Yolk with Doak 14: The Confidential Guide to Golf Courses

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Welcome back to another edition of The Yoke with Doak. In today's episode, Tom Doak and I discussed his latest edition of The Confidential Guide to Golf Courses. Volume five, which covers Asia, Australia and New Zealand, was released in November of twenty eighteen and is available on Renaissancegolf dot com. We talk about how he builds trips for the Confidential Guide, his excursion through India, and the joy of finding hidden gems. Tom Dolk is back and as usual he's not holding back.

00:00:40
Speaker 2: But don't toss the Yolk and.

00:00:43
Speaker 1: The famously candid Doak doesn't pull any punches.

00:00:47
Speaker 2: How do I make natural looking contour hire the biggest pool in the village and told them to get flat first?

00:00:54
Speaker 1: Overrated, underrated, rough, terribly overrated.

00:00:58
Speaker 3: Over the years, you got volume four of the Confidential Guide.

00:01:10
Speaker 2: Yes, it's actually volume five. It's the fourth. It's the fourth book. But when I when I started, I put on the back cover what volume one too? You know which areas were covered by volume one, two, three, four, five? And as it turned out, the last couple of years, I've had business in New Zealand and Australia, and and I was pretty busy in the summers at home, and I had more time to travel and see things in the winters, and it was easier to go see things in the winter in Australia or places in Asia than it was to try to go do it in northern Europe. You know, if you got free time in February, you're not going to go see the courses in Scandinavia that you want to see. So so I just it was, you know, it was easier to cover the courses in volume five before doing the book for Europe and Africa. So that's that's what I've done.

00:02:13
Speaker 1: Sometimes the Fifth Hole guests built before the Fourth Hall. Exactly exactly What were some of your favorite experiences from Volume five's travels.

00:02:23
Speaker 2: Oh, you know, it's always going to the they're really off the radar places that you know, I mean, there's not there's aside from you know, I traveled a lot in Australia and New Zealand, so I didn't travel too much more there specifically for the book. I went in and saw a couple of courses that I hadn't seen, but but you know, i'd seen most of the really cool things, I thought, and then on top of that, Darius lives there and has seen nearly everything, so it wasn't like I had to go see something so it would be in the book. You know. The only ones I kind of went out of my way to see were a handful of little courses in New Zealand that my crew from Terry Ed went and played and said, you know, they they sort of picked out ones for me to go look at that were you know, little country courses that were way off the radar, and I saw there's a couple of really cool ones. But in Asia, you know, there's very little to go by. I mean there's you know, the rankings of what are the best courses in Asia are a corrupted by money and influenced, you know, with with both the local golf magazines and the big worldwide rankings, so you can't really go from that. You know, if you don't know somebody local who will recommend things, you're kind of you have no idea, and they'd spend you know, compared to the rest of the world, they spend next to nothing on marketing golf courses over there. You know, it's all most of there's not a lot of golf tourism in Asia other than Thailand and Vietnam and then the rest of the countries. It's all like business related, so they don't have to publicize, you know, they just have to get the corporate guys to know, but they don't they don't put it in the golf magazines. So, you know, mass It obviously has had Japan covered, and so I didn't travel a lot more there. I've seen some of the best courses in Japan. There's there's some other ones that now that i've now that I've seen his reviews, I want to go see, but I didn't try to go see them all. I saw a little bit in Vietnam. Brian Curley took me around a couple of projects that he's working on. You know, there's a couple of courses in the book that aren't open yet, they're about to open, but really cool and different. But then I went, you know, I went places like I spent ten days in South Korea. I spent two weeks in India and Sri Lanka. That Himalayan golf course in Nepal, I think we've talked about before. That was one of the coolest experiences I've ever had, going to see a golf course, you know, but we went. I went some really remote places on some pretty thin evidence that I was going to see something good, and there was some hit or miss in there. Some of them were like, this was a long way to come for this, but there was at least some of them that were like, boy, this is really cool and it is way different than what I would see in America or in Scotland. It's just they're dealing with entirely different things here, so the golf course is going to be different.

00:05:57
Speaker 1: I imagine it's in a sense. You probably found some places that are almost more pure architecture, yep, like where the person that laid it out never has seen anything really else.

00:06:14
Speaker 2: Or nobody you know, or or the architecture has kind of evolved and you can't really put a name on it at all because you know, it started, you know, whoever built, whoever did it originally was was a major in the British Army in eighteen ninety and you know, the golf courses kind of evolved and expanded from that. But it's not really an architect that gets credit for and it has to be. It has to be a much more practical thing. They don't have any money to do stuff, and they don't have much money to maintain them, so they have to make it work, and so it has to be much more practical instead of pie and the sky ideas of things to do. You know, the first example I'm thinking of from this conversation and this place up in the mountains in India that we went. One of the one of the coolest parts of this experience is a lot of these places that I'm talking about. You know, I never would have been able to get around him and see anything at all, except that there's some young architect there who wanted to do nothing more than show me around a little bit and pick my brain for a few days while I went and saw some of the cool things in there in his country. So I got to do that in a lot of Asian countries with with Korean and Chinese and Indian golf course, architects who you've never heard of because their work doesn't get any publicity outside of their own country, and you know, they're they're kind of like they're overlooked because they're familiar. Yeah, you know that. I mean, you know, it's weird.

00:07:54
Speaker 1: I mean, I you know, but it had to be so valuable for them too.

00:07:57
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it was. It's the perfect trade. You know, they get a little They get to ask me questions about how we do what we do, and they ask me for feedback on this course that they're consulting on, and I get to see some things that I never could ever find or get myself to otherwise.

00:08:18
Speaker 1: Did Did any of them really like impress you where you like?

00:08:23
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yes they did so. The one in India is a guy named Fidget nandra Jock. He's about late thirties. I think he's a really good player. You know, typically they are, you know, most golf course architects are good players, but especially in a country that doesn't really have any golf course architects, who are they going to look to first a good player?

00:08:52
Speaker 1: It's like the start of the American golf course architect with.

00:08:57
Speaker 2: Old Tom Morris. Yes, yes, generally that's true, but especially in a small country, that's the natural thing is. But you know, Vigi's he's a very good player, but he's he's not you know, he has his own little construction outfit too, and he's really involved with building the golf courses and trying to help them figure out how to maintain the golf courses, because it's not just like a wee can hire a good superintendent from another course here. You know, they're really starved for that kind of information. But you know, so I sent Keith Baxter, who runs that Top one hundred Golf Courses website. You know, I put out on the internet that I was I wanted to go to India and that I didn't really know too many people there, and Keith Baxter sent me an email and said, you know, if you need help, We've got this guy who helps us try to sort out what are the best courses in India, Vidget, And you know, he said, I've never met him, but he seems like a nice guy. And he gets right back to us and answers questions for us and stuff, and I'm sure he'd love to meet you. So so I wrote Fidget and he was like, whatever help you need, I'd be glad to help. And you know, down to like arranging flights for us and arranging cars and drivers because getting around India, it's a huge country. There's not a lot of infrastructure, there's twenty two official languages. It's very complicated place. And if you don't have some help. You'd never see some of it. You never get to ooda command in the mountains, you just know way, so that's why you haven't seen it written up. It's a really cool hilly golf course. In the mountains. There is no irrigation except hose bibs for the greens, and the climate up there is hit or miss, a lot of droughty periods, so there wasn't a whole lot of grass in the fairways. And you know, fairies are grazed. They only they only, they only mow the greens and the approaches fairways were grazed by cows and sheep. There was coarse they're pine trees. It's very hilly, you know. I guess you could compare it to the Highlands of Scotland, but it's not that open, you know. It's you don't see forever. You're at like six thousand feet or seven thousand feet elevation. So the ball goes pretty far, and then it goes farther because when it lands, it's on a bear fairway with hardly any grass on it. But then a lot of them are also tilted, so it's hard to keep it in the fairway if you if you can't shape a shot. You know, if you could only eat a hook, there's three or four holes, you'd have a hard time finishing, or you'd be relying on your caddy to find the ball at the bottom edge where it rolls out. They actually they actually mark the fairways with like stones every once in a while because if you're in the fairway, you can place you could clean it, place the ball. If you're not in the fairway, if you're not, if you're outside the stones, no, you have to play it the way it lies. So you know a purist would say, oh, lift clean place in the fairways. That's bullshit. Yeah, it's the only practical thing to do there.

00:12:27
Speaker 1: And they don't play under USGA rules.

00:12:31
Speaker 2: Close. I mean, their general attitude is, you know, it's not easy to hit the ball in the fairways, and then if you don't, you have to play a play it where it lies. And trust me, there's a lot of places you have to play it from. There are a lot more severe than things that most Americans deal with. But you know, I was just charmed by the golf course. It helped. You know, my friend David Lee from China, who's he traveled with me in South America years ago. He's peaks about six languages and he can he's passable and a few more so. So he's a really handy person to have with you in a place where you just have no idea what you're going to run into. And he was curious to see. He's kind of semi retired and you know, he's he's got time and he's curious to see different parts of the world. So he went with me and Fidget played with us part of the time. But when we went to Uda command Is they have like the Army Officers Training Center up in the mountains and to comment and so, like half the golf courses in India are army golf courses. There are some of the few people that can afford to play and have some free time where they can play. You know, they're they're mostly single, so they got to, you know, they got to find something else to keep them busy when they're not soldiering. And they have golf courses all over India. Most of I didn't. I only saw one of the military golf courses. But Uta common even though it's a you know, it's an old club, it's it's it's kind of a national club that's costs nothing to belong to. But what keeps it alive is that all these military guys that spend a summer up there at one time in their training, you know, pay their few bucks to keep it alive because there's a special place to them. And Vidget invited. So there are three of us. So Vidget invited a buddy of his to come play with us. And he is like the runner up in the Indian Army Championship the year before. He's one of the best players I've ever seen. He made like seven birdies on a really hard golf course in really tough conditions, and and it was just we were playing a bestball match, him, his Vidget and me against his buddy and David Lee and David and I had almost nothing even with strokes. We had almost nothing to do with the match, and yet it was a perfect match. Half done the eighteenth hall.

00:15:13
Speaker 1: Just probably playing. Really it's really hard to play there as as a foreigner because it's just a it's a different style of the game. It's like it's like the Americans that go play the Open Championship for the first time.

00:15:25
Speaker 2: Sure they struggling, you know, you know, and I'm pretty adaptable. I've seen a lot of things, and you know, you know, I used to hit balls around in the dirt on my own courses, so I can play with sparse grafts on the fairways. But the very you know, the very first hall of Oudie. I won't go crazy on describing the golf course. There's more about it in the book, but the very first hall is a long part five. And so the little clubhouse is like across the street from the golf course and you hike back. I'm sure the hole was shorter before, and now you hike back about one hundred and fifty yards to the back tee and turn around and play past the clubhouse like you could fan a drive into the clubhouse pretty easily, and you know, kind of down over the crest of a hill. And then once you get over the crest of the hill, the hole looks like the tenth hole at Augusta, just screaming down a hill, except it doesn't come back up to the green the greens just kind of down at the bottom. But it's that steep. It's like, I've never seen a hole that I would compare it to ten in Augusta. That was that steep, and so I'd walk the golf course in the morning and we were going to play in the afternoon. I went out and took pictures first thing in the morning. And when I was out taking pictures, I was like, I wonder if anybody could hit this in two, because you know, it's like five ninety, but you carry a crest and then it's goes screaming down a hill. So if you're a long hitter, it's going to go a long way. And I played it after lunch and I saw two guys hit the green and two and one of them make eagle, So yeah, it's a little different, but you know, and there was a course there's five par threes there and all of I think one was like one hundred and seventy yards and the other four were like two fifteen all and they're all tough, not flat, not flat, you know, over a forty foot deep gully and stuff. They were. There were some pretty extreme hard par three holes, and you know, at first, you think, why would they do that on this course? But the reason they do that is because a lot of the other holes you're hitting a half wedge because you get so much run on the drive that those are the only holes where you're going to hit a long shot into the green or the par threes. Everything else, the ball just runs out forever unless you're going uphill. There's a couple of those.

00:17:54
Speaker 1: So people really started vacation a lot to like Thailand and Southeast Asia. What's the best area for golf? Not Australia, not Japan, not New Zealand, in Southeast Asia.

00:18:08
Speaker 2: Well, the one place I did not get to at all was Thailand. You know, Masa and Darius had both seen a fair number of courses there, and I just I figured I had two viewpoints on them. So yeah, you know, I was more interested in going you know, yeah, Moss had seen a few courses in India, but nobody had been to the other ones. I went to, so or Sri Lanka, So so I gravitated toward that and away from Thailand. And Thailand's like there's a lot of courses. You can sign up with one chore company and they'll handle all your tea times and all your golf reservations and all your hotel reservations. And you know, it's not like Myrtle Beach that because they're they're not all the courses are. It's not just one area. But even so, it's like handled and they have the infrastructure to do it, and it's really easy to take a trip there for a week as opposed to I guarantee you no one ever does the same itineratory Davidly and I did in India, even Vigia. The first time you saw it was just like, oh my god, are you serious.

00:19:11
Speaker 1: When you so, I kind of feel this way what I go see a lot of random places around now, Like you know, I find myself in rural areas of Wisconsin driving to see a nine hole course because I remember playing it as a kid, and I remember there being some cool stuff, But like are areas of Pennsylvania. But there's a certain feeling, like you know, playing one of the best course in the world is one elation, It's like an unbelievable experience. But to me, there's something that's almost more of an elixir of playing a golf course that nobody knows is great or cool. Yes, for like a very modest sum of money.

00:19:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, modest summer or not. Just feeling like you've discovered something that nobody else knows about is really cool. And obviously I've had that experience a ton over like ever since I went to Britain. You know, well, Crystal Down. So when I was still in college, I went to Crystal Downs. The only reason I went to Crystal Downs was that I saw Mackenzie's name attached to it. Ron Whitten and Cornish's book on Who Did What It had just come out. Just borrowed that, and you know there was a list of Mackenzie courses and Mackenzie courses in the United States where the five or six in California and Augusta and he readid Palmetto and of course in New York that no longer exists, and Crystal Downs and the UFM in Ohio state Crystal Down, Like, what's that. I've never heard of that at all. I mean I'd never heard of it. It was it had never been mentioned in a golf magazine, I promise, And I just thought, well, I want to go up there. I want to go up there and see some golf courses. I should go check that out. That's that's like my destination now to go see that. And then when I went to Britain, you know, I spent a bunch of time researching where to go and then on top of that, you know, as I was going, because I had I didn't have to have an itinerary. I wasn't coming home to a wife and kids, so you know, I could ask everywhere I was, what else did I see while I'm around here? You know what's got? Or you know what course has like one really cool hole, even if the rest of the course sucks, there's just one hole I should see. That's why I saw that. So I went to see one hundred and seventy golf courses. And you know, so in the in the I went over in the summer, the summer to summer, I was there and I was up in Scotland first and and then kind of worked my way down and got to around London, and like first of November, say, and I went. I had met the guys who ran golf World, the UK Golf World, which is owned by Golf Digest, And when I got to their office that fall, you know, I've been taking pictures the whole time, so I had my slides and I showed them pictures of all the little courses I'd seen in Scotland. And you know, they had never seen a picture of Cruden Bay before or Macrahannish or Boat of Garden or you know, I mean a bunch of little ones that that I could keep on naming. And they were just blown away. They just they were blown away that there was way more up there than they thought. And they wound up doing doing like half an issue about it that used about thirty of my pictures to publicize more of those golf courses. But so, you know, I've gotten to discover a lot of things that were sort of off the radar, just because I'm a curious person and it is a rush to do it and just see a great golf hole in the raw for the first time, just like it is when you're designing a golf course and you're out on a raw piece of land and you get to a future tea and go, wow, there's a golf right there. It's that's it's the exact same feeling.

00:23:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wish more people would do more exploring and not just you know, hey, this this course is one hundred dollars. It must be good, right it's And.

00:23:50
Speaker 2: You know, and I suppose I feel better that you said it the way you did to think that there is still a lot out there, because because sometimes I get the impression. Pretty hard to find anything new anymore, you know, there's so much more bandwidth, you know, I mean, I really wrestle with it. For the promotion of new golf courses. It's like, please don't show a picture of every single hole the day before the place opens, because then you you most people don't have this this reaction to it. But for me personally, you're kind of reckon it. You know, I won't get that thrill of seeing it for the first time if I've already seen one hundred pictures of it. Yeah, so just you know, the one that I was the most adamant about. You know. It's you can kind of do it with golf courses because if you're trying to take promotional pictures of them of a new golf course when you know, to be ready for the opening, so you've taken the pictures two or three months before, and there's the first few holes that were built, they're looking pure. The last few holes that were built are still kind of looking rough around the edges, so they don't use pictures of those. So if you can just do that and keep this part of the golf course, don't put those pictures out for a while that's enough. You know. In the case of barn Google, those last few holes were on the front nine, so nobody had ever seen a picture of number four before they got there, and I think that's a huge part of why people like it so much. It's just it's such an awesome looking thing to see for the first time, and you didn't really expect it because you never see it. You know. It's like, when you look at it, you think, why haven't I seen a picture of that? That's so dramatic and it's so easy to take a picture of. Why wouldn't I have seen that? And it just you know, we kind of fell into it by accident. But it's it's pretty good marketing strategies. Don't show them that, yes, as opposed to the whole thing of the signature hall, where we're just gonna we're just going to pound you with pictures of our best hole until you're sick of it.

00:26:13
Speaker 1: And it's always a lot of times now the signature hole is morphed into like maybe the hole that you should show anybody. It's the culture we live in now with social media is like that's the death of surprise of golf courses.

00:26:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, it might be the death of surprise.

00:26:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, period exactly, Like there's no it's it's funny. That's why I went to this one course because of this one hole. But then I played it when I was a kid, and it's got this Have you heard of the Eagle Springs place in Wisconsin. It's a nine hole course, fifth generation family ownership, and it's twelve dollars to play. It's like maybe forty minutes from like Geneva, but uh, I go it's you know, it was built in eighteen ninety five and then it was rebuilt in the twenties. And I go there because like I remember the volcano hole. They have the second hole that's got one of the most unbelievable volcano holes in the world.

00:27:09
Speaker 2: Ok.

00:27:10
Speaker 1: And then but then I'm playing the first hole and you're teeing off down in a forty foot like pit up over this giant ridge and the first greens like a punch bowl green with like this giant landform running right.

00:27:23
Speaker 2: Into the green.

00:27:24
Speaker 1: And I was like, oh my god, I don't remember this hole. And then you get you move on. The third holes got changed, but then the fourth hole is unbelievable. But it was like you know, I knew the second hole was coming, but I just had forgotten how cool so many of the other holes were because nobody ever has cone to put to cover Eagle Springs golf course a nine hole are in Wisconsin, And I think about it, and it's.

00:27:48
Speaker 2: I mean, that's that's true of great golf courses. I mean, you know, I mean, I'm on my mission now for the books to go around and see all the odd places that I've always wanted to see and that I might never go to if I don't go to him pretty soon. Yeah, And but you know, before that, you know, once i'd seen a lot of you know, all the top hundred courses that I wanted to see. Not you know, I have not seen a hundred of them, seen ninety something of them, but there's a few that I don't know. I think I know what to expect, and I don't really care if I go or not. So you know, my interests are more obscure now. But you know, so I you know what I what I would do a lot is go back to the National and go back to Saint Andrew's and go back to Pinehurst, and usually with one of my young associates or an intern or something buddy like I you know a little. I mean, I wouldn't have been to Yale in the last thirty years except for I took Riley John's there when he was working for me.

00:29:08
Speaker 1: I played with Riley and he was telling me about that.

00:29:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, we just you know, we just spent four days seeing the little places in Rhode Island that I'd always heard about that I'd never gone to see. And we went and I went back through Whittonsville and want to moist It. I think we went to one to moisse It and and Yale on the on the way back to New York before we flew out. But otherwise I wouldn't see some places like that. And but you know, just like what you're talking about, like the National is a bad example. I know that place like the back of my hand up been there are a ton But you know, even Crystal Downs for for most people. I mean, when you go back to crystal downs, like the third or fourth time, you know, you remember the eighth all, and you remember the seventh all, you remember the fifth hole, but the fourth, maybe the fourth or fifth time is when you get on the fifteenth hole and you're like Jesus, this is really good. I don't know, nobody talks about this hole, but this is really neat. If this was on my home course, this would be the best hole. And it's like completely overlooked at a great golf course. And that's the really great courses. That's true of most of them. You know, there might be one or two holes that aren't that great, but but you know, there's a ton of holes at the National that would be the best hole on in another state.

00:30:38
Speaker 1: That's why I find myself saying, like when you play really great course, like I just feel like all around, I'm like, God, that was a really great green. That was a really great hole. This is a cool green. That's like all you're saying all the way around. One other book you're working on is a routing book, And I'm kind of curious, what's a book that you would never attempt to write that you would love to read.

00:31:05
Speaker 2: Hmm. The answer might wind up being a routing book because it's so hard to do. You know, it's so hard to put into words, you know, and we it's hard to write because it's hard to put into words, and you really, you know, you really need to let them maps do more of the talking, but you don't have much faith that the people you're doing the book for can read the mapp that well and understand it. So that's what we're wrestling with trying to get a few chapters written. Is like, you know, do the maps come first and the text follows, or does the text come first and then you have maps and photos to try to support that, or how do we you know, what do we let lead the story? And it's you know, I think it's more graphics than I'm used to working with, so it's harder for me. You know, it's like we need to put all the graphics together before I can write about it. But how can we do that unless unless we know exactly what I want to illustrate. And it's we've really wrestled with it. I mean, Sarah mess who used to work for me, she's a teacher now, and it's like her summer project. She works on a little bit in the school year, but then all summer she's she worked on it all last summer. You know, we're at least one more summer of work away from having a book, and probably too the way things are going, because I'm going to be busy, but you know, and I still I mean part of what motivated me to do it. I mean I figured out years ago. The only way you're going to do is case studies. You can't talk about it in general terms. You have to talk about it in terms of this is how this golf course got to be this way, and that's you know, no it is even done that for like one golf course. You know, why is the third whole thing instead of somewhere else? Why didn't why didn't you turn that into a short part four instead? You know, there's reasons for all those decisions, but most architects never explain it in those terms, and then, you know, so people don't. That's what when when people that think they understand architecture are out, you know, seeing a golf course for the first time and critiquing it, you know, they're like, well, you know, why didn't you move this green over there? That just fits their eye better? You know, but they only ever talk about one change, and every single thing that you do involves at least two holes. If that green's over there, then the next te probably isn't going to be in exactly the same spot, and and maybe everything else shifts with it. So, you know, trying to understand how those things shift around is you know the goal of working on the book and then but the other goal is since since it's going to be case studies, and since the courses I know best, and I can say, you know, on a Mackenzie course, I can tell you why I think he put holes at Roll Melbourne the way he did. But my courses, I can tell you why I did it. So I'm using my own courses, and you know, you know, I want to do a book that explains my own courses.

00:34:33
Speaker 1: It's like I look at a lot of courses, I'll find these triangles. But then like is it actually a try? Like was that a theory of the architect order? Did it just happen that way?

00:34:45
Speaker 2: That's right?

00:34:46
Speaker 1: You know, So it's like there's no way to figure it out unless the architect specifically implicitly wrote about the routing, but nobody really didn't because the newspaper articles they weren't going to go into that depth.

00:34:57
Speaker 2: No, No, you know, if I mean there's some there's some phenomenal research done on you know, you can find almost any old newspaper clipping from hundreds of old newspapers if you know where to dig. And there's guys that they don't make a living doing it, but they they make some freelance money and they just and it's the it's their hobby doing that. There's three or four of them on golf called Ballas. If you ask them to find out something about an old course, they'll dig it up. But you know, but a lot of the newspaper stories they dig up are pretty wanting in terms of details. It's just like it's you know, like we tried to find some information out for Wileye in Hawaii and we found a bunch of old articles, but it was all exactly the same boiler played stuff about you know, this soul is based on a green at North Barrack in Scotland. So that's like, that's not telling me I need to know about that particular ridian hole and how I'm going to build it again. But that that was all the newspaper reader was going to register.

00:36:10
Speaker 1: Or it's like it was like a boiler outdated boilerplate press release. And that'll do it for the latest episode of The Yoke with Doak. Thanks for listening as always, and check back in later this week for our next episode of the Frida Egg Podcast.