A Trip to the Nebraska Sandhills and Mountain Golf Maintenance

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.

00:00:05
Speaker 2: And when I find my ball in a fried egg Frida egg, the dreaded Frida egg, Frida egg, Frida egg egg Frida egg bride egg Lie, I'm about ready to run.

00:00:13
Speaker 3: Off of the Welcome back to another edition of the Friday Egg Golf Podcast. I am Andy Johnson, and we've got a jumpbo podcast. This wasn't going to be this long, but we got talking about the Nebraska sand Hills and and it kept going. But we've got two segments here. We have our own Friday Eggs, Matt Ruches, who just went on a six day golf trip through the Nebraska Sandhills. It was a lot of golf in it. I wanted to have them on just to talk about his trip and just the whole golf scene there, and then that ended up being a lot longer conversation. And I also recorded last week a interview with Clear Creeks Superintendent Mike kind of a core Crunshaw design in the Sierra Nevada Mountains is really cool golf course and just a different place for a golf course, different not a place that you would you would equate to world class golf. But Clear Creek is a awesome, awesome golf course up there that was very high on the list of golf courses that I wanted to see. I wanted to see kind of Core Crunshaw in a wildly different environment and setting them we're used to seeing them working, and it was a delight. Mike is world class. I you know, I texted Bill Krer because he was out there the weekend before that. I was, you know, jokingly following him around, and he himself called out Mike's work there and especially the Native what they're what they do there, the presentation of the golf courses extraordinary. So talk to Mike about his time there as well as an old sandwich in the in the back half of this podcast. One thing if you're watching this on YouTube, Mike's interview I did in person. We did not. I did not have a camera setup. I haven't gotten to that stage of my production quality where I'm I can solo set up to interview camera system. Maybe next year, maybe I'll have Cameron teach me or Matt teach me. But so we'll lead with the Nebraska Sandhills. Matt Rusche's our very own Matt Rusche's who's been doing a lot of editorial work for us on top of the video production uh and has seen a lot of great golf courses year O to B in your mid twenties, He's living a good life of golf courses. So talk to Matt, and then we kicked it to Mike Kunniff on the second half of the podcast. Today's episode is brought to you by Toro. Moving people around comfortably and efficiently is an important job for any golf property and for other sprawling places like campuses, events, spaces, and municipalities. The new Toro Vista is perfect for all of them. Available in gas or lithium ion battery, four, six and eight passenger models, this powerful people mover works as hard as a truck, but rides like a limousine. God, you know, I was thinking about limousines and this is going to date me. I can't believe how cool riding in a limousine was in the nineties. So anyways, it rides like an a limousine and is sure to impress guests no matter the venue. Limousines have gone by the wayside I feel like we need limousines to come back. I'm sure it will. The Toro Vista not a limousine. A great thing for a golf course, a campus, you know, whatever it may be to move people around. It's polar bear white body makes customization a breeze too, so the Vista can pull double duty as a rolling billboard while getting folks from point A to point B on point God, it sounds like Frida Egg needs a Toro Vista. Your golf course or campus definitely does. Visit Toro dot com, slash golf and reach out to your local Toro distributor for more information thanks to Toro. Let's get to the podcast. Here's Matt Rushes followed by Mike Kunnech. All Right, we're bringing on our own Matt Rusius. You know, I gotta say last week I had a bit of extreme envy. I was jealous, really, the last two weeks of your life, I've been very jealous of I've been missing my days in my twenties when night I could just go anywhere I wanted without repercussion. So you went on a sand Hills journey last week. You live in Denver area, and you got in your car and you just drove out. And I think it's not too much to say all he did was just play golf.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that's quite literally what I did. It was a little over twelve hundred miles total round trip, and I played fourteen golf courses in six days, and probably probably about by the time I got to the tenth or eleventh course, I was like, man, why why did I Why did I decide to do this? This seemed like a good idea on paper, but it really started to wear on me. But at the end of the day, it was a tremendous golf trip to be able to see basically every single golf course in the Nebraska sand Hills that's worth seeing. So it was an awesome trip.

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Speaker 3: So let's break it down. Fourteen golf courses in six days, give us the rundown of the golf courses, and if you don't mind, just like highlight the which ones are public?

00:06:24
Speaker 2: For sure. So I started visiting the newest golf course in the sand Hills, which is a part of the Dormy network. It is Gray Bowl Club. It's a David McLay kid design, it's a private course. And then right after that I ventured down I eight to Awari Dunes, which was built in twenty eleven by Jim Ang, and that is a public golf course, really wild, crazy greens, greens that you won't see anywhere else on any other golf course, just some like very very extreme stuff. And this is actually probably the only course on the south side of I eight from this trip, and it's like this little pocket of sand dunes. Most of the Nebraska sand Hills is north of I eighty and in like more of that central Nebraska area, this is pretty far east and south of A eighty. And then from there I went on a nine hole course tour day where I played four nine hole courses. Starting in North Platte, you go up through Stapleton, Nebraska, which is Augusta Wind, which is a really really cool nine hole course that some farmers and ranchers literally just went out into this field started hitting golf balls around to see where their balls were landing, to lay out the golf course, and it is easily one of my favorite nine holers from this trip. It's so cool. Their budget is twelve thousand dollars to maintain the golf course and it is just incredible piece of land with some really fun, quirky golf holes, and then from there you just drive north up to Thedford. Thedford has a delightful course. There's about three or four holes that play up into the sand Hills. The rest are kind of on flatter ground and some trees, and then from there you go west to Mullen, which is where sand Hills is technically located. But in the town there's a golf club that's been there since nineteen twenty four, which I think is probably the oldest course in the sand Hills. The current layout is a nineteen thirty eight design, but that's just a really fun, more traditional styled golf course. But it plays on some cool rolling land. Nothing too crazy or extreme, but just some really delightful golf holes and very very well kept. The old football coach, the legendary mister Brown, who goes by coach and has a very distinct handlebar mustache, is the one who is the caretaker of the course. He does a tremendous job. He gets some help from the sand Hills crew, which is cool. And then from there you keep going west about another thirty minutes. The thing about this nine hole trip is each each drive is only thirty minutes on the highway, and these drives are just incredible. You're just staring at these towering sand dunes the whole time you're driving from course to course, and they're only thirty minutes apart from each other. So it's really easy to play thirty six holes in a day between these four courses. But the last stop is Pelican Beach, which is in the town of Hyannis, and yeah it is. It is extremely cool. So Dave Axlin and Dan Procter helped lay out and guide the locals on what to build at this golf course. But they didn't do any of the building themselves. They basically told them kind of gave them a plan on what to do, what they thought they should do, and then the locals.

00:10:09
Speaker 3: Some little alsie uh with markham and and h Russell down in Australia, Australia.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly. But the funny part about the name is like, why why would it be called Pelican Beach. Well, there's a huge pond on the north side of the course, and during the opening day some pelicans from that pond flew over the golf course and you can regularly see pelicans in that little body of water there, so that's how it got its name. But that's a really cool course that plays on this big side hill. Just some really awesome golf holes, some really cool greens, and one of the probably I think it's probably the best of the four nine holders that I just highlighted and very well conditioned is.

00:11:01
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know I visited that golf course. They went through a really bad winter a couple of years ago when we were doing the sand Hills Turf documentary, and you know, they had they had gone through extreme winterkill. So it's great to hear the turf's back because you wondered, like what was going to be become of that golf course. I think we're at the halfway point of your trip here, or maybe not even we're almost halfway. You've got like we'll take a real quick break you took. You have a real unique history with the sand Hills. You went to the University of Illinois. You're a fellow Aline, you know, you know, the well educated man if I may say so myself. But then after after college, you did the turf internship program that we actually documented. You lived in the sand Hills for a couple of months of your life did the bally Neil sand Hills turf doc ventory. So what's your you know, while we're here, what's your favorite part about being in the Sandhills as someone who has lived there.

00:12:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, So the sand Hills is such a unique place just because it's so remote and in the town of Mullen, there's one restaurant. They got a twenty four hour gas station. Yeah, Big Reds probably got like an eight dollars steak you can get there or something like that, but I.

00:12:29
Speaker 3: Think the burgers are four bucks.

00:12:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just a very very unique place. It's like traveling to another world almost because you're in within these like amazing towering dunes, an awesome like geological landscape that's extremely rare, one of a kind. And then you just like in this tiny little town with a bunch of people who will treat you like family, like some of the best, down to earth, nicest people in the world. But it's just unique. Like when I moved there a few years prior, they got a twenty four hour gas station and it was like the talk of the town, like they could not get over the fact that they had this twenty four hour gas station so that you could actually like go get a gas station breakfast before you go to work, so that kind of puts it into perspective. Is just like it's so small, everyone knows everyone. When you're driving on the roads throughout the entire sand Hills, every car you pass will like wave to you. They'll put up a couple fingers and wave to you as you pass by, just because most people just assume like if you're driving in the sand Hills, you're probably a local and it's probably someone you know. So it's just a really small, like tight knit community. Everyone knows what everyone else is doing. Rumors get around fast in these towns, but it's a it's a really neat place and extremely like kind of shocking cultural experience to spend five or six months there living there.

00:14:00
Speaker 3: Honestly, it's like one of my favorite places to visit. I was so happy when we did that project that we got to spend time like in the town and it wasn't just like I think like most people's view of the sand Hills as they go to like Dismal River or sand Hills or Prairie Club and they live and they spend their time there, but spending time in the town, getting to know some of the people. It is like, it's so cool, and I think like one of the testaments to like everybody talks about the golf course at sand Hills, but why it works. Why it's worked so well, there is the buy in from the town of Mullen into the into the golf course, and how the golf course, the whole facility is a family, and the family is the town of Mullen. That's what makes it work. And they're wonderful, nice people. It reminds me a little bit having been to Ireland now, like of Ireland, like rural Ireland in where you just have these little towns in these majestic dunes and the nicest people in the world. It is like to me, like kind of like America's Ireland and and what's neat as you're highlighting here, you know, I don't think this golf trip is for everybody, but this is one of the great American golf trips that you can make, and it is cheap. There are a lot of accessible golf courses and I know a lot of people think about this area and think of it as sand Hills, Dismal River now cap Rock and Gray Bowl, but there is a tremendous value golf trip that it's kind of like an unmatched valued golf trip. Like you know, if you put together Augusta Wind in Pelican Beach into an eighteen hole or I mean, is that one of the best public golf courses in the country.

00:15:49
Speaker 2: I think so, it's definitely it would be incredible too. Like the two are fairly different on like the terrain, they both kind of play over. They both to play over big hills with all these little ripples and small contours inside there. But yeah, that would be a pretty amazing eighteen hole golf course if you combine them.

00:16:12
Speaker 3: So let's carry on. So you had your nine hold day, your thirty six hold nine hole day. Where do we go next?

00:16:19
Speaker 2: From there? I went into the town of Mullin and stayed with a friend, a friend of mine who is now the assistant superintendent at sand Hills, and then drove down to Dismal River right and early the next morning. There's thirty six holes at Dismal River Club. One Tom Doak design built in twenty thirteen, the Red Course, and then a Jack Nicholas design that was built in two thousand and six, which is the White Course. The White Course is on this very very extreme terrain probably I would say the most extreme land out of any of the courses I played on this trip. There's some really really fun golf holes that are incredibly like severe terrain. There's some big cart rides between some of the certain holes, so you're certainly not walking out it at Dismal White. But to put it in.

00:17:15
Speaker 3: Perspective, it's disappointed that you didn't walk.

00:17:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think I would have survived if I tried to walk it.

00:17:24
Speaker 3: You wouldn't have made through the thirty six Old.

00:17:26
Speaker 2: Day, No, certainly not. But the White Course, on the other hand, is still on very severe land, but it kind of pales in comparison to the White Course. And this is a much tighter routing, kind of an ingenious routing that plays up the hill and then back down and then the back nine plays down towards the Dismal River, which kind of has this like canyony feel where there's a huge, massive ridge line playing on the backside of all these holes. So it's a pretty cool backdrop or for all the holes on the back nine. But there's some world class par threes or part fours out at the Red Course some really good golf holes. The seventeenth is this really cool hole with a blind t shot that like just tumbles down this hill like forty to fifty yards downhill, and it's a really neat one. And the unique thing about that one is the start and finish are not close to each other at all. So it's kind of like a golf course that feels like a journey where you start kind of towards the center of the routing, you work up the hill, back down the hill, and then finish kind of down on the river, away from the rest of the golf course.

00:18:42
Speaker 3: So do they cart people around.

00:18:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, So both the Red and White Course are quite a distance from the clubhouse. The clubhouse sits up high on this bluff and you can see a lot of the Red Course from it, but then the White course like set back far into these like big dunes. The entire property for the White courses like down in a bowl of these massive dunes. But the White Course is probably like a six ers maybe seven to ten minute cart ride from the clubhouse, and then the Red Course is probably like just under five minute cart ride from the clubhouse. So it's just massive properties. All these courses are very large scale and quite spread out, kind of like sand Hill. Sand Hills is a five to six minute cart ride from the clubhouse, which is cool because these courses are like set off on their own. There's no buildings really around them, and you really feel like you're out there in the middle of nowhere.

00:19:49
Speaker 3: Can I ask you a question about the White Course that I've always wondered, what's the deal with a windmill hole? Is the windmill in play? I've seen pictures of this need to.

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Speaker 2: Know there's very much in play, but.

00:20:04
Speaker 3: How does the hole work with it? That people that haven't seen this picture. There's like a windmill well in front of the green, right.

00:20:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's literally so there's a little cluster of bunkers probably about thirty yards short of the green.

00:20:18
Speaker 3: Par five.

00:20:19
Speaker 2: It's a par five, so it's a big downhill par five. It's like close to six hundred yards from the back tee. But there's kind of like a lowland native area all along the left and the whole kind of dog legs around it, and then up by the green, it's kind of like a Z shaped fairway where there's a little bit of landing zone to the left of the windmill and like bunkers. But when you're like, if you're going for the green in two, you're standing in the fairway and the windmill is directly in front of the green, just like square in front of the green, So you would have to like either hit a cut or draw around it, depending on kind of the trajectory that your ball's coming in at. And then the green is also kind of in line with that, so if you want to lay up and bail out to the right, you have to kind of hit it pretty far to the right and come in to the green at a more shallow angle. So it is quite unique hole.

00:21:16
Speaker 3: I would love to iner out. Are you in or out on the windmill?

00:21:21
Speaker 2: The hole's fine. It has a pretty cool green, but I don't know, it's it is confusing when like you get to your ball and you're like, wait, I just got to go like straight at the windmill. It is a bit confusing, but but it's an interesting hole to say the least.

00:21:37
Speaker 3: So we're eight courses in now thirty six a day at Dismal. Where do we go next?

00:21:43
Speaker 2: From here? You're crossing time zones, so this area of the country is right on the Mountain time, Central time time zone.

00:21:51
Speaker 3: You got beyond it, so you got understand with times.

00:21:55
Speaker 2: When you're all right. Well, a pro tip here if you travel to this area, you have to manly set the time zone on your phone or else it will screw up your whole day because one of the days I woke up an hour early at three forty five instead of four forty five because I forgot to set my time zone manually. So if you're in the area, when you're in Molland might not get service.

00:22:18
Speaker 1: Right.

00:22:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, So in Moland is central or Mountain time zone, and when you go north to Valentine, which was the next step on the trip, you go into Central time zone.

00:22:29
Speaker 3: Real quick question, you're driving around spotty service? What were you listening to? Were you were you? Did you download stuff? Were you ready to go? Because you're Spotify there doesn't always work.

00:22:41
Speaker 2: Yeah. I had a few podcasts downloaded for most of the trips, and then just just some music that was on my phone.

00:22:49
Speaker 3: I went with a music any music tips, I mean for what are you listening to?

00:22:55
Speaker 2: Well, for this one, I went with the shuffle all on my entire playlist, so I was go going with the eclectic just you don't know what you're gonna get. I mean, I probably have a few thousand songs downloaded on my phone. So it's just very eclectic, uh listening experience on the on the roads of the sand Hills.

00:23:14
Speaker 3: What's your what's your wreck? What's the wreck of a music that you know you're probably skill a little younger than the pod listeners. How can how can some pod listeners be hip to what the kids are listening to these days? What's a what's the wreck?

00:23:28
Speaker 1: Here?

00:23:30
Speaker 2: My my all time favorite band at the time right now is an Australian based band called The Parcels. They kind of made their.

00:23:38
Speaker 3: Names you got them, Yeah.

00:23:40
Speaker 2: They made their name in Berlin. That's kind of where they moved to Berlin from Australia to to kind of chase the music dream. And I recently saw them at Red Rocks. It was their biggest show that they had ever performed at Red Rocks. So that is a great wreck. They play basically indie pop music. They do have some like kind of more upby electronic indie pop style stuff, but they make really good music, really groovy, great great road trip in music.

00:24:09
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's I like their music. It's good wreck. All right, So you're going to Valentine.

00:24:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I going. It's about a little over an hour from Mullen to Valentine, and I went to the public resort of Prairie Club.

00:24:27
Speaker 3: The way that they set up one to go there.

00:24:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, really cool spot. But the way they set it up is one of their courses each day is a member course and the other course is a public course. So they have a fair amount of members. I'm not sure the exact number, but each day the private course flip flops, so it kind of forces you to go there for two days if you want to see both courses. But both courses are very different. One of them is the Pines and the other is the Dunes. The Dunes, as the name suggests, plays through some massive towering dunes, very severe land, and has some enormous blowout bunkers, some probably the biggest blowout bunkers out of any of these courses. Just enormous, like like the eighteenth hole at sand Hills. On almost every hole, just these enormous bunkers, which is very cool visually. And then the Pines course, as the name suggests, place through mostly pines and closer to the Snake River Canyon. So the Snake River Canyon is kind of this unique geological I guess land form for the for the region because mostly you just see.

00:25:42
Speaker 3: I mean goes all through this state, like through the sand Hills right, because the sand Hills lodging at sand Hills Golf Club is on the Snake River, right, So that runs all the way up through there.

00:25:54
Speaker 2: That's the that's the Dismal River down south. Okay, this north is a little bit different. But there's also a lot of like wildlife refugees around Valentine. There's a lot of people who vacation there and like go floating down the river, which I found out for the first time when I was here. Like they have a ton of tourists in Valentine that go there just to like float down the river, which is interesting. But back to the Pines course, it plays along the Snake River Canyon, which like drops two hundred feet down from like the edge. So some of these holes play up pretty close to the canyon edge, but none of them are like directly on the canyon edge. You can kind of see it on these canyon holes. But the course plays through all these pines and half of the holes are essentially on some more gentle sand hills and rolling dunesland and then the other half are kind of pushed up against this canyon, playing in and out of the pine trees. And then also at Prairie Club horse Course, the horse this place is really cool. It's kind of this choose your own adventure style golf course where there's ten greens and just short grass everywhere. There's no like explicit routing. There is like flag numbers on the flags, and there's kind of a certain way you can play it, but you could like create anything you could ever imagine. It's really cool, some really really cool greens and really fun to play.

00:27:27
Speaker 3: A Jeff Shackleford design, Yeah, you know, honestly a legend. Jeff Shackleford's is such a legend, and this concept is amazing. Yeah, like when you talk about like innovative golf concepts that nobody really talks about this one. To me, like I've always been like I would say that the main reason that I want to go to the Prairie Club is to see the horse course.

00:27:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really cool. And all the turf at the Prairie Club is find fescue fairways and then bank screens, and it was really firm, really fast when I was out there. Tremendous conditions for playing the low game. So like if you got a group of buddies out on the horse course and just like brought one club or a couple clubs and just played like bump and run low shots, like you could get really creative and just have an awesome time there. Really cool spot and perfect kind of addition to the two big courses there.

00:28:26
Speaker 3: Which big course do you prefer of the two personally?

00:28:30
Speaker 2: Personally, I like the Pines course a little bit better. I think the Dunes course is really fun and has a lot of really cool holes that are really fun to play, but it's just a little bit in your face for like eighteen straight holes, which is really fun to go out there and like make the journey out to see a really unique golf course and it's a lot of fun. But like the I really like the routing of the Pines and how it kind of takes you out. Starts out in the sand hills and you dip into the trees and kind of in and out, and it feels a little bit more of like a journey when you're on that golf course.

00:29:09
Speaker 3: God, I can't believe we still have four courses to go. So we're no eleven court. We have three courses ago, right.

00:29:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah they got Yeah the horse course, he's.

00:29:21
Speaker 3: Not gonna yeah, horse course not in there, ten greens to play it, that's of course. Yeah, all right, So we're on from the Prairie Club. Are we staying? And is it Valentine or Valentine? Valentine?

00:29:34
Speaker 2: It's Valentine.

00:29:35
Speaker 3: I'm Valentine, fairly.

00:29:37
Speaker 2: Certain that that is the correct pronunciation. But there's there's several hotels in Valentine. As I said, like a lot of tourists go up there in the summer. There's a big lake just south of Valentine that's pretty popular, and then a lot of kind of like natural state park areas, wildlife refugees, which is kind.

00:29:57
Speaker 3: Of I don't want to out somebody, I I don't. I think this is fairly but I think one of the architects of a golf course up there likes it so much that they have a house there.

00:30:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, So that would be crist.

00:30:11
Speaker 3: That that speaks that, you know, this is a person that could have houses, you know, anywhere. They love the beauty so much of it that they have a house there.

00:30:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, this, this Valentine region is really cool. It almost feels like you're in a National park almost. It's such a unique setting with like the Snake River Canyon, the dunes, all the pine trees, the wildlife. It's it's a really cool area.

00:30:36
Speaker 3: So this, have you ever done like hikes or anything out there?

00:30:39
Speaker 2: I have not done any. I've mostly played golf when I'm in the area. But I mean, you could, I know, I know.

00:30:48
Speaker 3: Uh.

00:30:49
Speaker 2: Kyle Heigland, the superintendent at sand Hills, has told quite a few stories about the Snake River Canyon and potentially getting attacked by a rattlesnake. But that's just for another day. So I stayed with a buddy. One of the interns that I worked with at sand Hills when I was out there, is now the assistant superintendent at cap Rock Ranch. So I stayed with him and went to cap Rock Ranch the next day. You can actually see cap Rock Ranch from Prairie Club and vice versa. They're that close to each other. They're basically bordering each other. The entrance road to the Prairie Club basically splits them. But the cap Rock Ranch course is also a very new design. It opened in twenty twenty one. That was the year that I was out at sand Hills and I got to see it right after it opened when it was just an infant, But going back was really cool. It's matured a lot. The turf conditions are incredible, really great job done there by Mike and their crew. But this is a world class golf course. It has an amazing routing that takes you in and out of the sand dunes and then up against the Snake River.

00:32:05
Speaker 3: Canyon and huge canyon.

00:32:07
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, enormous two hundred foot drop. But all these holes are pressed right up against the canyon as close as you could possibly get golf holes to them, so it's really in play and makes for some extremely dramatic holes. I think through four of the five part three's on the course are along the canyon and make for some really epic golf shots that you're either hitting alongside or over this deep chasm. But the course itself is just incredible. It's extremely well routed, very walkable, and a really really fun golf course to play. And now they have all their lodging and stuff in there pushed up against the canyon, a huge putting Green and it's just a really fun place to go play golf. And then from there we go up to the town of Valentine. So Prairie Club and cap Rock Ranch are about twenty minutes south of the town. And in town there is a course that was built in twenty seventeen called Frederick Peak. It is a ten hole golf course designed by Tom Lehman, who also did the dunes course at Prairie Club. Tommy, Yeah, but this is like a amazing community like golf course. It's always packed with locals. I think like the creation of this course like made the people in the town like love the game of golf. When I was there, there was like every type of person you could imagine. I saw like high school girls golf team practicing on the practice area. Dude like in his work clothes, like probably working on the cattle ranch that day, in his blue jeans and like a very dirty, like shaggy shirt. Like you get all types of players out here. And the course plays over some really cool land. It's very severe. It's not really sand hills like the rolling kind of prairie grass covered dunes that the rest of the courses are in. But it is a sandy site and it has some cool land movement. It plays kind of up along this high ridge line and then plummets down and there's three holes down below. In this kind of lower section, there's some really.

00:34:30
Speaker 3: Hard three you always see a picture of.

00:34:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, So the fifth hole is this awesome short part three. I think it plays like one hundred and seventy yards is the actual yardage, but you're only hitting like a pitching wedge or something. It drops well over one hundred feet straight down, really cool golf hole, and then there's two more holes that play down there, and then you kind of climb back up this hill and play a few holes down the stretch. But there's a The eighth hole is technically the bonus, and it's this really cool short, little par three that's tucked on this little kind of like peninsula on the edge of this cliff. And that's a really really neat golf hole. But this is just an awesome place to go play.

00:35:14
Speaker 3: How much does that cost.

00:35:16
Speaker 2: I'm not sure the exact price of it, but I know it's it's very affordable, certainly less than probably forty dollars to play the ten hole course there. The one downside is it's pretty unwockable because of how severe the land you play over is and that big kind of drop from the top four holes and then nine to ten are up top and then the rest are down below, so you can't really walk there. But nonetheless it's really fun place to go play golf and some really fun golf holes.

00:35:49
Speaker 3: What was that?

00:35:50
Speaker 2: And then the final stop on the tour was a trip back to where I worked sand Hills Golf Club, basically the course that started at all and and and laid the path for all of these courses I just talked about to be built and except.

00:36:08
Speaker 3: Except for Mullen, Yeah, arguably sand Hills. Sand Hills followed Mullen.

00:36:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, sixty years later. But yeah, I mean, I don't think sand Hills needs much of a description. Most people know about it. It's one of the greatest golf courses in the world.

00:36:26
Speaker 3: What one question I have for you? So you've spent a ton of time at sand Hills, like more than most people. Did you pick anything up? Was there one thing that you had never thought about about sand Hills this time around that when you played it, where you're like, oh, that was pretty cool.

00:36:47
Speaker 2: I don't know if there was a specific thing that I that I picked up exactly. But every time you go back, like I start to like just like appreciate it more and more, like I already knew it, Like it's probably my favorite golf course in the world, just because I got so intimate with it and got to learn all the quirks and details about it. But every time you play, like you notice maybe one small little thing like, oh, like this this pin right here is really really hard to get to unless you get over here, and small things like that on how to play certain holes to certain pins. But the thing that like I take away most is how incredible the routing is. It is easily the best routing out of any of the courses in the sand Hills. It just plays over like the most dramatic land it can without being too strenuous or making you feel like you're like hiking a mountain. After like playing like I, after I played, I felt refreshed, like I was like so excited after finishing, like I didn't even feel like I had just walked eighteen holes, And it just plays over such incredible landscape and the journey it puts you on the front nine is kind of more intimate and all pretty close together. And the back nine is the big out and back loop, which is really cool. And it's just a it's just an unbelievable golf course. And I'll always cherish my time that I get to spend out there.

00:38:18
Speaker 3: When I go back, it's it's it's extraordinary. I love that place. So with this, there's two courses that you didn't hit that you've played a number of times in the sand Hills, the public courses Bayside and wild Horse, which are both awesome golf courses. They are excellent Proctor designs on kind of in different areas. Ones in Gothenburg, which is kind of more east, and one in Ogoala, which is way west. It's probably the closest course to Denver in the Nebraska sand Hills. My question to you, as someone now that's seen all the public golf courses in the sand Hills, how would you build a trip through the sand Hills? What sequence? Which courses would you include, say somebody wanted to dive in and do a week long trip, how would you navigate them flying to Omaha or Denver? Which one would you do? Denver's probably the easier one, right.

00:39:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it just depends on which side of the country you're coming from. I know, I was just out on Long Island with a member of Sand Hills and they used to always go into Denver from New York, but now they do Omaha because I guess they just like the shorter flight. It's about the same drive. It's like four and a half hours from either Denver or Omaha to get to like Mullin, which is kind of the central point of this entire trip. But the great thing is that there's several courses right along I eighty, So if you're on a road trip through the entree, you could just stop and play one of them if you want, or you can set up your trip around it. So if you're coming from the east, you're gonna want to stop at Awari Dunes first. And something I forgot to mention there's a course north of Awari Dunes in the town of Dannenbrog, and this course is a nine to old golf course with sand greens, so it's a really really unique experience. You could play those two courses on your first day if you wanted. One of the one of the holes at dan and Brog is a sand green with a grain silo around the perimeter of it, and it's like four or five feet high, so you have to hit it over the grain silo wall to get onto the green. And just playing playing sand greens is such a unique experience. It's a it's a once in a lifetime thing. There's very few golf courses left in the world, and I believe there's two or three in the state, and but I've only played Dan and Brag. That's a really fun one to go see and fairly close to Awari Dunes, so you could do those two in a day, and then the next course west from there would be Wild Horse, which we've highlighted multiple times, done a video on and I think it's probably the greatest value golf course in America without a doubt. Yes, seventy five dollars is the peak rate you can pay to play there. And the superintendent, Josh Mahar is one of the best in the entire business. He has that golf course absolutely dialed all months out of the year, extremely firm and fast. That makes that that design really shine. So that is a must play golf course.

00:41:47
Speaker 3: I think it's one of the ten best public golf courses in America.

00:41:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, full stop, no doubt, Like.

00:41:54
Speaker 3: And people think I'm crazy for this, but like I'd rather play it than a couple of course horses abandoned. I'd rather play it than I think maybe any course at stream Song. I love the courses its stream Song. I'd I think I'd rather play it than any course at Pinehurst except for Number two. Maybe some days I'd rather play it than Number two. I've had thoughts that if I had ten rounds between it and sand Hills, that I might play wild Horse more because I enjoy like the walk is so gentle and nice, like it's I think it's a better everyday golf course than sand Hills. Yeah, it's definitely, like I love this place.

00:42:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, Wildhorse is amazing. The land is much more gentle. Like I said before, it's it's pretty close to EE eighty and that's kind of where the sand Hills big dunes kind of start to taper off once you get down to I eighty, So it's right there and it's on this much more gentle terrain. But like you said, it's it's a tremendous walk. There's nothing like crazy in your face, like very bold like some of the other courses like there's River White or the Dunes course at Prairie Club, but it's just eighteen extremely well thought out and well designed golf holes and it's just a must play. They also have lodging on site, so if you want to get a group of buddies and go stay there and play thirty six holes, they have a couple I believe they're eight person cabins, so you can you can pack some people in there and spend a lot of time there for a really good budget trip.

00:43:28
Speaker 3: And I think one of the hard things about this trip is that people might feel overwhelmed is about lodging. But if you did those Awari Dunes and the sand Greens, then you get to Gothenburg, stay at Wildhorse if they're available. There's other hotels there, play play in Gothenburg, and then where do you go from there?

00:43:50
Speaker 2: Yeah. Also one thing to note is Awari Dunes is just south of the town of Kearney and there's several hotels there. Yeah, there's a there's a really big like Marriott hotel and like conference center, so there's there's some great accommodations there and places to eat and whatnot. So that's a good place to stay from there, North Platte is a really great central hub for this trip to multiple hotel options and food options. There's a really great Brita.

00:44:19
Speaker 3: There when I was driving across the country, peg Like Brewing.

00:44:22
Speaker 2: Well that one, and Pals Pals Brewery is a great one. But yeah, from North Platte there's there's multiple ways you can go. So Bayside is west of there, probably about an hour. And that's kind of similar to these I eight courses where they're right on the edge of the sand hills and baysides. I wouldn't really consider it that that stereotypical sand hills like sand dunes kind of land, but it's very dramatic. It has some some smaller dune stuff on the front nine and the back nine plays over these these massive ridge lines that feed down towards Lake McConaughey, which is the huge lake that the course plays right up against.

00:45:06
Speaker 3: I having driven all the way through the sand hills, that's kind of where the sand hills stop in a way.

00:45:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, just about Yeah, when you're that far south and west, they kind of taper out. But north, if you went up pretty if you want fifty miles north of Bayside, there's still sand hills there. It's mostly that entire central region of Nebraska is all sand hills. And then you can stay in North Platte if you're going to the four hole the four nine hole courses, which is like an easy day trip to do, so I would stay in North Platte. That's honestly like a really great place. If you wanted to do this whole trip, you could just stay there for all of it, and you're never going to drive more than like ninety minutes to any of these courses. The furthest one would be a warri from North Platte, which is like just over an hour and a half I think right out an hour and a half. But you could go up from North Platte and do the same way that I want. You go North Platte to Stapleton, Stapleton to Thedford, Bedford to Mullen and then Mullen to Hyannis and then you're this is where things start to get a little dicey on accommodations. You're in the heart of the sand hills.

00:46:25
Speaker 3: There's I've stated the sand Hills Motel is delightful.

00:46:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's your only option. That's your only It was.

00:46:33
Speaker 3: It was delightful. It wasn't tanking season, so it wasn't that busy, and I was I was in luck. I loved it. I got a pizza and beer from the twenty four hour gas station and I was a happy boy.

00:46:47
Speaker 2: Yeah. So that's basically your only only place to stay in Mullin unless you're staying on the property at sand Hills. But the sand Hills Motel is a delightful little place in the town and it really gives you the true experience of Mullen. And then Valentine's kind of your other hub from there. You can stay in the town of Valentine and make the twenty minute drive to Prairie Club, or you could stay on property at Prairie Club. They have a fair amount of lodging there, but there's multiple hotels up in Valentine that you can stay at.

00:47:24
Speaker 3: And then you play Frederick Peak in the three Prairie Club courses. Yea, and I mean that's that's a lot of golf. It's really cheap, and you know, your big ticket items are Prairie Club really Yeah.

00:47:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's going to be probably the most expensive public option. The rest are extremely affordable.

00:47:45
Speaker 3: Everything else is sub one hundred, and most are probably sub sub forty.

00:47:50
Speaker 2: Yeah. So the all the nine hole courses are just honesty box courses where you just write your name on a ticket, slip your cash in, and slide into a box. There's no one there's no pro shops, there's no one kind of managing the courses besides the caretaker of the course.

00:48:08
Speaker 3: So on your trip, if you're looking to pick up sick merch.

00:48:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, there's there's no merch to be had at these courses besides a scorecard and a pencil. But those all those those four courses are all twenty dollars or less to play, and that gets you golf for the whole day. So if you wanted to play at one of these courses just the entire day, twenty bucks plays as much golf as you want. So that's a really cool thing.

00:48:36
Speaker 3: So good. I love a good honesty box.

00:48:39
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:48:40
Speaker 2: And the thing about it too is that like these courses, a lot of them are maintained by people who do it like as volunteer work, just to like have this asset for the community. A lot of the people in this region love golf and they cherish their golf courses so if you're visiting these courses, I would urge you to maybe spend a little bit extra on your greens fee and and air on the side of the higher side and slip them some extra box as kind of a donation to help help their efforts to maintain the golf course, because if a harsh winter comes through, they're likely going to lose a lot of their grass and the course is going to take a beating and they're going to need all the help they can get to bring it back. But luckily this year like amazing weather conditions for the winter and early spring and all these courses, we're absolutely money just perfect conditions for how low of a budget that they use.

00:49:37
Speaker 3: That is. That's a great trip. I would like to make it one day.

00:49:41
Speaker 1: I am.

00:49:42
Speaker 3: I'd always thought about doing this exact venture that you went on. I'm very I'm part jealous, part happy for you, very happy for you. All Right, last question if you if you had ten rounds and you want to split it between all the sand hill, how are you dividing ten rounds?

00:50:03
Speaker 2: Man, that's a tough one. I'm gonna have to I'm gonna have to admit some of the courses.

00:50:08
Speaker 3: Well, I that's the thing. That's why, it's why it's a hard question. That's what we ask on this podcast. Nothing but nothing but the hardballs or fastball's coming your way.

00:50:18
Speaker 2: I'd probably go two rounds at sand Hills, two rounds at wild Horse, two rounds at cap Rock Ranch.

00:50:33
Speaker 3: All right, you got four rounds left.

00:50:35
Speaker 2: And then I would play Augusta Wins once.

00:50:39
Speaker 3: How about you can put you can put two nine holes together for a round. I'm not gonna take away nine holes, so you could you or you could say I'm gonna play this twice and accounts as one.

00:50:50
Speaker 2: I would probably then play Augusta Wynn Pelican Beach together as one round. All right, so I got three lound rounds left, I would play Dismal rad once the Tom Doak design.

00:51:03
Speaker 3: I would play two rounds left.

00:51:06
Speaker 2: I would play Baside once for sure. I love that place. You should never you should never pass up that course if you're driving by.

00:51:14
Speaker 3: Oh it's interesting advice for our colleagues Cameron and Garrett.

00:51:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll never hear the end of that one.

00:51:22
Speaker 3: Never hear the forced me to drive to the Denver Report. To be fair, we didn have time to play, but we had enough time to pull in, look around for a bit.

00:51:36
Speaker 2: And then two horses left. I think I would I'd probably tack on another round at sand Hills to make it three.

00:51:46
Speaker 3: All right, three? Just what he said too. I was kind of like us. He could have come back for me.

00:51:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I can't get enough of sand Hills. I just I never leave that place without a huge smile on my face. It's it's one of the best places in the world. And then my final round, I'd probably go with the Prairie Club Pines course. I enjoy that place a lot.

00:52:10
Speaker 1: There.

00:52:10
Speaker 3: It is Matt's ten rounds in the Sandhills tough exercise.

00:52:14
Speaker 2: There's there's a lot of good golf. You could go to any one of these courses just one time and you won't be you won't be dissatisfied. It's it's truly a really unique place, and you play a lot of golf courses that you've probably never seen anywhere else in the world. So I highly recommend going if you just want to make a few stops along the trip that I did, or go to one of the areas, or if you're just passing through on I eighty on a cross country road trip. There's a lot of different options for playing these golf courses in the sand Hills.

00:52:49
Speaker 3: Awesome, all right, Matt, Great, great trip. And there'll be a bunch more content on our various channels, whether it be to Club TFE, the public website, the maybe the newsletter. But really really fun to talk to you about this trip and uh and in a couple of weeks of your life, the last two weeks long Island to sand Hills is about about the biggest departure you could make.

00:53:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was an incredible two weeks. But thanks for having me on. Excited to talk about the sand Hills anytime.

00:53:34
Speaker 3: All right, big thanks to Matt. Let's kick it over to Mike kind of superintendent at Clear Creek, Tahoe. I got to ask you, I would I would say that you're an expert on this, sure, would you consider what what region of the country? Would you consider where we are right now?

00:53:58
Speaker 1: I think technically it's south west, but Mountain West, Mountain.

00:54:03
Speaker 3: West, what not the Pacific Northwest?

00:54:06
Speaker 1: No, I wouldn't say that you're starting starting the podcast with some quizzes. No, No, I just always I like to call this part of the Pacific Northwest. Yeah, I guess. I mean it's close enough. It's close enough, right.

00:54:21
Speaker 3: What is the Mountain West? What is the climate here? What is that like?

00:54:27
Speaker 1: We pretty much get sunny days April through October and literally zero rain. So most of the precipitation that we get falls as snow, you know, an occasional rain shower in October, maybe April may a touch of rain, but it's kind of it was odd moving here. It was kind of like Groundhog Day coming from the East coast, you know, where we just it rained all the time and it was doom and gloom. So I would say May first to the beginning of October is sunny and you know, eighty eighty five degrees every single day.

00:55:02
Speaker 3: So Bill and Ben were just out here. It was the first time they were here in what like ten years.

00:55:07
Speaker 1: I think it was five or six since we we held the core Crenshaw Cup, I don't know, twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, So yeah, it had been a pretty good amount of time.

00:55:17
Speaker 3: What was it like, you spent a long time walking the golf course with them. What did you take away from that experience?

00:55:25
Speaker 1: You know, it's just it's always great to just have those guys back just to know that you know you're headed in the right direction, and you know, being the caretaker of their golf course, you know, always a little apprehensive when Bill and Ben come back to town, for sure. But no, it was really cool. I mean we spent Saturday. I think we started at nine, and you know, we walked around and looked at you know, five or six holes, and then you know, I thought they were pressed for time. I was like, do you guys want to break for lunch or something, and they're like, no, we want to grab a hot dog at the turn, and we want to look at every single hole here. So that was pretty cool. I mean, they still have a tremendous pride of ownership in it, and you know they're just really interested to see, like how the golf course evolves throughout the years.

00:56:10
Speaker 3: I heard they were telling stories from construction. Yeah, did you have a favorite one one that stood out?

00:56:17
Speaker 1: I don't know, I can't really remember any specifically. You know, they talked about like which one of their shapers or their associates. I guess they're called, you know, shaped each hole. So some of those were pretty cool. I think the one that kind of sticks out is when Bill Corr was first brought here with our original ownership to take a look at the golf course. You know, they're coming up this mountain grade and you know they hadn't done a lot of mountain golf courses before, and you know, they showed Bill the lake and he's like, okay, cool, it's like Tahoe. You know, that's pretty, but where's the golf course? And then you know, they start to come down these mountain passes and Bill's like losing interest, Like he's like, there's no way we could find a good golf course here in all this crazy terrain and elevation change. So that one was pretty interesting to hear, you know. But when he finally made it to the site, you know he started to see a little little bit of potential and then I guess he ended up walking around for the next five or six days straight and was really intrigued once he finally got here.

00:57:13
Speaker 3: So, yeah, I feel like when you drive in, it's it's you come over that pass and you're I kind of was. I kind of felt the same lay off, like and you see Carson City down and it's like dead flat, yeah, and I'm kind of like, where is this course? Going to be and you like pull off, I mean like you pull off the mountain pass, like you're still on the mountain pass right and you pull off and then you're right here, but you drive in Like, to me, the interesting the first thing that you're like, oh, this might be really cool is you see that meadow right on your right that's just sitting there completely. You know, there's no golf holes on it, and it's like, oh, I could see golf holes here.

00:57:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely. I think that's what Bill said the other day too. He mentioned seeing that meadow, which I think that's where they filmed Bonanza. I'm a little too young for that show, but if anybody recalls Bonanza, he's like, Oh, that's cool. That would make a nice par three in there. I think that was Bill's original thought in that meadow.

00:58:09
Speaker 3: So how would you describe how they routed it? Like what the unique challenges of getting eighteen holes on the land that the golf course is now?

00:58:20
Speaker 1: You know, I think that elevation drop that you saw it last night from the third hole, that two hundred foot elevation drop from from the tee to the green was was a you know, a key to the routing for them for sure. I'm pretty sure though they had carte Blanche to kind of pick the golf course before any of the home lots were we're picked, we're picked out or designated. So but I know that was a challenge, like how to take people from the highest part of the property to the lowest all in one hole, and you know, still try to keep the golf course somewhat walkable.

00:58:54
Speaker 3: So yeah, I was when I was out here last night, I was thinking about I think I'm not, like I would say, I'm not a mountain golf expert, but to me, the tricky aspect of mountain golf, and what maybe stands out the most to me about this place is how like supremely walkable it is despite being mountain golf, and how the holes blend together a short tea degree in walks, And that one was the thing that stood out to me, like three drops two hundred feet. I had it on like on my drone. I had it at like one hundred and sixty meters, So I was curious, Now one hundred sixty meters, which you know, was like I was curious what the exact elevation. But then you know, I think you can't go up one hundred and eighty two hundred feet, No, but you could go up two hundred feet over the course of four holes right the way it does, and it gets you back up there, but it does it in a really dramatic and unique way each hole. It doesn't feel like you're playing just straight uphill for four holes, right, which is the key to the whole thing, because then you have, like, you know, it's it's such a cool property where you have like that front nine feels really mountainee, right, but then on the back nine you get back into that beautiful meadow.

01:00:14
Speaker 1: And that flat and open back there.

01:00:17
Speaker 3: I mean that to me is like, you know, it's about as beautiful as of golf ground as you can get.

01:00:22
Speaker 1: No, it really is. I think you know, they really looked out with this property. It's it's mountain enough, but you know we're kind of sit on this bench or this saddle between the two mountain peaks, you know, so we have one or two pretty dramatic holes that you would typically find with mountain golf. You know, just enough, but just you know, it's flat enough where you can keep it walkable and playable.

01:00:44
Speaker 3: What would you say, like in terms of you talked a little bit about the climate, but like, what are the challenges of that the property presents for maintenance.

01:00:54
Speaker 1: There's a lot of challenges, you know. I think one we kind of already touched on it was the weather. You know, being being near Lake Tahoe, you know, we don't get as much snows as right in the basin does. But I think just the short growing season is a challenge. And then you know, the unpredictable nature of the weather. You know, we just never know what we're gonna get for a winter. You know, we've had winters where we get one hundred inches of snow, which is pretty mild, you know, two three feet around the golf course for most of the winter. And then you know, we've had a couple doozies where we've gotten a couple hundred inches and just been buried until April fifteenth, and you're supposed to open in two weeks, you know, and you're looking at some of the greens that have what year was it not last year? The year before, you know, we were measuring snow depths and we had seventy inches on the fifteenth green, you know, in the middle of March and We're like, how are we going to open this golf course? How do you even get around? You really don't snow shoes. I mean, occasionally we'll take the snowblower out on our skids deer and you know, clear a path, But most of the time it's just you know, getting as close as we can in trucks and then hoofing it in there to take a look at the golf course.

01:02:06
Speaker 3: So with seventy inches on a green, yeah, what do you do.

01:02:12
Speaker 1: A lot of times we get out there in the wintertime and we'll start we'll start clearing it, you know, take a few feet off of it just to get it down, and that's you know, that's kind of a fraction what some of the other Tahoe guys get, Like the trucky golf courses they can have you know, ten to fifteen feet out there. So we usually try to get ahead of it and start peeling the snow off the greens at least.

01:02:34
Speaker 3: Is what's like the kind of the nightmare winner here? Is it the heavy snow or is it like a lack of snow do you have to worry about like I know, like in some extreme climates, like say the Nebraska sandhills. Like the nightmare is is the desecration potential of no moisture.

01:02:55
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, we've seen that in the past before too. My first few years here, like twenty thirteen twenty fourteen were pretty dry where we only had a touch of snow and the golf course set pretty open all winter and we've had to turn on the irrigation system and you know the middle of February and run a week or so of cycles to keep the place hydrated. The nightmare situation is when you get those late snows February March and you just you know, continue to get pounded with feet of snow. Those are the real the nightmare situation. The last couple of years, yeah, like the last couple of years. Yeah, twenty twenty two, I think, no, Sorry, last year was a brutal year, twenty three. You know, we just had so much dead grass and fairways. You know, we had to push our opening back and communicate to our membership. I mean, they know a lot of them live here, but and people that live in the Bay area, you know, they know how much snow and precipitation Tahoe got, So just try to manage that expectation level that we're going to open a little bit late this year.

01:03:54
Speaker 3: So when is like, to you the prime time for golf and the Sierra Mountains.

01:04:02
Speaker 1: You know, the summertime is fantastic. We never get too hot, but for me, the primetime September October, you know, you cool down into the seventies or low eighties and you get those nice, crisp nights. Greens are just running super fast with almost no effort, and just those beautiful fall days out here I think are the best to me.

01:04:23
Speaker 3: What in terms of like growing grass here, you have to be pretty it's got to be a really short window because I mean, even even now it's middle of August when we're recording this, you're getting low temperatures. I saw this week could get down to even in the thirties.

01:04:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, it's definitely a challenge. I mean coming out of spring, you know, you might have some warm days where you know, people think, oh it's golf season, you know, let's go, but you're still you know, stuck in the thirties every night. Sometimes we don't hit peak growing season until middle of June, fourth of July where we really see active growth and ramoon every day, so it's a challenge to pull it out of spring. Sometimes.

01:05:06
Speaker 3: You moved from Massachusetts out here, what was what was the transition from the northeast to the you know, mountain town like personally and professionally.

01:05:25
Speaker 1: That's a good question. I mean it was it was fun. I mean it was you know, I would think I was thirty, We had no kids, and you know, I just convinced my wife to move three thousand miles. I mean, we had heard of Lake Tahoe and what it was, but I actually had to google it, you know, I didn't had no idea what it was. So it was pretty neat moving out here from from the East Coast. I mean, granted, the golf courses and on the East Coast and where I worked was really beautiful. But the weather. The weather's probably been the biggest change. It's just so nice to come and you know, see the sun every single day. But that's also a challenge too, because every single day is productive. Like there's really never a down day where you know, you send people home because of rain, so you know, the season can kind of get a little long in that regards.

01:06:10
Speaker 3: I noticed that I really miss rain days, yeah, totally.

01:06:15
Speaker 1: And when it's windy here. You know, we always joke around we would we would much rather have it be rainy than windy. You know, the wind can just kind of beat you down from time to time. But you know, it was interesting. We've enjoyed our time on the West Coast. You know, we lived right outside of Boston before, so it was really fast paced. But no, it's been a nice change of pace moving to the West Coast. And I like grown grass out here for sure.

01:06:40
Speaker 3: So you were working at Old Sandwich and you came on at growing What was it like seeing a golf course before it opened and then being able to have that experience of the last push of growing into opening And what did you gain as a young superintendent from that?

01:06:58
Speaker 1: You know, that was a super fun time. I think growings are special because you know, obviously you get to see the golf course, you know, start from square one. Obviously, you know, I wasn't there for the shaping and the irrigation install but we took a you know, a premature golf course and got to see the evolution of it, you know, move all the way through. So the growings are super fun. I mean you're like a farmer. There's no golf out there. There's there's no early tea times. It's just all about growing grass and you know, constructing the place. And then you know, when membership starts to play and you open, you know, the whole scene changes. Now you've got to worry about early tea times and green speed and you know, pin locations and all the stuff that kind of comes becomes monotonous after some point. But you know, the construction and the project side of it is what I've really enjoyed it in the past and still do today. You know, I still like the construction aspect of it.

01:07:57
Speaker 3: What appeals to you about the construction aspect?

01:08:02
Speaker 1: I just think all of it, you know, I think the work is really fun. You know, it's just it's nice to watch the evolution of a golf course. Just start from square one and see those features develop over time and mature from you know, planting grass into a fully established golf course. It's just a unique experience.

01:08:21
Speaker 3: You have had a young superintendent that moved to Brambles and h Tyler and he, uh, you know, went into a growing what what type of advice did you give him when he when he took that job, and and have you I assume you you know, you guys generally stay in touch. What's that been like, kind of have you been living vicariously through his experience there?

01:08:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely, definitely live vicariously through his experience. I think I just told him to be patient. You know that things don't happen in a day, and you know it's gonna take two three years for you to be happy with the results. You know, kind of manage your expectation levels going into it, growing like that you've.

01:09:03
Speaker 3: Been here for twelve years. Yeah, I think like one of the interesting aspects of the superintendent world is this idea of your you start to cultivate talented young superintendents that move on. You know, your job is to totally nurture and educate and develop young talent in the industry that eventually leaves. Right, what's it been like watching you know, you all of a sudden have you know, people all over the place, and you know, what's that experience like?

01:09:43
Speaker 1: It's super cool. I mean, when you're a young superintendent, you know, you're trying to do everything yourself. You know, you're working yourself sun up to sundown. So it's just fun to find these young guys that are super talented and just have such drive and determination. You know, like Hyler was fantastic. Sean Gorman, who works for US now, is unbelievable as well. It's just nice to watch them grow as as individuals. And you know, I think I got pretty good at it. You know, it took a long time as a young superintendent to let go of the responsibility and you know, break away from doing all the tasks yourself and kind of set people free. But you know, I think giving them a large a large part of part of responsibility in managing the crew and just letting them make decisions on their own. And you know, they really feel like they've they've built the program here. So that's been a you know, I don't know if you'd call it liberating, but I think there's just been a key to success.

01:10:44
Speaker 3: I feel like to me that I was talking with a group of younger superintendents last week at a Toro event, and I was to me, that is where young superintendents trip up maybe the most is where they're unable to, you know, not do the work themselves. And there's so much more power in allowing other people to do it because you can't be everywhere on a on one hundred and sixty acre, two hundred acre, whatever the acreage that you have to maintain at your.

01:11:20
Speaker 1: Course, right, and you know, it's it's hard to break away. I mean you as an assistant or an intern, you know, you grow up doing all those tasks like doing the top dressing, doing the mowing, you know, doing the projects, and then when you transition to superintendent, it's it's hard to break away from that stuff into a you know, a more managerial role. You know, especially when you have twenty five, you know, thirty plus people on your staff. Eventually you just have to succumb to it and put faith in other people. But you know, I think that's what really builds your staff and your depth and your staff is when you give them a big, huge chunk of responsibility and let them run with it.

01:11:58
Speaker 3: What's been your most uh successful kind of managerial revelation? Like, what's been the Do you have any moments where you know you feel like a light bulb went off with managing people here?

01:12:16
Speaker 1: Yeah? I think you know, back to what I just said, you know, when I just when I broke away from being so involved in the day to day operations, I think that was a big change for me.

01:12:25
Speaker 3: Was there a moment that, like you you let go of something like do you do you remember a specific moment.

01:12:32
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe when I started to have kids and mature a little bit, when I just realized that, you know, I say it to Sean sometimes too, like I kind of just realized, like, you've you have way less control than you think you have, you know, and eventually you just have to let go and and just know that it's going to work out.

01:12:49
Speaker 3: I I agree, like kids are kind of a life changer. The way you think about staff and people and everything change just so much.

01:13:00
Speaker 1: I feel like, yeah, totally, you know. I think if you hire the right people and you set the expectation level from the beginning and just set that bar and let your stuff run with it, that's where we've had the best results this.

01:13:15
Speaker 3: You obviously have a short window of golf here, and I think the superintendent industry one of the biggest challenges is work life balance, where you know you've got a short window. Everybody wants to play golf, yeah, and you could conceivably work the sun up to sundown every day. Yeah, how do you go about balancing your time on and off of the golf course and as well as your staff.

01:13:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a great question. You know, it's hard to do. I can't say I've ever perfected it, you know. I think every year we go back to the drawing board with schedules and you know, days off and trying to program in you know, time away from the golf course. But you know, with the short season, you kind of you eat, sleep, and breathe it. So I think it's just the best way to go about it is just you know, when you leave the property, just try to leave it all behind you, and you know, programming as many many vacations and two three day off spurts as you can. You know, we've kind of gotten in the habit of breaking away for you know, five six days in the middle of the summer or beginning of August, just to kind of reset the bar a little bit, you know, before we finish the home stretch, and you know, encourage our employees to do that too. You know, right around the fourth of July you start to see everybody just kind of melting out. You know, April and May are always the toughest months. You know, it seem easy, but you know you're trying to start a golf course or open a golf course, and you know, we usually have twenty five or thirty days to do everything, you know, all our spring cultural practices, all our bunker modifications and adding sand and all that. So by the fourth of July, everybody's pretty dead dog tired.

01:14:57
Speaker 3: Where have been your favorite place is to take a break?

01:15:01
Speaker 1: It's for like vacations. Yeah, you know, I think some of my best vacations have been. We love Canada, you know, it's always fun to just go there anywhere with the beach or you know, the ocean. My wife loves the ocean. So we've kind of gravitated towards Hawaii just because it's used to be too far from the East coast, and now it's only five hour flights, so we find ourselves there more often than not.

01:15:27
Speaker 3: It's a good spot. I think one of the most stunning aspects of this golf course is the native grasses and just kind of the visual aesthetic that you guys have cultivated here. Can you describe the native here, what makes it unique and what goes into maintaining it?

01:15:49
Speaker 1: Sure, so most of the native here is pine trees, you know, Jeffreys and Ponderosa's and then underneath that there's a lot of sage and bitter brush and a few native grasses. Some of them we've planted, some of them have moved in on themselves, you know. I think the hardest part of maintaining it is just to make it look like we haven't done anything to it. You know, we can't really go mow it down, or we can't really take a tractor in there. So sometimes we joke that like fifty percent of our time has spent, you know, clearing native I was actually joking with Bill the other day about Pinehurst and we went there and played golf a couple I think it was a year ago. You know, we saw those guys one hundred and fifty yards off the playing corridors in the woods, and we're just kind of joking because that's kind of what we end up doing here too. You know. It's a lot of hand picking of stage, you know, all handwork raking to make it look well, one playable, you know, it's no fun to lose a golf ball all day long. And two just to keep that natural look to it, you know, like we didn't do anything.

01:16:58
Speaker 3: You're having to train up your staff, find what plant you want to keep, what you want to get rid of. Yeah, is that is that a challenging aspect of it is just people understanding what what to keep and what to get rid of.

01:17:13
Speaker 1: No, our guys have been really good at it. You know. We used to do it with many excavators. We tried that for a few years and then ultimately we just figured out that the best way to do it was to send a group of guys out there to just attack a hole by hand. That's where we've had the best results. I think the hardest part about it about keeping the native in good shape is managing the traffic, you know, keeping carts out of it, whether it's our staff carts or member carts, and just trying not to get you know, trails built in or you know, all this cool looking native all trampled down. That's been hard, hard aspect to manage.

01:17:51
Speaker 3: I mean the member cards I can speak from experience. They're aggressive with with stopping you. I was trying to get on some maintenance trails last night. It was making me reverse out.

01:18:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's pretty funny.

01:18:04
Speaker 3: So I think the member carts are pretty dialed in.

01:18:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, they are are pros do a good job of the geo fencing.

01:18:11
Speaker 3: So are you guys responsible for I mean, the entire property is what about sixteen hundred acres?

01:18:20
Speaker 1: I think the whole property is twenty one hundred acre, yeah, twenty five if you include the ranch down below us.

01:18:28
Speaker 3: Are you responsible for all all of the property.

01:18:32
Speaker 1: No, So the golf course sits on about one hundred and fifty one hundred and fifty acres, and then we do a lot of landscaping for the club and all the different entities or amenities, and then we do a couple of things for the hoa and some snow removal.

01:18:49
Speaker 3: I was curious. I saw that there were like trails and stuff, and I was curious, what like trail maintenances versus versus golf course maintenance.

01:18:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. We do the trail maintenance too. That's a super fun part.

01:19:00
Speaker 3: Of the job. How what goes into maintaining a trail?

01:19:04
Speaker 1: You know, it's not too bad. It was fun building them. We hired a guy years ago who built this awesome trail network. You know, we have the Clear Creek trail and then we have the Headwaters trail and our Overlook trail behind the first tee and just we've continued to add on to it through the year, so there's a pretty nice I forget what the mileage is, it's probably fifteen twenty miles of trails. The mainance isn't too bad. You know now that we have more people living here, so they get used quite a bit more. At first, it was pretty difficult because nobody was walking them and we'd have to go out and keep them clear. But mainly it's just bucking up trees and occasional raking certain spots.

01:19:43
Speaker 3: What did you talk with the guy that built the trails and like what went into the philosophy of building a trail. As someone who hikes and runs trails somewhat regularly, I've always been curious, like how someone goes about building a trail.

01:20:02
Speaker 1: I don't know how he did it. I mean, I thought he was an incredibly interesting guy who built all the trails through here. He would literally leave at seven o'clock in the morning and go out with you know, a shovel and a pick, and come back ten hours later and he would move, you know, he would hand dig the whole entire trail himself. I think he would just look at the maps like the topo maps, and try to keep the grade walkable, you know, for most of it, and just miraculously he just wiggled his way through all these mountain peaks out here. It was pretty neat. What a wild job. Yeah, it was pretty wild job.

01:20:35
Speaker 3: I mean, it's not that much different than golf architecture if you think about the trail and like what you're trying to achieve, right, you're trying to show diversity of landscapes, like you're trying to make it visually interesting. We're trying to make it a really easy to navigate walk. Yeah, like you know, and you have to bring it back to the same point a lot of times. Like obviously there are out trails. I've like always thought about writing something about about trail, like how how they mirror building a golf course.

01:21:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, they definitely do. That guy who did it for us, Jeremy, he definitely had a special knack for it. I was impressed. There's a there's an architecture to it, No, there is the certainly.

01:21:16
Speaker 3: I was curious, what like your native soils are like here because they look a little sandy. I know they probably aren't. They're like gravelly right.

01:21:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean rock If you looked at the specific classification, it's it's classified as a sandy loam, but it's basically DG decomposed granite soils.

01:21:36
Speaker 3: So what's that I mean, what's that like? How is that different from say a Midwest soil or what you were dealing with at Old Sandwich.

01:21:48
Speaker 1: You know, it's been a lot different. It's not the best soil to grow grass in, let's put it that way. It's pretty compacted and just slow draining. Old Sandwich was was definitely a lot easier, I'll admit that. I mean we sat on I don't know, one hundred feet of beach sand at Old Sandwich that was pretty well drained. So it's provided some unique challenges in growing grass for sure.

01:22:10
Speaker 3: This You came from Old Sandwich, which is all golf, came here, which is golf with houses. Yep, what are are there considerations that you have h with maintaining golf with houses.

01:22:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's been it's been different. You know, Old Sandwich had no homes and we had no real estate factor. We're here, you know, the homes are you know, the first few years there was really nothing, which was basically the same as old Sandwich. But now we have you know, a lot of a lot of homes scattered throughout the golf course, so it's been not too much of a challenge. Most of the homeowners are pretty understanding that, you know, there's eight o'clock tea times every day. We got to start at five. So we've gotten a few complaints over the years, but no, I think you know, it's in the back of your mind that you know, yes, we're we're a golf course, but we're also trying to provide an amenity that's you know, driving real estate sales. It's always top of mind.

01:23:05
Speaker 3: With Clear Creek. You were on staff as you went through an ownership change.

01:23:10
Speaker 1: Yep.

01:23:11
Speaker 3: What's that like from a superintendent role when you're when you're kind of going through when you're in that in between phase and adjusting to new ownership. What kind of experience was that like? And what would you say to someone that was going through that.

01:23:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a good question. You know. When I was hired in twenty twelve with that ownership, you know, they definitely had a great vision for the golf course. I think, you know, ultimately they just couldn't pull the whole thing together. With the real estate and then had to call in a little bit of help, you know, so our second ownership since then that started in I want to say it was twenty seventeen. They really pulled the whole place together, you know, put the right infrastructure in place. It was challenging. You know, you always have a little bit of doubt in the back of your mind, you know, if you're going to be successful or not. So I think some advice would just be, you know, keep focused on the product that you're trying to put out and things will fall into place after that.

01:24:16
Speaker 3: What type of infrastructure do they put in place? That kind of really helped take it to the next level.

01:24:26
Speaker 1: They basically had to put in everything, I mean, roads, gas lines, utility, water lines, like we basically had to put a whole new water line in from the valley because there was nothing up here. So, I mean, it doesn't seem like it's that remote of a location when you consider you know, it's adjacent to Carson City and Douglas County. But when you try to put in that infrastructure, we are, you know, ten miles up in the mountains from there. So that was a unique challenge to start from square one with everything.

01:24:57
Speaker 3: Where do you guys source most of your your staff from.

01:25:02
Speaker 1: Most of our staff comes from from Mexico. We use the h TB visa program that's been super successful for us, and then a lot of our staff lives in Carson Valley.

01:25:13
Speaker 3: What in terms of if you were if you could have one innovation in the in the turf world, what would be the thing that you would you would want the most? What development would you want to see the most? Or do you think we'll have the biggest impact on the industry in the next ten to fifteen years.

01:25:33
Speaker 1: You know, I think the autonomy autonomous mowers and the robotics and some of the sensors that we use show a lot of promise, whether it's autonomous fairway mowers or like some of the sensors that we use to measure moisture readings. I think a lot of it's still, you know, it in its adolescence right now, but some of the stuff that we've used is showing a lot of promise that that's helped us a lot so far, Like moisture meters on the back of our faraway moors have been pretty popular. You know, I think we're still fine tuning, you know what the parameters are for those, But I think the technology is really going to change the game in the next five to ten years.

01:26:12
Speaker 3: Does that allow you to like that stuff like moisture meter on the back of a faraway moor. Does that allow you to do that? Is a staff savings time optimization in terms of maintenance, And how do you re re I guess, redistribute that time around, Like how does that kind of process work from when you gain time back or are able to optimize something, how do you redistribute the time.

01:26:44
Speaker 1: That's a great question. You know, I think we're seeing it it come to life, you know, in real time right now, where every you know, all those processes where we you know, started to measure moisture readings twenty years ago with a TDR and we would send people out to do that work by hand, and or we would just look everything, you know, look at the golf course every day and you know, field observations and make make our decisions off that. Now we're using you know, data to drive all those decisions, which is really going to change the game. So yeah, optimization. You know, we have people instead of you know, handwatering fairways all day they're doing something else instead of you know, sticking to moisture meter in the ground five hundred times throughout the day. You know, we really like the the GS three ball that the USGA has come out with. I think it's you know, it's building in a data set for us where we just have some predictability of what's going to happen on the golf course. You know, we know what certain practices, you know what the outlook's going to be in five or ten days. Now, we know how to manage our plant growth growth regulator applications, and we know what's going to drive you know, green speed and you know, produce the best services out here.

01:27:59
Speaker 3: How does that GS three ball work? How do you use it? And how does it what does it provide you?

01:28:06
Speaker 1: We take it out almost every morning and we measure green speed, firmness, and then smoothness and trueness with it. You know, I think for us, it's just it's taken the guesswork out of a lot of things for us. You know, we know what what surfaces or what speeds we're going to get from mowing or you know, double mowing and rolling. We know what a vertical mowing or a top dressing is now going to do to our our smoothness and our trueness factors, you know, with the short season and mountain golf, one of our goals the past few years has just been to kind of maximize our members time spent here. So say we have one hundred days. You know, we're open for one hundred and eighty, but we have one hundred days of primetime golf. We our focus has been, Okay, let's take those hundred days and let's let's try to have as minimal amount of disruption as we can and try to put out the best product, you know, ninety five of those hundred days, you know, just try to limit the interruptions for our membership, you know, and being being so you know, being somewhat of being a seasonal club. You know, yes, we have some members that live here full time that play every day, but we might have groups that only come in for you know, one week a year. So really we want to put our best foot forward, you know, every single every single day of the summer.

01:29:30
Speaker 3: What's been the best way for you guys to have that minimal interruption while still providing like as good a playing conditions as you can. Every day, knowing like you have to have maintenance time.

01:29:42
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, no, I mean you have to do the maintenance. You know. I think we've scaled back our cultural practices over the years. You know, we used to top dress just for example, we'd say, okay, you know, we all grew up top dressing every two weeks because that's what someone told us that we should do for that production or managing organic matter levels. And then you know, as like new data collection has come out with moisture meters, the GS three ball, you know, O M two four six, we have a set of data to look at where we know, you know, what the results are going to be now. So now instead of top dressing every two weeks, we can push that to you know, top dressing every single month per se and just lightening the load during our high peak golf season and achieve the same results.

01:30:32
Speaker 3: It's interesting. So, like, I like it was curious with like the idea. I feel like there's a superintendents that like to do you know, they kind of feel everything out versus then there's very data driven and basically the data has told you guys that you might you have to do less than what you would like instinctually do.

01:30:54
Speaker 1: From exactly standpoint. Yeah, I think you know history and instinctually you're saying, okay, I need to do these things because we all grew up in the golf industry doing all these things. But now we're able to say, Okay, we're going to get the same results, but we're only going to do half of those processes throughout the summer. So it's really been eye opening. I mean, I think, you know, golf in the future, five ten years from now, you're still going to have that art side of it and that feel side of it where you're out there every day, you know, knocking putts or walking on putting greens. But the data's really helped, you know, open our eyes to what's possible.

01:31:30
Speaker 3: It's a stunning property. Where's your favorite spot on the property? Do you have a place that kind of every time you're driving by you have to stop and kind.

01:31:41
Speaker 1: Of look around. That's a great question. I'd say probably just that area right there that we're looking at on the wall behind two Green. I probably have five hundred photos from that same spot in my phone number thirteen as well. You know, I'd say it's kind of our signature hole. I probably have five hundred photos of that green in my phone. I should go through and delease some of them someday. But yeah, just beautiful vistas from a few key spots here on property.

01:32:11
Speaker 3: Yeah, that thirteenth reminds me a lot of fourteen at Lacc actually, the way that hole, Yeah, it works where you have like on the right, you have that fall off that canyon almost and the green plays out to like a spectacular infinity edge. And yeah, it's really similar green shape. It's like a kind of a crazy how similar to me that hole is.

01:32:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really cool.

01:32:35
Speaker 3: It's a yeah, that's it's a stunning property. It's one of the places that you realize like how cool golfing and different landscapes can be.

01:32:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think three Te's is right up there as well. I don't know if you stood on three Te's last night, but you know, I remember being here my first day and just walking out there and just going, wow, you know, this is quite the setting. You know, there's some cool alpine meadows that you look up into and just these tall mountain peaks off in the distance. I always thought that was one of the best looks on the property.

01:33:08
Speaker 3: What was it like coming out here as a as a Northeastern and like interviewing. I mean, I imagine that first experience was had to be crazy.

01:33:18
Speaker 1: Yeah it was. I think I was. I think I was just blown away by the mountain setting. You know, I grew up skiing and love in the winter, but you know, just the drastic landscape and the super tall mountain vistas really appealed to me, you know, coming from New England, where we just we just don't have that dramatic of a landscape, I think. So, yeah, that was really unique moving out here.

01:33:42
Speaker 3: What's all right? Before we wrap this up, we got to get into a little bit of a Tahoe guide. What's your favorite mountain to ski?

01:33:51
Speaker 1: Oh, that's a tough question. I love Kirkwood, Love Palisades. Yeah, it's probably a toss up between Kirkwood and Pays. All right.

01:34:01
Speaker 3: What's your favorite beach in summertime?

01:34:06
Speaker 1: No, my favorite beach is probably Whale Beach anywhere on the anywhere on the East Shore over there. It's pretty good. A little bit of a hike down too, but it's worth it.

01:34:15
Speaker 3: And then what are your what's your must go to like restaurant or or you know, food place, I guess that'd be a restaurant.

01:34:25
Speaker 1: That's pretty tough. I don't know if we have the greatest restaurants up here. It's probably a probably a taco stand somewhere.

01:34:33
Speaker 3: I was noticing that as we've been looking around it. Yeah, it's not the best. And then favorite hike.

01:34:40
Speaker 1: Favorite hike is probably Rifle Peak behind my house in Incline. Yeah, it's like two thousand or sixteen hundred vertical with a thousand of it in the first mile. So a lot of bang for your buck with that one.

01:34:54
Speaker 3: Not a not a not one to bring a toddler.

01:34:57
Speaker 1: Don't bring your kids on that one. That's a bad idea.

01:35:01
Speaker 3: That's great, all right, Mike big thank you to coming on and talking turf in your life with us. And yeah, congrats on taking care of a really spectacular place.

01:35:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, thanks for having me, and thanks for coming out. Glad you finally made the trip.

01:35:19
Speaker 3: So thank you for listening to another edition of the Friday Golf Podcast. I hope you guys enjoyed the jumbo pod. We'll be back next week. We'll probably be talking east Lake on Tuesday, and then who knows what we're gonna be doing it Thursday. Thank you for listening. Big thanks to PJ Clark for editing. PJ has been just an editing monster here getting these things on YouTube. If you haven't watched them on YouTube, if you're interested, they're up there. The recent yoke with Doakes are up there. I think those are particularly good watches, just legend Tom Doak. Hey, quick reminder if you're into what we're doing. If that Nebraska Sandhills thing really peaked your interests, if Mike Kunniff and Clear Creek peaks your interest, check out Club TFE. That's for you. It's one hundred and twenty dollars a year goes to support what we do, and what we do is provide a ton of content there. There will be a bunch of Nebraska Sandhills content on there. There is a profile about Clearcreek that went up last week up there, so check that out. The fridegg dot com slash membership it's one hundred and twenty dollars a year. You get a ton of content plus other benefits like pro shop discounts, early event access, CLUBTFE only events. That is we're trying to build that into a great community, so we'd love to have you in there, and if you are a member, big thank you to the support and I hope you enjoy it. So we'll be back next week. Thanks are listening to another pod and uh yeah thanks p J. M m hmm.