice clubhouse, a very commodious clubhouse, and they did that. That was built in nineteen eleven. It was designed in O nine, built in ten, and opened in eleven. I did find an article back from nineteen oh nine where I talked about the addition of the extra nine holes, and that a golf expert, Donald Ross, from Boston, had assured the club that there would be ample room. Now I'd love to know whether it was Donald Ross actually came there, but there were, to the best of my knowledge, there are no records of that. But anyway, that was built in nineteen eleven and everybody was happy. They had the river to canoe in and sail in, and they you know, and golf course an eighteen whole golf course and they you know, tennis courts and the rest. Fast forward to the early nineteen twenties. Nineteen twenty two, George Asman, who founded Eastman Kodak Company, along with leadership from the University of Rochester, wanted to expand the campus for the University of Rochester at a medical and dental center, and there were a lot of choices, but they ultimately decided that they wanted the o'kill property, and so there was some negotiations. They raised the money. Long story short, there was a landswap where we gave up the ninety acres in the clubhouse along the river for three hundred and fifty five acres here too. Donald Ross designed golf courses and the Tutor style clubhouse that were sitting in. So I would say it was probably the great land swap in the history of Western New York, if not New York State. And so here we were in nineteen twenty six that both the East and the West courses opened, and there was you know, everybody was very happy. I mean, you've got two courses in a great clubhouse. There was no landscaping, and so I won't voy you with the whole story. But doctor John R. Williams, who is a retired physician, decided he wanted to take a crack at the landscaping and proceeded to have he was an amateur arburst. Proceeded to have people from all over the world send him acorns from the great forests of England and Europe and Asia, and he sprouted him with coffee cans in his backyard and then brought him over here and we had little nurseries. And someone once asked him and so the oak trees that you see here are are doctor Williams's work. And you know that was that was almost one hundred years ago. And someone once asked doctor Williams how many trees had he planted, and he said he stopped counting at thirty thousand, so you know, and there are reports of you know, seventy thousand oak trees on the property. I haven't counted them myself, but that's what I understand.

00:10:38
Speaker 5: Before golf was here, it was this land.

00:10:42
Speaker 6: Yeah, this land, this property, And if you think about it, no one wants to take valuable property and turn it into a golf course. I mean, if it's tree, there's value in the lumber. If the soil is good, it's valued as as farmland. This was burnt out farmland, basically treeless, and so it was a it was, you know, a choice place for the university to buy. As part of the swap. We did have Donald Ross come out and walk the property and he came back and he said, the rolling hills and the and the Islands Creek that flows through it would be a perfect place for thirty six holes of golf.

00:11:44
Speaker 4: How do you think dn Ross's that design philosophy was embodied by the original Ease Course.

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Speaker 2: I felt from the first time I got on property there that the the topography was really the star of the entire design. There's kind of two high points. There's one in the front nine that kind of then connects into the first part of the back nine kind of three green, twelve green, two green that area, and then there's kind of fourteen fifteen sixteen that ridge there, And so those became these dominant positions to play around or from, and the sequence of golf holes that he utilized that section at the front nine, so two three four T and then twelve green thirteen T just developed some really interesting opportunities for unique golf So I felt like he really utilized that piece of ground well. And then if you think about the dimensions of the parcel, that he really only had space to utilize that section kind of ab out where New five Green is out in that direction. There were only so many different ways he could potentially use that. And then how that interconnected back with the rest of the golf course. I think it is quite interesting and unique and beautiful.

00:13:09
Speaker 7: And then that he.

00:13:09
Speaker 2: Had to create thirty six holes, and of the thirty six holes there, I struggled to think of a shot that's replicated, you know, And so that ground has some flatness to it in places kind of a long Allen's Creek, the ground gets a little flat. But then you have these kind of little dominant features that he played over and around and off of that, I think starts to create the different shots that the player has to play to be successful.

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Speaker 4: How did Robert Fred Jones change.

00:13:41
Speaker 5: The East course?

00:13:42
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's interesting, right.

00:13:44
Speaker 2: Jones was a native of that area, so it had to have been hugely important to him. All the historical evidence shows that the greens were significantly the perimeters of the greens were significantly adjusted, the putting surfaces of them, maybe just minor adjustments, if any. And so the style of bunkering, bunker placement, the width of the golf course all changed pretty dramatically with RTJ. A little more kind of artificial features, a little more earth moving, a lot of back bunkers that were flashed up, you know, maybe a little more definitely more modern, but maybe a little more of kind of this visual inspiration versus kind of the feature being the star itself. And you know, I think the golf course had the routing and the property has always been outstanding, and I think it was just this transition of trying to make it more relevant to the modern game was maybe the directive with RTJ. When you dig through the club documents, there's a lot of interesting kind of discussion of what was happening, why it was happening, and what was done. And I think it comes back to this idea that a lot of golf courses post war were such, you know, they lived such a hard life over a period of time, they had to do something, and the original architects weren't around, Ross wasn't necessarily around in that time period, and so they had to switch directions and so instead of embracing what they had. They kind of went a newer direction, but they knew, thankfully, they knew the routing and the property were great. They didn't need to mess with that. It was more kind of the window dressing.

00:15:35
Speaker 4: Then subsequently how to Topazio change course.

00:15:40
Speaker 2: So I think that discussion again there's a lot of club documentation about what the golf course kind of needed, I guess needed to stay relevant from a modern championship venue, and a lot of discussions about gallery flow and the things that you know today we think about build out, but then it was really about just getting people around. Really there wasn't build out, but there was a need to move people through a space, and then also a need to link in the golf course and provide a modern challenge. So a lot of those adjustments that happened after RTJ and that kind of the Fazio timeline was really to address those needs. So they made significant adjustments to what was the fifth and sixth holes, and then also things like adding the pond on the fifteenth green and doing some things that made for this, you know, great major championship venue, but probably departed a little bit from the original foundation of the of the golf.

00:16:47
Speaker 4: Course when when you won that job, and you know, were what were some of the key issues you thought needed to be addressed with these course.

00:16:57
Speaker 2: Again, I think since it's in the routing and the property were great, so we didn't need to do a whole lot with that. I felt strongly that Number one, the greens needed to be recaptured as much as we could do to get the original shapes back on the ground. These unique corners and edges. There's some pretty wild green shapes that we reconnected to. It allowed the golf course to start to have more variety of setup options. When I arrived, either from years of bunker sand and or all these other things that had happened, a lot of the greens were kind of flipped up on the edge, and so most of the usable space was right down the center of the green. And so when we started to look at the raw shaping and you could get off front, right, back left, you know, in these little edges, now, all of a sudden the golf course could play in vastly different ways.

00:17:51
Speaker 7: So I thought that was huge number one.

00:17:53
Speaker 2: Number Two, I felt like the presentation of the golf course needed to be more authentic and better connect to some of the original imagery that we had from Ross's time, So that really meant bunkers, fairway lines, you simplifying things.

00:18:08
Speaker 4: How would you describe the style.

00:18:10
Speaker 7: Of aggressive Yeah, bold and aggressive.

00:18:18
Speaker 2: So there's an opening day video where there's a few shots being played and the bunkers are very steep and bold and aggressive. And in the combination of this idea of providing a little more with some of the trees that we needed to impact to provide better growing conditions that I think we all felt these course maybe demanded true hazards. So these bunkers are hazards. They're not for the faint of heart that you need to avoid them. I do not see the players bailing out in bunkers.

00:18:56
Speaker 7: I just don't.

00:18:57
Speaker 2: I think they're probably might hopefully they're not many complaints about them, but they're going to be some bunkers that are more maybe in keeping with an open championship where you're going to play sideways potentially out of some positions. They're penalties, but we tried to get them in position where they're thoughtful and that the best players in the world are going to have to negotiate them. Another kind of mindset that's a little different on the East course than other places, is that Oakill's blessed with thirty six amazing golf holes, and the mindset really was on the East course to make it challenging. That was a primary driver. So some of the bunker shaping and bunker positions were really meant to put a premium on hitting golf shots. And so when you get in them, recovery as a chore.

00:19:48
Speaker 1: How many trees were removed work.

00:19:51
Speaker 2: Of hell eas So I get the question about how many trees often, and the reality is it was the right number. We had a long discussion about it, and I would take what's happened at Okill any other course in the country around the world for that matter, and I think there's some lessons to be had.

00:20:15
Speaker 7: The first is that there was.

00:20:16
Speaker 2: A great inclination of the membership and doctor Williams, who planted a lot of the trees originally to go from a fairly stark landscape that not a lot of trees as a farm kind of setting.

00:20:29
Speaker 7: And try to get it to mature fast.

00:20:32
Speaker 2: And what you end up doing is you start to plant trees where they look okay for today or maybe even tomorrow. But over the decades, they start to have issues. And at o'kill there continue to be a mindset of placing trees in gaps and trying to get a very tree lined golf course. And I don't think there's any harm in having a tree lined property. In fact, I think Okill will always have great trees, and we're working to protect the ones that are there and protect it for decades to come. But when you start to have trees that are growing together, that if you lose one in a storm event, or you lose one because of a pest or some sort of damage, and that one is gone and the rest that surround it are not in good shape because they've been overcrowded or they've grown into one another, then all of a sudden, now we don't have anything to work with. And so I remember a specific situation on the right side of number eight where a number of younger trees have been planted, and the anticipation was to plant them for today.

00:21:42
Speaker 7: But the mindset has to be you have to.

00:21:43
Speaker 2: Work through it that as they grow, what we're eight become six, become three, become maybe two, And I think golf courses can really learn that lesson of if you want great majestic trees, you have to give them space to grow, and little trees become big trees. I love saying that it's so obvious, but it's the truth. And so you started to see these majestic oak trees that were once planted with a fifteen or twenty foot canopy, that were perfectly fine where they were planted, but when they get a sixty seventy eighty foot canopy, now they're halfway over the fairway, and that's where you have to make some critical decisions. So there was a lot of that thought and discussion at Oakhill. In reality, we spent I know we had at least one town hall meeting where all we did was talk about trees and a lot of thoughtful discussions and wanting to make sure that we protected the legacy of what they had. But the reality is that you needed to find balance, and I think we did that.

00:23:03
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00:24:00
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00:24:02
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00:24:34
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00:25:28
Speaker 3: All right, Andy, we're back. That was Fred Beltz and Andrew Green and talking to us about you know, their their thoughts about oak Hill, and we're going to give our thoughts about oak Kill. Now this is this is our opinion about the course. So why don't we get into it a little bit. First of all, what do you think are some of the significant strengths of the East course at O'kill Country Club?

00:25:52
Speaker 4: I mean its zero in on two things that really stand out to me. A is the history. This is a course that has hosted pretty much every major men's major championship under the sun. They have three PGAs, three US Opens, they hosted a Ryder Cup, US AM's Senior PGAs. But you know, I think the thing when you go to a course with history, it just lends something to the broadcast. You know, it lends something to the product, Like that's the way millions of people experience it.

00:26:26
Speaker 3: Is gravatas, right, Oak Hill has gravatas exactly.

00:26:30
Speaker 4: They It just it adds when you you know, to that telecast, when you can it adds levity like to the you know, this is what's happening, This has happened here before, you know, while the holes are going to look a lot different than the last time we saw when Duffner won, and and even the Sean mckeel, uh when it's it's the course is going to look different, but the holes are pretty much the same holes. And you get these moments. And I think that's one of the things that bring that makes Augusta so special, for example, is that you're not just trying to win a major. You're you're trying to add your name to history. And when you go to these visit these courses that have a lot of history, it adds, it adds to the championship. It's a big additive. So that's kind of my first thing that I think with Oakill, it's impossible to ignore the history who's won there. I mean, you got Jack and Trevino. I mean, it's a special place in terms of like just major championship golf history. The second thing, which I think is really important for this golf course, it doesn't have, you know, the trees are really the defining features. It doesn't have like it's not going to be lacc with like this like incredible canyon scape in a in a major city. It is a parkland golf course. And one of the things that Parkland golf courses like they don't show quite as well in television. You know, they can just kind of feel monotonous. They can feel a little bit, you know, a little blah sometimes, you know, if you think about the course, like Balta Straw would be a good example where everybody obviously it rained. Everybody was like an upheaval about Baltistral.

00:28:19
Speaker 3: By the end of the week, I mean everybody forgot about it. We've got a two months later, yeah, did it even happened?

00:28:25
Speaker 4: So like this is one of the things that can happen with Parkland golf. The thing that oak Hill has going for it, I think twelve through eighteen are really strong, and I think it's got a phenomenal closing stretch. And why it's great, there's a lot of variety. You've got short par four, you've got a couple mid length part fours, you've got a couple of long part fours.

00:28:49
Speaker 1: And you've got a short part three.

00:28:50
Speaker 4: Yeah, you have a short par three.

00:28:52
Speaker 3: I don't know if it's going to play that short in the championship, but I'm talking about fifteen. Yeah, and it's kind of a postage stamp concept that I think people will enjoy.

00:29:00
Speaker 4: Also, you have a really really hard par five, like you know, one of those par five's, like I think some guys, if the conditions are right, can get home into, but it's going to be like a big task to get home into.

00:29:14
Speaker 1: On thirteen I'm talking about.

00:29:15
Speaker 4: Yeah, So you have like this really nice variety in terms of like just the holes being way different from each other, and they don't come in succession, right, So twelve is kind of like a mid length part four, dramatic, like the key features there, dramatic bunkering, really beautiful bunkering. It goes up, so let you know them build these like big bunkers into it in a cool angle green thirteen. You go into thirteen and it's really cool topography. It's a long par five and it goes down and there's the famous Hill of Fame full of trees. With with you're gonna hear a lot about the trees and.

00:29:53
Speaker 1: The little plaques on the trees.

00:29:57
Speaker 4: So it's that's to their Hill of Fame. It's like their most you know, decorated people from their history or on this hill on the right, and it's kind of like a punch Bowly green. It's a really cool green site, a hollow, great topography. Fifteen or fourteen. Next is the short part four, which is going to be really fun to watch any short driveable. Part four left kind of falls off into no man's land. Short you're in these deep bunkers, and I'll be interested to see if guys lay up. I could see laying up being an option.

00:30:30
Speaker 1: I could too.

00:30:31
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you don't want to be right either, Yeah, and you don't want to be over. I mean it's sort of almost a volcano type green. It's not purely that, but you know, it's a good short Part four in the sense that it makes use of this very severe part of the property. The green is way up in the air and so it's sharply uphill, and the protection is basically the topography, because if you go for the target and you miss it, you're in big trouble around the green, where if you lay up, Whereas if you lay up to the fair way before the green you have a fairly simple wedge in you can be pretty confident that you're going to hit this green with your second shot. And so yeah, I think it's going to be a highlight of the telecast fourteen and fifteen, especially because you have a short risk reward par four followed by a very nerve racking par three where hitting the target is absolutely a must. Yeah know on fifteen, if you miss right or left, you're in big, big trouble. You've got to hit this target. And so there's going to be this great tension I think around that shot, and it's coming at just the right part in the round. You know, the fifteenth hole. You've only got a couple of holes left, So yeah, you have a big opportunity with the fourteenth hole where if you try to seize the opportunity it might go wrong on you. And then you've got the fifteenth hole where you just need to step up and hit that green.

00:31:58
Speaker 4: And I think, like you talk about the diversity of features, right, you have like kind of topography playing in on thirteen, topography on fourteen with some built features. Fifteen is pretty much just a built feature like that is you know you created short par three really you know, the greens super severe. It's got a big ridge that runs right down the middle of it, and it create it makes the target smaller. So it's already a small target, but you need to be on the right side of each ridge to have a really good look at birdie.

00:32:32
Speaker 1: Right.

00:32:32
Speaker 4: It's not it's not one of those things where you can hit it fifteen feet right or left of the flag and be in a good spot. You have to really take on the flag for a good look at birdie. So you kind of have like this, you know, in sixteen. I think sixteen is an interesting hole in the sense like it's gonna never ever be anybody's favorite hole. Nobody's ever gonna play O kill and be like, hey, you know the sixteenth hole just bloom away, right, It's a subtle hole. It kind of like I think. The thing I like about it is it's going to be a hole where you earn you can earn a birdie and that's really going to separate you. Right. It's not like in it's just one of those if you hit two good shots, you can make birdie hole. And what I like about it is it's not like just like Super Hard where everybody's hanging on for four like you have on seventeen and eighteen. But it just gives another variety. It's like that mid length part four. You can kind of score on it. But if you get out of position, it can bite you with a It gives you a nice variety of scoring, especially in the mix because then seventeen and eighteen are brutes, you know, really hard par fours. So you just have this nice mix mid two, mid length par fours, two long part fours, a short part three, a short part four, and a long par five. It just like, I can't think of many horses that have that kind of variety, and the features are different, Like so seventeen is a converted par five and it kind of plays up and over into a green that's well defended. There's a bunker short left on the right side. What I love about the hole the right side. Andrew Green constructed these hummocks, these chocolate drops, right people.

00:34:22
Speaker 3: Which are gonna start to be associated with Andrew Green. He did similar stuff at Inverness and some of his other courses. He executes these features really well.

00:34:30
Speaker 4: So like, I'm gonna be really curious, are players. I kind of think players would prefer the bunker shot to this ground feature.

00:34:39
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree. I mean I think that the lies can be so weird in these little hummocks, right, you can have these really sharply downhill uphill side hill lies and your ball is sitting in this rough that makes the shot really unpredictable. I mean, we all know that pros can hit a shot out of sand, especially the type of sand that we see at professional tournament venues. It's pretty pretty predictable. And the pros know that they can hit a certain shot, they can spin it, they can get the ball up in the air, and they're pretty comfortable with that. What they're uncomfortable with is an unpredictable lie in the rough because they don't know how the ball is going to come out. And then when you enhance that with these weird lies that come about when you have such sharp small features. You know, you've never had a more uphill or downhill lie than you'll have if you're on the side of one of these hummocks, right, That just doesn't normally happen on a golf course. Yeah, it's so they'll they'll be really out of their comfort zone on this.

00:35:43
Speaker 4: It'd be like when your ball doesn't get all the way down into the bunker and it catches on like an entry lip type situation around the greens oarrior on a side hill into a bunker like into a deep bunker. It's a it's not a fun place because, like you can, it's so easy with law long rough on those to have like your club head grab and like literally shank ball like there are. There are such a wide range of things. So I love those hummocks. And again it speaks to the variety. That's not a feature of any hole from twelve through eighteen except for seventeen, and it's it's introduced a few other places on the course, but it's a really defining feature of that hole. And then eighteen is just your quintessential dramatic. I feel like it's just like a dramatic for Northeast Finishing Championship golf par four where you play up to a ridge in the fairway and then there's kind of a low and the green sits on another ridge and you have to hit you know, probably mid iron.

00:36:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know what the pros are gonna hit.

00:36:49
Speaker 3: I mean, I head a three wood yeah into this green when we played.

00:36:53
Speaker 4: Not from the bactis not from the vecties at all.

00:36:56
Speaker 6: No.

00:36:57
Speaker 3: Yeah, again, that's not a very good way to judge what the pro are going to hit. But I think it's going to be a long shot in there. I hope it's a mid iron. I hope that we see some long irons and hybrids as well, because that shot is a burly shot and it's sort of like, you know, it's a different type of hole, but it reminds me a bit of Southern Hills finisher, which was such a highlight of that PGA Championship. And you know, it's it's just one of those holes that looks like a finishing hole. If you were to show me a bunch of random pictures out of order of Oak Hills holes and ask me which one would you want to be the championship finisher, I would point at this eighteenth hole. It just feels like that it has that drama, that grandeur, that size, and so I think it's going to be really satisfying. And also there's the natural amphitheater around it, yeah, which I think will be cool to look at as well.

00:37:52
Speaker 4: It's just like a quintessential closing hole.

00:37:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's it's a classic, right. Yeah, there's clearly Ross knew what he was doing when he put that hole there, knew that it would serve its purpose really well in big time championships.

00:38:08
Speaker 4: So so that I think just that closing stretch is going to really stand out, and I think it it really carries the load for you know, a the rest of the course. Like, you know, I think the beginning eight holes are pretty sleepy. I mean, there's gonna be some like high scores on they're hard, but that I don't think they're necessarily like extraordinarily compelling golf holes. But where it needs to be compelling, it is, you know, and that and I think there's some like there's some train train wrecks waiting for you in the first first you know eight holes.

00:38:46
Speaker 3: And I guess this is part of the reason that I'd say that I like oak Hill as a championship venue, even if I don't really like it that much as a golf course. Yeah, you know, for for amateur player especially, but just for kind of playing a full round of eighteen holes on a regular basis. Okill would not be one of my first choices in the area of Rochester, right, But for a championship golf course, twelve through eighteen is so strong that you can just kind of focus on those holes in the telecast, even if you're watching on site. You can stay on those holes and just see what's happening there. You don't really even have to pay attention to the beginning of the golf course, now do I wish that the beginning of the golf course was really strong, you know, like Augusta National, having those great, if less famous holes on the front nine and being able to kind of dig into some of those details if you're a nut about it. Yeah, I mean that's great to have. Okill really doesn't deliver that, but it's okay, right because the finishing stretch is really great and you can kind of focus your attention there for the four days that the championship plays out, so at least there's that. Our next partner is Athletic Greens. I take ag one by Athletic Greens literally every day. I gave ag one a shot because I was just looking for a healthy way to start my day and get off on the right track. I take AG one first thing in the morning, right before I take the kids to the bus stop, and it just gives me an immediate boost. I feel energetic, I feel healthy, and I know that I've gotten my nutrients for the day. So Andy, how is your experience with AG one going? As we're traveling right now.

00:40:42
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00:41:54
Speaker 1: Yes.

00:41:55
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00:42:16
Speaker 1: Check it out.

00:42:22
Speaker 4: Let's talk a little bit about you know, I think, like you said, I'm excited for this championship. You know, Okhill is a golf course. Doesn't necessarily excite me as in terms of a golf course to go play, where are your chief? You know, the things that kind of hold you back from loving Oak.

00:42:43
Speaker 3: Hill, Well, I think that a lot of it is just what Oak Hill is or was originally. I don't think it was one of Donald Ross's greatest courses, or at least I don't think it was one of Donald Ross's courses that I like the most. Right Essex County Club and Donald Ross Course in the Northeast that is a delightful wonderful, beautiful golf course and it's so much more appealing to me.

00:43:08
Speaker 4: Way different style, way different style. Well, I think a lot of that's presentation too.

00:43:13
Speaker 3: A lot of its presentation, but also the golf holes. That golf holes are just a little bit quirkier, a little bit more fun more playful, And maybe that has to do with the time in Donald Ross's career. Essex County Club came about earlier, but I don't know, just comparing it to other Ross courses I've played, there's just a little bit less of a sense of play in the design at oak Hill. It's a serious golf course. It's a grave golf course, right. You're there to do a job when you're playing that golf course, and your job is to show that you can hit big time golf shots. And that's fine for a championship, but for me as a player, you know, looking for fun in golf, I don't necessarily get it from Oak Hill, And I don't think that that's necessarily something that we can attribute to Andrew Green, or even to Robert tran Jones, who renovated the course in the fifties, or to the Fasios, specifically Tom Fazio, who worked on the course in more recent decades before Green came in.

00:44:13
Speaker 1: I don't think.

00:44:13
Speaker 3: It's necessarily any of them who turned Okill into this course that I don't really love that much. I think it was honestly that way from the beginning, and so I just want to say that I think that Andrew Green really improved this golf course and he did some great work there. I think that his bunker styling, the way he constructs those mounds, the way that those two things tie into each other. The green expansions are awesome, you know, the little corners that he found where you can put pins. Now, some of the contours in the greens are really interesting too. I would say that I see some more fun and quirky greens at other ross courses, but there are some really good, interesting greens at Okhill that Andrew Green was able to bring out because he expanded the green to the edges of the green pad in a really wonderful way and found some interesting shapes and stuff like that. So I think that a lot of the work that Green did at Okill was really successful. He removed a lot of trees. I can't believe that he did that I can't believe that he persuaded this membership to remove this many trees, because this membership is very devoted to that part of their history where one of the original founding members, as we heard from Fred Beltz, planted like seventy thousand trees and that's like a great story that they love to tell within the membership of this club. They have an acorn as their logo. You know, it's really deeply rooted in the history of this club that they love their trees. And Andrew Green was able to remove a lot of them to enhance views across the property, to enhance airflow, improve agronomy, and also some playing characteristics on some holes. Now, there were some holes where he wasn't able to remove I don't think enough trees, especially number seven and number eight. I think trees get in the way of the strategy of those holes. But I'm impressed that the Green was able to do what he did. So with that said, you know, I think that Green is a talented restoration architect. With that said, this is this is not my favorite course, you know. I just think that the first eleven holes, especially, there are some real clunkers in there.

00:46:29
Speaker 1: There are some real boring holes.

00:46:31
Speaker 4: I mean one one's like the perfect example.

00:46:33
Speaker 1: It's nothing. I think I describe that hole.

00:46:36
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think like this is the thing. And I'm not saying that every course needs to be eighteen great holes like there are. There are lots of courses with holes, but there are there are far too many kind of snoozers at Oak Hill for it, in my opinion, to be thought of as like one of America's great great golf courses. You know, the first hole is a perfect example of that. It's really just like a nothing. It's to get you out to the second te you tee off. You know, there's a creek that runs in front of the front of the green. Tee off intod just a dead flat floodplain and there's nothing that's super interesting. The green's okay, it's a it's a fine green, but there's no real interest in the golf hole. You know, you just hit it into the fairway and hit it onto the green. That's right and that and that right there is really kind of like I think, like my big you know, if I was going to say my big critique on OKILL is so much of OKILL is your traditional execution test and I think some people like the execution golf test. It's a major championship venue. If that's your taste, that's fine for me. You know. I think where I was probably the most disappointed with where it went is and I don't think this was really I think this was more of like, hey, you know, hosting major championships is super important to oak Kill. It is like, you know, it's a Rochester club, It's Rochester, New York. And what it's known for, what is famous for its hosting major championships. And this restoration renovation was done with how do we get more major championships here? And you know, oddly with what happened with the PGA, I think it really kind of you know, it moving to may hurt its chances of long term major championships, Like I don't know what majors are really options for them after this year. Right, it doesn't appear that the USGA is going there anytime soon. But one of the things that I just don't like is that Donald Ross built this golf course with like significantly wider fairways.

00:48:42
Speaker 3: I would say fifty to seventy yards wide. Yes, big fairways.

00:48:47
Speaker 4: Big fairways which accentuate this this isn't a mind blowingly awesome topographical site. Land. The land is not awesome, but it's good good, it's good land.

00:49:02
Speaker 3: There are big broad slopes that you could put big broad fairways on.

00:49:06
Speaker 4: And when you put those fairways, when they're you put match the topography with the fairway scale, like Southern Hills last year. Yes, it presents this grand golf course and it presents this just like it's a brawny place and the fairways just don't match it.

00:49:27
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:49:27
Speaker 4: It'd be like having like this massive living room and putting like a single love seed in it. You know, it looks stupid.

00:49:35
Speaker 1: It would look dinky.

00:49:36
Speaker 4: Yeah, So at this golf course it becomes such an execution test. And there's you have these really cool nooks that were recaptured in the greens, like back right wings, but you have no way to get to a different place to play into them. It's just you. You have a singular focus off the tee is hit the fairway because they are very narrow fairways and they narrow is the thing that really gets me about the place is that you have a mismatch. It just it looks a little silly. It diminishes the dynamic nature that could exist at the golf course with the greens, and you know, it's really what I think is quite interesting about the majors. This major to la is you are going to get to see really the the current trend of championship golf, which I would put in the vein of last year's Southern Hills, this year's LACC, the presentation, wider fairways, more options to play into greens, allowing the land because the land can be a hazard when it's short grass. It can't be a hazard when it's thick rough because the ball just stops, you know, it doesn't roll into bad places. So anyways, you get the trend of new age championship set up with la versus your your father, you you know, championship set up with Oak Hill.

00:51:04
Speaker 3: It's a very it's a very Robert Trent Jones setup. I don't think this is Robert Trent Jones shaping or green styling or anything like that. And I think that there's a respect for history that's different from what Jones did in the fifties. But in terms of the rough, the type of rough, and the width of the of the fairways, it is I think pretty jonesy in its philosophy, and that's a little bit disappointing to see at a ross course. And I think what you're getting at is that the missing part at Oak Hill right now is the possibility of angles and angles making a difference or position in the fairway making a difference. I think that there is some possibility, with the greens restored as they are, that there could be angles at Oak Hill.

00:51:54
Speaker 6: Now.

00:51:54
Speaker 3: I think that these angles are pretty muted and maybe not that interesting because in in the original design, what you can see if you just look at an aerial of this course is that a lot of the greens are oriented square to the line of play. You don't have many greens that are angled to one direction or another, so that there's kind of a preferred angle for playing into the green, or an advantage to be gained for hunting one side of the fairway over another. Now, one hole that's an exception to that is twelve, and that's why that hole sticks out so much. That's why that hole really feels fun and a little bit eccentric, because the green actually is kind of narrow and angled in one direction. So you start to think, oh, how can I position myself to play into this green effectively. But the rest of the greens at oak Hill, pretty much all of them are kind of these more square constructions where you know, if you're in the middle of the fairway, that gives you the most options for attacking the totality of the green. But yes, these little corners were recaptured, and so you can see a possibility of maybe there being a semblance of lateral strategy at Oakhill. But what they didn't do in the restoration, and I think that the key thing that makes this not a restoration is that they did not recapture the original width of the fairways.

00:53:23
Speaker 4: They try and get close.

00:53:24
Speaker 3: Or get even close. I think the fairways are just as narrow as they were in the last PGA Championship. They are really no wider. I see some places on some holes. You can see this in the.

00:53:37
Speaker 1: Book that Oakhill actually published.

00:53:39
Speaker 3: We picked up a copy of that when we were there, and you can compare the ross fairways to the current fairways to the fairways as they existed in twenty thirteen after Jones and Fasio had come to the course, and they really didn't find any extra width from what the fairways were when Fasio worked there. I do think that they found some expanded approaches to the greens. You know, there used to be sort of that bottleneck or that hourglass feel into a lot of the greens, which is unappealing, and so it's good that they widened that out and provided more places for people to run the ball onto the green. So I think there is some more width there, but in terms of the landing zones for t shots, they're really not any wider. They're just as narrow as they were, and I think it dulls the course. It makes the course feel one dimensional, and that's why you might, especially in those first eleven holes, start to get a little bit bored with this golf course.

00:54:40
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think like it's interesting, like where I would say an underrated aspect of having that space. The fairways being a little wider is when people get in trouble, when people miss the fairway, when they find themselves in these these massive, magnificent and groves of oak trees that are at the course. Is like the idea if the pins back right of me punching out to the front left and then getting a really nice spot to chip in from versus a player that might not be thinking like that, or might not control their their punch out well and they end up over like short right, and they just have a way different tough shot. Like angles play out in so many different avenues of golf. It is not strictly about the simply the approach angles like it is is a lot like with really makes recovery way more interesting also, And I think that's like the thing we were playing. We had our event at Seul Park and I typically there's a boomerangreen out there. It's the fifth, it's if you're on, if you're it's this. It's got this great fourth, the fourth hole. It's got this great central slope and effectively a right green and a left green divided by this massive slope. And I usually hit a good T shot, like I think, in like the ten times I've played it, I always hit a good tea shot. Yesterday I hit a bad te shot and I was like, legitimately the pins on the left and I'm hitting a layup like I'm trying to hit a three wood into a like into the area I want it to and I'm thinking to myself, you have to get this left, you have to get this left. Like it was like honestly, like, one of the most like pressure rise shots was the recovery, and it only works because there's enough space for me to get left. If it was a twenty yard wide fairway, I would just be saying, just hit the fairway, or maybe I'm trying to hit it into the left rough, which is not nearly as fun because then I got it over left and I hit a wedge to a couple feet and you know, so, I think recovery is always the underrated aspect of width is the eye idea of like, and especially with par five's like the thirteenth, more width allows for more interesting layup shots, and a lot of guys are going to hit layup shots there.

00:57:10
Speaker 3: Yeah, Now I love that point, and it reminds me of something that I always notice when my dad and I play golf, because my dad, you know, hits it really straight, but doesn't hit a te shot much more than I would, say, one hundred and eighty yards. Sorry, sorry Dad for airing you out like this, That's just the fact of the matter. And then he hits these kind of like chippy five irons to get into position. He plays par fours as three shot holes, and what I've noticed is that angles are so relevant to him. Basically, he hits his te shot and then with his next shot he's looking to find a side of the fair way to play into the green effectively. And that's sort of like a recovery shot that a professional player would play. If you're off the corridor, you're suddenly playing a par four as a three shot hole, and in that instance, these kinds of angles really matter. And it also matters that those spots, those ideal spots, have some short grass that you can play to give you the option to actually pursue a strategy on the whole.

00:58:14
Speaker 7: It.

00:58:15
Speaker 4: Yeah, so, I mean, if we wanted to synthesize really what Oakhill, I think that one of the things that it does is it really removes the idea of ever like having thought outside of please hit the fair away. And I think that, you know, that's the real missing ingredient of the golf course as a whole. I would love to talk a little bit. I think like where you can find interest in the first twelve eleven holes, Like you know, we've talked a lot about this, but where I think there will be significant interest is on the hole six and seven two back to back brutish par fours where long. Yeah, yeah, I mean super long. I think six is gonna six. There's gonna be some carnage on six.

00:59:02
Speaker 3: I think there's gonna be some carnage on seven too. I mean that approach shot is so hard and you've got trees kind of in places that are forcing you to I don't know, like I think that it's gonna be really hard to hit the green on seven. I think that the green and regulation percentage on seven is going to be super low. But yeah, you're right on six. Six is a as a new hole basically, right. It was they got rid of a par three that was in the middle of the property and that allowed them to extend the sixth hole down Allen's Creek a little bit and reposition the green. So now it's a much longer part four with a hazard very much in play.

00:59:44
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:59:44
Speaker 4: So both these holes play along Allen's Creeks, especially off the tee. Those are where you're gonna have to contend with this. It runs down the right side of both of them, you know. The I think the sixth green is probably maybe the most interesting green on the golf course. It's kind of got some raised plateaus. You have to hit it really in the right section, and there's a giant central nose to the green that really like messes with everything. There's gonna be really tough back right flag front left. Then you have the creek that you have to contend with, and it should be a pretty interesting hole to watch professional golfers contend with. Obviously, if you play out left off the tee, you're leaving yourself with a much much longer approach shot, but it could be an advantageous shot to play into the back right where you get a much better angle in there and ability to kind of run it in. Because it is a long hole like you're gonna have, you're gonna see these guys, especially depending on the weather if it's cold, like you could see some long irons from guys on these on this hole in particular. And then seven, as you alluded to, I think you got some trees. It is so narrow. The effective driving area of seven off the tee is about ten yards to where you can approach any pin without having to contend with trees. There's a tree that overhangs the left side of the fairway and a tree that overhangs the right side of the fairway, and it's a pretty neat, kind of shallower green that's wide. So you know, this is an example of where like with a little bit more space, all of a sudden, it could be Hey, if I get over here, I got a much better shot with this long approach to get it over to the left side of the green or to the right side of the green. But you have these trees that kind of prohibit you from playing anywhere but down directly down the middle of the fairway, and there's a creek on the right side, you should incentivize people to want to get over there.

01:01:41
Speaker 3: Yes, well, that's the thing about the strategy of the hole right now, because of the trees. I think that the original concept of that hole is that the more that you play toward the creek, whether it's on the right or the creek actually crosses the fairway kind of on a diagonal from short right to long left. If you get up toward the creek on the left, then you shorten your approach. If you play out to the creek on the right, then you give yourself a decent chance at a nice long approach into the green. But right now, what you have is if you play out to the creek on the right kind of short right, then you're blocked out by a tree that's kind of short right of the green. You have to have hit a big slice basically around that tree to get to the green. And then if you want to be more aggressive off the tee and play kind of long left toward the creek, you have to have hit a big hook around the trees that are on the left. And so I'll be curious to see what players do on that hole, because if you play right, you're really blocked out.

01:02:47
Speaker 4: I wonder if they're going to be able to just hit it over the tree.

01:02:50
Speaker 3: I wonder if they'll just go straight over the trees on the left and they'll find that little sliver of fairway. And I wonder who's going to be able to do that? Yeah, because I think basically what the hole is now is that the the really long players are going to be able to attack that hole and the shorter players are.

01:03:05
Speaker 1: Going to have no avenue to attacking that hole. Yeah.

01:03:08
Speaker 4: Nine is another hole that is, you know, just would be such a dramatic hole with a wider fair away.

01:03:16
Speaker 1: Probably the best topography on the course is on nine.

01:03:19
Speaker 4: And it's a cool hole, as is big false front, big dramatic false front.

01:03:24
Speaker 2: It is.

01:03:24
Speaker 4: It is a really really neat hole. One question I have for you is do you think this is going to lend itself to a bomber's golf course.

01:03:38
Speaker 1: I think it is.

01:03:39
Speaker 3: And I think that one thing that our friend Joseph Lamannia might say about this course, and I don't know if he's going to say this, but just looking at it, I think it might be the case. I think it's going to be one of those courses where a really wide miss is almost better than just a slightly wide miss off the tee, because you know you're gonna be in rough in either case. But if you miss really wide, you're gonna sometimes be wide of kind of the tree line that goes down the size of these fairways, and you might find some open spots out there, like way off the corridor of the hole. You might find some places where really there aren't many trees and you can get back in the hole pretty effectively.

01:04:23
Speaker 1: So I think the.

01:04:24
Speaker 3: Guys who are very long and not necessarily super super accurate are going to eat up this course, especially if it's wet. I think it could end up being the type of championship that we had at Bethpage where it really seemed like in that tournament Brooks, Koepka and Dustin Johnson.

01:04:44
Speaker 4: Were Rory had that horrible start and then back door his way into like.

01:04:49
Speaker 3: Of course, yeah, but he had a chance to He was one of the players who had a chance. John Rohm probably did too.

01:04:56
Speaker 4: Gary Woodland played well. Another long power player, Speith had like a you know everybody, Oh, George Speed finished third, way back third, with like a historic putting week like he made I think he gained like ten plus shots.

01:05:11
Speaker 3: He was making putts from yeah, you know, fifty feet, sixty feet, just all over the place.

01:05:15
Speaker 1: That's crazy.

01:05:16
Speaker 4: I don't have it in front of you, but I think you finished like eight shots back.

01:05:20
Speaker 1: And he wasn't in it.

01:05:21
Speaker 4: Yeah, and gained ten plus shots on the greens. So like if you take that down to five, he finished thirteen shots back.

01:05:28
Speaker 3: Like, you know, I think the two guys who were in that tournament were Brooks and DJ That's what it came down to and what we might see at this championship. You now, if it's firm, then okay, different set of circumstances. If it's a little bit soggy. Then I think we could see something pretty similar where two or three of the longer, more powerful players just kind of dominate and separate themselves.

01:05:54
Speaker 4: Is that Cameron Music.

01:05:56
Speaker 1: Cameron, Yeah, Cameron Young could might really really like this.

01:06:00
Speaker 4: Of course, a kid from the Bronx and goes to western New York.

01:06:05
Speaker 1: That's true. This is his home state.

01:06:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, this is uh, you know, going back to the streets of New York.

01:06:11
Speaker 4: Yeah. The I think like a lot of people are gonna be asking about the fluky winners, and I don't want I feel like this is gonna this is getting casted on like Jason Duffner as a fluky winner. At that time, Jason Duffner was not what Jason Duffner is like the last five years.

01:06:30
Speaker 3: He's one of the best ball strikers in recent history. I mean, this guy's a golfer. He's not a very good putter, but he was fine enough in that area for a while.

01:06:39
Speaker 4: And he was in the mix at like the PGA that Keegan Bradley wants, you know, like this is.

01:06:44
Speaker 3: Not kind of a brutal era for golf, to be honest, but yet, but Jason Duffner is not a shmoke.

01:06:48
Speaker 4: He had He had a good like five years where he was a top twenty player in the world. And and I think, so is he a is he like an all timer like Jack or Trevi? Know, no, Sean mckeel. Now, like my thing is by like people are going to ask like, why did this produce Sean mccheel. Why you know, has like this golf course has the opportunity to present some weird names on the leaderboard, I think, and that is because it is going to be so hard to hit a lot of fairways that o kill. You could drive it great and hit like fifty five percent of the fairways, yeah, because they're narrow. They're just twenty yards wide, and a tour player's average dispersion is like forty five yards wide. So that means like you're just not going to hit a lot of fairaways. So what happens when you don't hit a lot of fairways like it? You know, like one guy might get just like red hot, and if a shorter hitter gets red hot, he might hit a lot of fairways for a couple rounds, right, And that's how the only way that this could happen, Like or a long hitter. Might you know, like we might see one of the long hitters get just like flukely statistical aberration, you know, hot and hit a lot of fairways, right, and if something happens like that, that's how you can get a fluky winner when you have narrow fairways. I think it just gives you. It opens you up to best player not winning.

01:08:22
Speaker 3: Is there a similarity here with Wingfoot? Now, in that case, Bryceon won and I think everybody recognized that he was one of the best players in the world that at the time and did not feel like a flukey winner. But does this course feel pretty similar to that or does the topography bit more.

01:08:36
Speaker 4: It's a kind of in between Wingfoot and Page and Beth Page.

01:08:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree.

01:08:41
Speaker 4: I agree, It's like it doesn't have quite as much up and down is Beth Page. The thing with Beth Page it is so long, it's narrow, and it's you know the thick rough to the elevated to.

01:08:55
Speaker 3: The elevated greens. Yeah, and Okhill has a number of elevated greens, but like it's not there also some grains there.

01:09:01
Speaker 4: One sits down, two sits up. Three is just a long part.

01:09:05
Speaker 3: Three you just have to hit a long shot. And then four has a grain that's at at the level of the green.

01:09:10
Speaker 4: Par five five, par three six, it's you have to carry it over water, but it's low. Sevens up high eight flat, nine's up high.

01:09:20
Speaker 1: It's not all that flat.

01:09:22
Speaker 3: It's a little bit elevated, as I recall, but not not like hugely elevated, like nine.

01:09:27
Speaker 4: Tens down yep eleven, par three, twelve up, thirteen's up, fourteen's up, fifteen's kind of at grade or sixteen's act grade, seventeen is at grade eighteen. So it's kind of like a mix, whereas like if you went ran through Beth page, a lot of them are up. So I think it's kind of in between. I feel like we had like a major course maybe in between in between the two recently that would fit the bill. But I'm drawing a blank. But but yeah, I think it's uh. I think it'll definitely skew Bomber. But I think like somebody that gets hot and just hits a lot of fairways, listen, Like, I think it's when the fairways get this narrow, it's kind of fluky.

01:10:12
Speaker 3: Maybe we're due for a fluky winner too. Because we've had a run of Majors recently where we've had a lot of satisfying winners, a lot of winners where we say, either, yes, this is the hottest player in the world right now, it makes sense that he won, like Francesco Mullinari or a player who is one of.

01:10:30
Speaker 1: The potential all time greats. Right.

01:10:32
Speaker 3: So you know, John rom winning a Major is not surprising or dissatisfying anyone. And so yeah, I think that there's a possibility that we could see somebody just sort of pop up. The other scenario, as you mentioned, is is bomber domination, with which I feel like is is something we could see as well.

01:10:50
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm interested. I you know, I'm thinking through courses like it's got a little bit of Tory pines to it, yeah, yeah, and it's got the trees, which you know where Tory like you can miss a mile right, mile left and be fine.

01:11:04
Speaker 3: Well, what I'm talking about is, I mean Tory has a few trees. Yeah, but if you miss way wide at Tory and then you're kind of an open area and Oak Hill has some of that going on, less of it than Tory, but I think that wide miss super wide misses at Oak Hill could be could be kind of okay, so uh we'll see. I mean it's a.

01:11:25
Speaker 4: You know, the course that it could play a lot like if it had a little bit more space. Is the country Club?

01:11:32
Speaker 1: Uh huh yeah, yeah, I can see that.

01:11:35
Speaker 4: If it just doesn't have enough width though, Like at at the country Club, like good driving was was very rewarded, right yeah, Like that's the thing that gets me is you could have a great driving week. Karen hit fifty percent in your fairway.

01:11:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is.

01:11:50
Speaker 3: It's really narrow, and it's it's funny because the country Club wasn't that wide.

01:11:54
Speaker 4: It wasn't that wide, but it's just.

01:11:55
Speaker 1: Definitely wider than like eight.

01:11:58
Speaker 4: Yards makes a huge friends, when you're just asked to hit into these thin ribbons all every hole, it's just you're just there's no way for you to like sustain a great driving day.

01:12:08
Speaker 3: Yeah all right, Well, I hope that we have given you all listeners some gambling advice. Now maybe the Fried Egg podcast is the real gambling podcast at this point.

01:12:18
Speaker 4: Trying to step on the shotgun starts.

01:12:19
Speaker 3: So yeah, exactly, we're getting we're starting to edge into the shotgun starts. Territory with this with this great uh you know, advice for course fit and stuff like that. But I hope that gives people an idea of what to expect with Oak Hill. Anything else we want to touch on, Andy or do you want to wrap up here?

01:12:36
Speaker 4: I think this is ah, this is good. We'll have more content coming and look forward and really looking forward to the weekend at the PGA. Like I said that closing stretch is gonna be really fun to watch.

01:12:46
Speaker 1: I agree. All right, Thanks Dy.

01:12:58
Speaker 3: This episode of the Frida Egg podcast was produced and edited by Matt Ruschius.

01:13:03
Speaker 1: Thank you, Matt.

01:13:04
Speaker 3: If you'd like to support the Frida Egg, the single best thing that you can do is join CLUBTFE. That's our membership offering. Go to the Frida egg dot com slash membership to see what CLUBTFE is all about. It's a lot of content that we're producing for CLUBTFE, including a weekly course profile. A few weeks ago, maybe a couple of months ago, I published a thorough profile of Oak Hill where I just gave an in depth analysis of the golf course and talked about a favorite hole or two, talked about at least favorite holler two and gave the course a rating, so if you'd like to see that along with some amazing visuals from Andy and Cameron, then that's in our CLUBTFE membership. So that's just one of the many things that we offer through CLUBTFE. Again, it's the Frida egg dot com slash membership. Thank you for listening and we'll be back again soon