A Preview of The Country Club (ft. Gil Hanse)

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Hey, quick note up top here we have a preview video on the country Club at Brookline featuring drone footage and an interview with Gil Hants, and we will be premiering that video on the Friday YouTube channel on Wednesday evening at eight pm Eastern time. That's Wednesday, June first, eight pm Eastern. All right, on with the pod. I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset when I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.

00:00:26
Speaker 2: And when I find my ball in a frid Egg Friday Egg, the dreaded Frida egg, Frida egg, Frida egg, egg, Frida egg, bride egg.

00:00:32
Speaker 3: Lie, I'm about ready to run off the.

00:00:56
Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to the Frida Egg Podcast. My name is Garrett Morrison. I'm here today with Andy Johnson. How are you doing, Andy? You're outside?

00:01:04
Speaker 4: Yeah, I am. I you know, we're working on getting some Wi Fi back to back office at at the new residence. And in the meantime, I'm I'm outside while my daughter takes a nap. I think anybody can appreciate not wanting to wake up a napping almost two year olds. So we are, we're doing it out here. You're gonna get the nice ambiance of outdoors in this in this podcast.

00:01:33
Speaker 1: There you go, perfect ambiance for this podcast, which is about the country Club at Brookline. This course is i mean, basically all the important beats in golf history some version of each of those has occurred at the country Club. It's it's pretty incredible and so obviously it's the host of the twenty twenty two US Open coming up here in a couple of weeks. This is the first time it's hosted a US Open since nineteen eighty nine, and it's a pretty special place.

00:02:04
Speaker 4: Surtis Strange taken down Faldough, yep, exactly. We've done it. We've done spotlights on the shotguns start on both of those players, and we covered the eighty nine US Open in detail with the Curtis Strange one.

00:02:18
Speaker 1: So really interesting US Open for a number of reasons. And I'll get into a couple of those. Obviously, two great players going head to head. But it's a little bit surprising to me that it's been that long because the country Club is such an important American course, and you know, the Ryder Cup has been there since then, memorable nineteen ninety nine Ryder Cup, the Miracle of Brookline, but there has not been a US open there in more than thirty years, and so it's a great opportunity to talk about this course, its history, and some of the recent work that has been done there by Gil Hans and his team. As we did with the Southern Hills podcast that we did in advance of the PGA Championship. We have a segment of an interview that we did with Gil Hants that's all about the country club, and we'll be playing that tape in this episode, and then you and I will discuss some things about the course as well. But first, just to kind of dig into some of the history a little bit. Country club dates back to the nineteenth century. So this is one of the first American country clubs, if not the first. I'm not sure whether that claim can be made about it or not, But originally this club was not about golf. It was it was really started in eighteen eighty two. It was chartered a couple of decades before that, but they really got going in the eighteen eighties and their focus was horseback riding and shooting and other outdoor sports that were not golf. And the reason for that is keep in mind. At this time, golf is not very popular in America, but it explodes in popularity in the eighteen nineties, and that is when the country Club at Brookline made its first golf course, which started with six holes, designed by Willie Campbell, who was one of these Scottish pros who came over and was, you know, really instrumental in the you know, birth of American golf. He designed the initial holes at the country Club, and then over the next number of years the course was gradually expanded and lengthened to the point when it had eighteen holes. It was a full championship course by the nineteen thirteen US Open, and this is one of the most important US Opens in golf history. Francis we met beat Harry Varden and Ted Ray in a playoff, and you know, it's some consider it the greatest tournament ever played. There's been a fantastic book by Mark Frost about it, There's been a movie about it. I think people are aware of this tournament and its significance in American golf history. You know, beating these two players was a big, big deal. So that's you know, that happened at the country Club. A number of championships have been held at the country club over the years. It expanded to twenty seven holes in nineteen twenty seven. That was when William Flynn added the Primrose nine. And William Flynn, you know, really important American architect. You've done an episode about William Flynn. What are some of the other courses that he's designed, Shinnakok.

00:05:20
Speaker 4: Hills, Necock Hills, Cherry Hills, and Denver. A ton of golf courses in the Philadelphia area, such as Lancaster which will have the US Women's Open in a couple of years, Huntington Valley, Rolly Green Manufacturers, catant It, you know, a really a top flight architect of the Golden Age for sure.

00:05:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, so William Flynn was here and now I'm not sure he designed the Primrose nine, which was originally intended to be kind of for kids and older people and for women golfers. That was how it was imagined, kind of this sporty nine. But I'm not sure if William Flynn had an in fluence on the rest of the course, whether he made updates to the rest of the course, But there does seem to be a kind of stylistic cohesion that emerged at the country Club over time, and I wonder if William Flynn had some influence on that, or you know, whether he was brought in to consult on the other holes. I'm not sure. There's a lot of aspects of the country Club's history that I'm a little bit vague on, so I'll be looking forward to like learning more as the US Open approaches. Maybe there will be some articles on it.

00:06:29
Speaker 4: It's an interesting thing because obviously the name the country Club, it's a synonymously really the first country club. And like many country clubs, it has a long and you know, winding architectural path with this golf course. And really, you know, we usually see these championships at your pure Breads. You know, this is an Alistair McKenzie or at Southern Hills. This is a Perry Maxwell golf course. It Tilling has. This one is at a mut and it's a beautiful mutt. You know, it's that that great dog that that you know, everybody always says, hey, what kind of dog is that? Because they're curious and they see it and they're like, that's a beautiful dog, and it's you know, one of the unique things about being a mut is that it's got a lot of the different aspects of the course to look at and a lot of different stylistic things, but all together it works. You know, it's got some some mounding and different things that would be more associated with very early architecture. It's got you know, Flynn features where it just uses the land and has these dramatic ridged ridge holes that work really really well. And then obviously with Gill coming in and adding some of his flavor to it, you know, it all fits in together. But it's not one of those courses where you just say, oh, what a great you know, Flynn core. There's a lot in this golf course besides William Floyd.

00:08:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the product of a really complex, long evolution and so crediting it to one architect is always going to fail. And you know, I think that's a thing that you often see with courses that were built before the nineteen hundreds, because in the early nineteen hundreds that's when the Haskell ball was introduced and courses had to change. So any courses that were built before the Haskell ball, they became something usually something completely different after the Haskell ball, And then that sort of happened again in the nineteen twenties, there was more length being added in the game. Players were getting longer, and co and clubs had more money, and so they got to go back to their courses and renovate. And so courses that were pre Haskell Ball not only had to go through the Haskell Revolution but also the nineteen twenties when courses were making these addition and kind of participating in the boom of American golf and American golf architecture. So any courses that were built back then, you know, they're going to have these kinds of design histories where you can't credit the course or in even any particular hole to a specific architect because they have grown so much over the years. And so that's what you have at the country Club, all right, just to kind of finish out some of its history. You know, you get into the eighties, Rycee Jones comes in and he doesn't do the thing that we associate now with Reese Jones. He doesn't do kind of a Robert Trent Jones monsterification lengthening narrowing of the course necessarily. He does in the eighties what he calls then a restoration. And you know, I've talked to a number of people about this kind of posing the question. Reese Jones calls this a restoration what he did in preparation for the nineteen eighty nine USO, and was it a restoration, And the answer has generally been it had a lot of the characteristics of a restoration. You know, he took out some of the stuff that had been done earlier by I believe Jeffrey Cornish. Jeffrey Cornish kind of added some you know, containment mounts to the course and did some things that made it look not you know, properly antique. Rhese Jones brought back some of the esthetics, some of the grasses, some of just the look of the course, but he didn't remove trees, and so there were some things that remained to be done. He didn't. I don't think he really expanded greens either, certainly didn't expand fairways. Fairway expansions still haven't really been done there.

00:10:40
Speaker 4: When you look at the green expansions that were done, you can see and you'll see this at the tournament. You'll see the overheads of and you'll if you pay attention, you can see the old grass lions and the new grass it is unbelievable to look at how small the greens were before Guilt did his green restoration and expansions.

00:11:02
Speaker 1: Just tiny, and they became part of the courses identity. I think that small greens at courses like the Country Club are the reason that a lot of people think that so called old school courses have small greens. Yeah, and that's not really the case. You know, old school courses are mostly quite the opposite. If you're talking about old school Golden Age of golf architecture, the greens tended to be much bigger than what you saw at the Country Club or Pebble Beach. But it was because of courses like the Country Club having these tiny greens that people often think that that's what old fashioned golf looks like. In any case, so Reese Jones did his thing, and it was a really important moment in golf architecture where suddenly a lot more people knew about the concept of restoration. And then, of course there were architects after Reese Jones who consulted at various clubs like the Country Club and did restoration that was maybe a little more historically faithful than the work that Riese Jones did. In nineteen eighty nine, but he deserves some credit for at least, you know, promoting that concept, all right. And then finally last step in the evolution of the country club. There have been a number of architects who have visited over the years that I haven't mentioned, but gil Hans came in and started consulting in two thousand and nine, and so this is actually one of Hans's sort of not early jobs, but mid period jobs. This wasn't part of like the recent big wave of Gilhant's historical renovations. He started at this club not long after he did the restoration at Los Angeles country Club North Course, and so he has been working at the country Club for a great deal of time, kind of doing the gradual work that we no longer really associate with him. We associate Hans with these big, spectacular, all at once projects like he did at Southern Hills or Oakland Hills. But here at the country Club, he's been doing more peace by piece stuff, and I think that's part of the reason that, as we'll discuss later, they're still is stuff that remains to be done that he probably still wants to do at the country Club.

00:13:06
Speaker 4: Yeah, totally. This is a restoration or historical renovation, like the way most clubs did it at that time period. I feel like there's been a huge movement lately, and this was led by clubs like Wingfoot or Oakland Hills or Southern Hills that says we need to shut down or we need to do nine and nine. And the way a lot of clubs did that before that was just piecemeal. And you see that with a lot of the other great courses. And one of the benefits of that, I think with the Country Club in particular, is that it still has this rustic feel. And I think that's one of my favorite things about it is the statics of it is that it is an old place. It is a very important place. It's a very historic place, a founding five club of the USGA, and it looks old. I think it is a little silly when an old course comes out of a restoration and looks brand new. It just you know, and you have the monostan turf at the Country Club, you still have a wide array of grasses, and it just looks lived in, It looks worn. It beautifully lived in place. And I think that's one of the things that I love the most about the country Club is just the aesthetics and how it fits the place that it is Boston. You know, of course that came out brand spank and new of a huge restoration at the country Club. That wouldn't work with Boston.

00:14:39
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, totally agree. It's that's always the tension with this work that people are doing. You know, you may do things that make the turf quote unquote better, but in the process you may also lose some of the feel that makes the course special, and that differentiates old courses from new courses. You know, a big part of what we love about old courses is that they feel like they're really part of the landscape. They've had time decades to settle in. And when you redo something all at once, sometimes you can lose a lot of that and you might gain a bunch of things on the other end of it. There might be some real benefits to doing things that way, but there are also some costs that aren't discussed very often. So I think that's a big one with the country Club. And it does look it looks amazing like the aesthetics, the colors, the textures are so cool there all right, So to get into some I want to set up this Gil Hant's tape here, this conversation that we had with Gil about his work at the course and what he thinks about the course. But before we get into that, I want to try to clarify for people as much as we can what the routing is that they're going to see at the US Open, because it's not just the course that gets raided in magazines. The course that gets raided in magazines. The country club is the Clyde and Squirrel Course, which is the non Primrose nine. It's the non William Flynn country Club course as it exists now Clyde and Squirrel. At the US Open, what we're going to see is the Championship course or the composite course. I don't think they have a single name for it, but it consists of holes from all three nines, so it kind of ranges across the property. And the championship course that we're going to see in twenty twenty two is different from the Championship course that we saw in nineteen eighty nine. It has changed, and so Andy, could you explain, having been there recently, basically what decomposite routing there.

00:16:41
Speaker 4: Is for sure. So it is mostly the Clyde and Squirrel golf course, so the golf course that's ranked it is mostly that, but the fourth, the eighth, and the ninth holes are skipped and in their place is the ninth hole from the prim Rose, the first and the eighth hole. So the way it works is you play one, two, three, the way the normally is done, and then you skip to what is usually the fifth hole of the Clyde's Squirrel routing, but the fourth hole runs right there. It's an easy walk, it's a manageable the way it kind of fits in. It easily gets there. Then you play the normal routing through that all the way till the seventh hole, and that's where things kind of change. So from there you kind of jump across. Normally you would go keep going around that, you'd play the eighth and ninth holes, and then you go to the tenth hole, which is a different you know, it's a different tenth hole. But the way it works now is you go up the par five, which is usually the fourteenth hole. That's where it switches, and that is the eighth hole for this this routing change, and this is where the Primrose then makes its first entrance and it's a down hole par four. It's usually the ninth hole, the last hole on the Primrose nine, So this is a downhill par four, and then it picks back up into the normal routing of the country club, where you play the tenth hole and then you play the eleventh hole, the short part three, which is a new edition this year.

00:18:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that was enabled by skipping what is normally the fourth.

00:18:33
Speaker 4: Hole, yeah, which is a really famous hole.

00:18:36
Speaker 1: It is. Yeah, it's a cool hole. But also the you know, just to linger on three, four and five, the Clyden Squirrel three, four and five for a second, because the fifth hole on Clyden Squirrel, or the fourth hole for the Championship routing has been lengthened so much because the tea has been pushed back so much. Essentially, you're using all the length of what used to be the fourth of what is usually the fourth hole in the Client Squirrel, and you're adding that on to what is now the fourth hole on the Championship course. And so the transition from Championship three to Championship four is really good, Like it's you know, basically the t is right next to the green, but that exists because that that second hole of that duo has been lengthened so much. So that's basically why it works.

00:19:24
Speaker 3: Now.

00:19:24
Speaker 4: That transition works really well if you're playing the back t. Yeah, but if you're playing the beber T, then you just walk past a hole. Yeah, it's like a two hundred yard walk there. So it's a clunky one, but it's a really seamless one for the back tea, which is the most important thing here for the championship routing. So yeah, those holes occupy such great land. The other thing that it enabled by skipping four was a par four where they can put hospitality tons exactly. Yeah, so you talk about champion instructure infrastructure that that hole provides versus a short part three is substantially more.

00:20:04
Speaker 1: Yeah. So okay, so you were into talking about championship ten eleven and twelve eleven is the new hole, the drop shot par three cool hole. We can we can talk more about it later if you want. Actually we talk about it with Gil, So that's that's coming up later. You do ten eleven twelve.

00:20:20
Speaker 4: So ten is usually regular routing eleven and then the short part three is usually regular routing twelve. Yeah. So then you play the twelfth hole of the championship, which is regular thirteen, and you hop back into the Primrose. There you go, so the Primrose, and.

00:20:39
Speaker 1: This is where it gets really crazy. By the way, yes, with a thirteenth hole, So.

00:20:43
Speaker 4: Thirteenth hole is prim Rose one. But you play to the second green on the prim Rose course. So the first this is the crazy. One of the craziest holes I've ever seen in championship golf. I've never seen, you know, we hear about using differ for tea boxes. I've never seen a hole that plays from one tee to another green. This is like a cross country golf hole that actually works quite well. So U t off on one. It's kind of one is on prim Rose, kind of a shortest dog, hard dog like left par four, and it's followed by a short par three over water. There aren't any trees in the way, so you just play one t to two green on Primrose. So you're you're gonna see guys and you might see them hidden in the trees and they might ship out and you might see people play wedgshots from what is the first green on the prim Rose golf course. So literally play right over the green to the next to the next green. It is a it's a crazy hole, so it's now four hundred and twenty seven yards. The whole otherwise would probably be around I don't have the Primrose scorecard in front of me, but it would be around three hundred in three hundred ish yards, may a little bit longer. And then you play Primrose eight, which is a dramatic par five that plays up and we'll talk a little bit more about the par fives, but it occupies the same land as the other part five, which if you remember, was the fourteenth hole. So those greens are really close by, which connects you right to the fifteenth t of the Clyde and Squirrel eighteen routing, and that brings you right into too the clubhouse. So you play fifteenth through eighteen just as you would on a normal day at the country club playing the Clyde and Squirrel, but you just connect through this other par five that's green, is side by side of the usual fourteenth. So the fourteenth in the championship is a par five just like the fourteenth and the Clyde and Squirrel nine, but it's the eighth on the Primrose, not the normal fourteenth.

00:22:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so the two par fives, it's just two par fives in the championship routing, right, this is you're dealing with a seventy course here.

00:23:00
Speaker 4: So and one one thing about the early start. One other quirk is that the second hole is a converted short par four into a par three.

00:23:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it looks like it because there's like a little dog leg on it. Yeah, it's like a dog leg par three.

00:23:16
Speaker 4: Now, so well it's not really it's a straight shot. It's an easy straight shot.

00:23:21
Speaker 1: I mean, you can take a straight shot, but the way the way the hole is shaped, it looks a little bit like, yeah, like it has the bones of you know, a short dog leg part four. But it's yeah, I mean, and there's like a back tee there that's not going to be used for the championship.

00:23:35
Speaker 4: Stands on that or an entrance it's right by the entrance drive. It's so it's it's a logistical, you know, kind of effort to put this championship course together. And I believe they've almost had a different championship course every time they've had a tournament.

00:23:51
Speaker 1: Have they. Yeah, it wouldn't be surprising. I mean, you know, they've had a ton of US amateurs here and other you know, uh, other US events, But this is only the fourth US Open. You know, this was that that has been held at the country Club. It was held here in nineteen thirteen obviously, but then it was nineteen sixty three until they held it again, and then it was nineteen eighty nine, and now it's twenty twenty two. So there actually haven't been a lot of US Opens here compared to some other you know, rota kind of US open road to courses. But anyway, I hope people followed that and got something out of that. Basically, the championship routing on the course consists of holes from all three nines, and it's in the middle of the course that it really jumps over to the Primrose and uses some of the holes there. And at one point you will see players hitting approaches over one green to another green on the other side of some water, and that will be even crazier to people than the site of players hitting a t shot over a green at Southern Hills at the PGA Championship. So we're seeing a lot of crazy stuff. To get the proper length of championship courses these days.

00:25:02
Speaker 4: I will say explaining it is really confusing, but when you're out there, everything works together really well. Like the Championship course connects really well. There aren't any crazy green to tea walks like you're just it really flows together well and it really you know, what works about it is the proximity of those holes where you're flipping back and forth. Those green to teas are right next to each other, so it's a really easy change in the routing.

00:25:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's some really nice gathering points too. You know where you see Champ seven, Green, Champ ten, te, Champ eight, T, Champ twelve, green, Champ thirteen T. You know, a lot of that's around the same point in the middle of the property where they're going to have the practice range. By the way, the driving range is going to consist of holes on the course.

00:25:53
Speaker 4: Yeah, that range is on eight and nine, yes of Clyde and Squirrel, so that same gathering point would be eight and nine Green. Which those holes are really cool holes, totally really neat holes, but they're just kind of shortish Part four US. So to make the course a little bit earlier, they use those they interchange those other other holes in.

00:26:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, all right, so that is the championship routing of the country Club. Let's throw it to the conversation with Gil. We sat down with him a couple of months ago and just talked about everything to do with the country Club, his thoughts about the course and some of the things that he and Jim Wagner did in their renovation of it. And so let's go to that.

00:26:48
Speaker 3: Moving on to the country Club.

00:26:51
Speaker 5: I had a player that's in the field tell me the country Club along with Shinnacock were the two hardest courses he had ever played.

00:27:00
Speaker 3: What about it is so challenging.

00:27:03
Speaker 2: Uh, you know, it's a theme we're running on here with the greens, but it's just a small tilty greens. I mean, and they're tiny. Yeah probably, I know they're bigger than than Pebble Beach, but they're probably the second smallest set of greens I would think on it for major championships aside from Pebble. So I think, you know, you've got to you've got to play good golf shots in there. I think, you know, obviously US Open rough will be will be a big factor in that. And I think the other thing we saw it at Wingfoot, you know, Bryson had a plan to go in and he was just you know, he executed it and it worked. I'm not sure that something like that works at the country cook because you've got a lot of fescue and blueing, so you've got native like you know at Wingfoot. If you miss it in the rough, you're pretty much in the rough, right it's all bluegrass or think. But there's a lot more unpredictability at the country club where if you really start pulling it far left or for or far right, you're you're going to be in stuff this tall as opposed to you know, six inches tall. So I think that's going to be part of the character and part of the test as well is that there's a lot more native ground to it. The contour of the role they sort of up and down will You're not going to get a lot of level lives out there. So I think, yeah, I think it's it's it's a it's a full test, and now that it's been lengthened, I think it's probably got the you know, the length to challenge those guys as well.

00:28:26
Speaker 5: Do you think the small grains kind of would help prevent the kind of hit it as far and worry about your lie later. Obviously, wing foots greens were pretty big and a lot of them slowed front to back.

00:28:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think wing Foot and credit to Bryce, and it was uniquely designed to be receptive. Right. You get everything tilting severely, so it's going to take the steam out of a shot coming out of the rough, and as long as you got it on the green itself, it was probably going to hold up now putting. And he putt it great that week. So it was one of those things where I think that that thought process was applicable to Wingfoot, But I don't think it's going to be applicable because of what you said. Those screens are tiny and there's in a lot of the fronts are angled off, so it'll be harder to get into them.

00:29:14
Speaker 5: How does the country Club make an impression early in the round, Well.

00:29:23
Speaker 2: I think you've got the really probably some of the most interesting to part. I mean obviously not one, you know, one's just the old racetrack, So I think it's just it's a longer hole playing into that. It's probably a good just get away hole, and two being converted to a part three I think is a tough hole playing up that hill. A little over two hundred yards, so you know, part threes are always difficult. You know, us amateurs always think of them as being the easiest, but when you look at scoring average, they're always the most difficult for because we can all envision ourselves hitting one shot, whereas those guys, you know, it's they rather play a Part five with they can miss something and and and score that way. So I think you're starting up with a part three second and then three has got some of the best topography on the property. I mean, that's one of my favorite holes in the world. Let alone there, and it's got the whole package, you know, the way it rolls, the way if you get yourself, you take the most aggressive line, you've got visibility. If you don't take a good line, you you know, you have your visions obscured. And then Champ four.

00:30:26
Speaker 4: Is just hard.

00:30:27
Speaker 2: I mean that's just a long, long golf hole. So I think you know, those first four holes, you're you know, you're hoping to come out there even par, but the chances are it's and then you know, you get to Champ five, which is obviously a short four, so you've got a chance there to to start scoring a little bit. So it's a it's as as ross with it's a firm handshake in welcoming you to to the country club.

00:30:49
Speaker 3: Those holes also.

00:30:52
Speaker 5: Kind of introduce you to the really unique aesthetic of the country club. Could you could you talk a little bit about out the way the country Club just looks and how unique its environment is.

00:31:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think, you know, it's the rock out croppings are spectacular. You know. The removal of the trees that's occurred over the last twelve fourteen years I think has again restored the scale and the drama and the beauty of that property. I mean, it's a rugged piece of ground and it's a rugged golf course, which is great, and I think that's emblematic of, you know, the origins of American golf architecture. In New England, it is hard to find just perfect ground. So you kind of tacked and went to and fro and up and over hill and dale and that's pretty much the way the country Club is laid out. You're on a trek through an amazing piece of ground that's not always conducive to golf, but they figured out a great way to get through it. And I think, you know, the beauty of the rock out croppings and the fiscue areas is really something you looking across that landscape at that at the clubhouse, the Yellow Clubhouse, it really is. It's it's a truly special place in American golf. So I'm sure we're all delighted that it's that it's back there again.

00:32:08
Speaker 5: Over the years, the identity of the country Club, you know, really became the small greens and the small targets. But you guys did some expansions. Talk about the dimension that some of the expansions added to the greens.

00:32:25
Speaker 2: I think it allows the whole locations, well, we found a few more which they desperately needed on a couple of the greens. But I think it allows you know, back to that setup talk that we were talking about at Southern Hills. It you know, it allows John Bodenhammer and Jeff Hall and those guys a chance to have more options as opposed to knowing, Okay, this is a very small zone that we can we can put like the fifth Green, which just is an amazing amount of tilt similar to the Fifth Green at Marion. You know, there's really only a few whole locations there, and so It's one of those things where if we can just grab a little bit more space, then it gives them a little bit more flexibility and where they're putting it, and then I think it also brings some of the adjacent hazards.

00:33:11
Speaker 3: More into play.

00:33:11
Speaker 2: You can start tuck like some of the whole locations are created on six and sixteen, well regular routing six Champ five, and I'm horrible about that. I keep getting them all mixed up, you know, gives you an opportunity. There's some little crowns that they couldn't have pinned before because they were too close to the edge. And now we can also created a whole location on sixteen just beyond the bunker, and same thing on seventeen. So I think it's going to give them a little bit more flexibility and where they can put the whole locations based on the conditions and the firmness. And I think that that's been welcome. They're still tiny, I mean even you know, we're talking about maybe expanding a green that was four thousand square feet to forty eight hundred. It's not like we made it seven thousand.

00:33:53
Speaker 5: Were some of those greens? Was the decision made not to expand some of them.

00:33:59
Speaker 2: Yep, it was on a few of them, just because we really there was We felt like they were historically pretty close. And while we're not Jim and I aren't averse to restoring greens where slopes are not going to yield a whole location, sometimes we felt like that the challenge that was presented was probably more appropriate to leave it as rough or leave it as it is. So there were, Yeah, there were I would say probably six or seven greens that we didn't expand.

00:34:26
Speaker 5: Like Champ twelve. Was it just too severe like in the front part there.

00:34:31
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, I was walking around kind of wondering.

00:34:36
Speaker 5: With the short part three, this will be the first time they have that short part three part of the part of the championship. What what do you think that brings to kind of the flow of the round.

00:34:48
Speaker 2: Well, I think it literally has the flow of the round and that you're not walking past that hole that was always one of those sort of strange like Okay, you know, you finish here and then you walk, you know, three hundred yards by the time you get to the next tee. So I think it plugs that gap quite nicely, and I think it just fits in you know, really well with the overall flow of the entire golf course to have that part three set in there as opposed to you know, I'm trying to think you had a part three in the original change, you know routing, you had it on two and then seven, and then you didn't see another part three till sixteen. It's a long gap, you know, between between wholes. So I think that that was something where it really works out quite nicely to have that fit into the overall flow of the round.

00:35:31
Speaker 5: The architectural history of the country club's very, very complex, and so when you're doing a restoration there, what architectural history did you attempt to restore?

00:35:44
Speaker 2: We looked at photos from every era and we tried to figure out how to best handle it, and ultimately it came down to just sort of picking and choosing different eras. There was no and we never do, you know, Jim and I are never big fans of picking that so sort of golden date, like, okay, we're going back to that moment in time, because then that denies that any evolution that ever occurred on the golf course was good. And so we just feel like, listen, let's try and use to the best of our ability, our knowledge and what the club is trying to accomplish based from a members standpoint first and foremost, but then also from a championship standpoint and what ultimately makes sense. And so we found some good examples of like bunker style, you know, the originally they weren't the way they are now. That was an evolution over a period of time, and I think some of those tied into when William Flynn came in to do Primrose and then they got a little bit more sand flash on the faces and so then the gnarly sort of rugged edge was more of a you know, sixties I can't remember what year they opened, was there in the sixties, but it was more of looking at that photograph and so I think it was just trying to figure all that evolution back and just try and pick the highlights for each individual golf.

00:36:56
Speaker 1: Hol So part of the architectural history at the country Club is the Rhys Jones Restoration is what it was called in the late nineteen eighties, and it was one of the first examples of a really high profile project that was called a restoration. And so obviously the country Club had been the subject of a supposed restoration before you arrived, and so when you arrived, what remained to be restored or what were you looking at for bringing more of the historical character of the course back into play.

00:37:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think, you know, in all credit, he should get all credit for that, because he really started talking about it was great. I mean, it was nice that people started talking about old architecture and going back and restoring these types of features and character to a golf course. I think it was really an important moment for golf architecture, honestly. And I think, you know, he had had a longer term relationship there than Bill Kore and Ben Crenshaw came in after the Ryder Cup and some and did some minor tweaks there, and then eventually they handed off to us, and really what we were focused on was a lot of more tree removal, more of a restoration of the landscape because that had just been evolution over a period of time. That wasn't like a conscious architectural decision to really put a lot of trees onto it. They just grew, you know, was that benign neglect which nobody was setting out to make a statement or a negative change. It just happened, and so I think we were trying to move some of that stuff back, repeal some of the growth, and then also preparing for the US Amateur in twenty thirteen. It's like, okay, what needs to happen now, because the last championship they had there was the Ryder Cup in ninety nine, is like, Okay, in those fourteen years, the game's changed dramatically, So what do we need to do to make the golf course a challenge for the best amateurs in the world in that case, and so I think it was trying to find bactees, It was trying to move bunkers downrange. It was ultimately trying to address grassing lines, you know, either through widening, and then there was some infrastructural stuff improving drainage. So it wasn't as if we were brought in to make wholesale architectural changes. It was really, okay, how do we burnish this beautiful golf course and try and get it to a point where it's presented better but ultimately also provides a modern test for the best golfers in the world.

00:39:21
Speaker 3: Outside of that opening stretch, what are some of the holes that you're most excited to see the pros play.

00:39:28
Speaker 2: I got to get the routing right. It's the long bar five in the back fourteen right, it would be fourteen yet because now it's hooking in and then you're going behind.

00:39:42
Speaker 3: It was fourteen fifteen.

00:39:44
Speaker 2: I do this all the time because because we've had four different iterations, there's actually a member who came up with the one that we're using for the for the US Open. So it was it was our main contribution was, listen, let's try and get rid of four what happened Champ four regular four because you're basically playing that short par four and then almost walking the entirety of it back to play the the back tee for what it was Champ five, And so that was then we put in the short par three to take the place of that hole, and then ultimately, you know, how do we figure out the rest and then so that that long par five, which is fifteen. I'm excited to see because I think it's one of those sorry fourteen fourteen, it will be a if you don't hit it in the fairway off the tee, you're not getting up top and then watching those guys have to sort of lay back to a really a long yardage and then have to play completely blind up the hill into that green. I think could be really interesting challenge. So I think the t shot there is really going to require you got to hit in the fairway.

00:40:46
Speaker 3: I mean, and that where you lay up to.

00:40:49
Speaker 5: If you miss the fairway, you're there's no way you can see anything.

00:40:54
Speaker 3: You're looking at a rock cliff. Yes, and then roughly it's about two hundred I.

00:41:00
Speaker 2: Think it'd be. Yeah, it's a long shot up there, and you got I mean those guys can hit those that shot high. But I mean if you're an amateur, you're you're trying to hit up a rock face from that distance. Yeah, I think that'll be an interesting hole just because the te shot, I don't know that people. A lot of people are talking about how difficult that tea shot is going to.

00:41:18
Speaker 5: Be, and the green is not easy if you're on the rock in the wrong spot, if you miss that.

00:41:22
Speaker 2: Third shot absolutely yeah, I mean just sitting in that kind of canoe that bowl, if you get yourself out of position, it's going to be a hard one to play into. So I think that's that's an interesting hole, you know. The little part three, I think is gonna be fun to see how they do because there's some really diabolical hole locations on that you know that with the expansion, just trying to get it back closer to the edge, and the penalty for a miss is pretty severe. I mean, those bunkers are not easy, and if you start, you know, you miss it long right or long You're you're in a wetland area, so you're looking at dropping in a hazard or maybe finding your golf ball and being idle to chop something out of there. So it's I get it. It's a short club, it's down hill, but I think even that is going to exacerbate the challenge more because you're so far downhill it's almost I'm not even sure it's a full club for those guys. So I think that'll be a fun one.

00:42:10
Speaker 1: To watch, and seventeen as a whole that people will probably see a lot on the on the telecast. I think it's a pretty interesting hole.

00:42:16
Speaker 3: A little bit of history happened.

00:42:17
Speaker 2: A little bit of history things happen there and in that fair way, Yeah.

00:42:22
Speaker 1: You know the garden bunker, So what are what are some of the architectural features of that hole? I mean, I think people probably can call it to mind because so many famous moments have happened there. But what about the design of that hole might be might be interesting.

00:42:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, that'll be a hole that'll be interesting to watch, but almost not in a positive way. That's probably the hole that I'm most worried about, and I'm not it's not me that, you know, I think architecturally, I don't know how they're going to play that. I mean they could in theory, they get the right conditions, they could just pound it and almost drive the green because it's you know, it's it measures whatever, three eighty three ninety, but that's on the dog leg if you go directly towards it. I mean, they could, in theory goes So we've added some little chocolate drops down the left hand side and the rough. I think that rough over there is going to be extremely penal. I think the USGA has made a decision to try to do that. But then if you don't take that angle, do you just hit an iron and lay up short and then still have a very short iron into the green? So I have a feeling it's going to be one where I'm not sure if they're all just going to hit iron off the tee and just take all the trouble out of play and then just trust that they can hit a short iron in there, which would then in theory, not be all that interesting to watch. Or are they going to all try and pound it down there, or are you're going to get a mixture of both. I mean, the best result would be right if guys are willing to take a chance. It's a whole I'm just I'm just not sure what's going to happen there. It's really an interesting when the other ones you can to a certain degree predict or at least have some solid thoughts about what they're going to do. But that one and the way the hole sort of sits and then turns on the ridge, you know, picking a point to carry over the bunkers, you know, on the through line, you're almost when you carry it, you're almost worried about it just going through the fairway on the on the far side, so you've got to turn it. Then that brings I mean, there's a lot going on there, and it'll be interesting to see what they do. But I'm hopeful it just doesn't turn into Okay, I'm gonna hit an iron, you know, or hybrid into the middle of the fairway and just take my chances.

00:44:29
Speaker 5: In a way, it could be a hole that distance has actually made more compelling it is.

00:44:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm hopeful it has. I'm hopeful it's not a hole that distance has made just boring.

00:44:41
Speaker 3: The chocolate drops you brought up, I'd love, you know.

00:44:44
Speaker 5: I think that's a common theme through the course, and what is appealing about chocolate drops or hummocks, whatever you want to call them as a as a hazard.

00:44:55
Speaker 2: The unpredictability, I mean, it's just where you're going to be or you're gonna be on the top of it, on the side of it, you're going to be in one of those little hollows, You're going to be standing on one of those you know, with the ball below your feet is going to be above your feet. I think it's just a randomness in the unpredicted. But because God knows, they're they're the most artificial looking thing ever, so in theory we don't really you know, we're trying to build natural looking things and they just conflict with us esthetically, or at least you would think they would. But in the proper context, like they're cant tansit has them, I mean in New England. I think they're kind of cool the way they've been treated and the way the grass grows, and.

00:45:29
Speaker 3: In a way they kind of mesh in with the rocks, right.

00:45:32
Speaker 2: Because that's generally what they are. It's just a pile of rocks, and they didn't want to move them too far away, so they just dumped them underneath there and they became, you know, a practical solution to a problem of building a golf course, which has then turned into really a kind of a cool architectural feature.

00:45:48
Speaker 3: Brian Schneider totally great.

00:45:50
Speaker 5: One of the courses he works at North Jersey, which is a Travis.

00:45:53
Speaker 3: Okay, the members wanted to play the.

00:45:56
Speaker 5: Course really right when it was not ready to play, and they said, okay, you can play, but you have to pick rocks up in the fairways as you play. And they have all these huge hummocks.

00:46:07
Speaker 3: And rock pile.

00:46:08
Speaker 5: There are just rock piles that the members just dropped, like, you know, weeks after the course advent started the like offense, and so they have them.

00:46:17
Speaker 3: They're just completely random where they are. That's where they sit. Now, that's awesome.

00:46:22
Speaker 1: I'm curious about the execution of a feature like that, because I feel like it's almost a bit of a trend at this point, the hummocks on some of these older courses, and it carries a bit of a whiff of like pre Golden Age architecture, you know, like Victorian style chocolate drops, and they can be really cool. But I have a hard time describing to people why these are different than containment mounds. You know, unnatural looking, you know, regular kind of humps and hollows that you know, we've all seen going down both sides of golf holes, and they don't look good. How do you make how do you make these little fields of hummicks look good? How do you execute those so that they don't look ridiculous or just you know, blatantly artificial and unpleasing.

00:47:10
Speaker 2: So what we kind of say is just make a mess and then track it in and see where you got. And it's not easy to constantly up and down and over, and it doesn't then the excavator guys just kind of tap them in and bang them down. So it's really just as you almost want to operate the bulldozer the machinery with your eyes closed is the way you want to try to do it so you have no idea what you're actually building, and that's the only way we found that you can replicate that stuff.

00:47:37
Speaker 5: It's like the McKenzie line, like, how do you build an interesting green?

00:47:40
Speaker 3: Hire the biggest fool in town and tell them to make it flat.

00:47:48
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00:49:48
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it just embodies New England, right, And when you think about New England at its core is like kind of the place where America was inhabited and where early America started really, you know, was New England. And one of the things that I feel like when you're there is that you're going on this adventure and the routing really works well for that because you start down in this flat and then right after the first hole, which you know was part of the racetrack and really flat too, you work your way up into the highlands and you know there is where you see the really cool stuff. It's where you have these rock out croppings and you have these gorgeous trees, and then you have these mounds. And the mounds are kind of walky, as Gil talked about it. They have like this little bit of you know, unnatural feel, but they work really well with the rocks because you see these other rocks and they're probably just rock piles, but these mounds, and what you're doing is you're tackling this really big landscape and you're trying to hit it over rocks, you're hitting it around rocks, you're hitting it through rocks at certain points. So with a third hole, you know, you're trying to thread the needle between those two huge rock out croppings. And really what it is is you're in this kind of almost high leans and you're discovering every time you're walking over hill, you're seeing something new. And it's a really thrilling place to play golf because of the way it navigates its nature, its place is that you are constantly you know, you're excited to turn the corner and move to the next hole to see what you have to tackle next. And really when you look at the aesthetics, so we talked about this at the beginning, but you know, having it look old, feel old, the grasses, you know, just present such a unique look that is quintessentially theirs because it's old, right, this is what the nature and the landscape wants it to be. So with that, it just is a really visually appealing place. Once you start down from fifteen off of fifteen T is when you return back down into the flat area that was formerly the racetrack. So after fifteenth T that's kind of the end of your your journey through these highlands and you return back to the flat land that has fifteen sixteen seventeen eighteen, so one and one as well, right, yeah, one fifteen sixteen seventeen eighteen are in one part of the land, which is this flat old race track, and then when you go up after two tea shot, that's where you go into this really dramatic, rocky, uh kind of forest.

00:52:42
Speaker 1: To say, yeah, so you kind of start on What I'm hearing is that you start on this racetrack area fairly flat, you know, not as exciting as the rest of the land, but the kind of purpose of the course is to get you out to this really interesting stuff below where you're there's all these rocks and these crazy undulations and some water stuff as well, and then it returns you from that, and so you're kind of setting out on an adventure and coming back. Like a lot of cool courses do that we've talked about.

00:53:13
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly, in that you're seeing, you know, kind of the recipes of what we like to see with what test players. You have a lot of different lies, uneven lies and the greens. They're different than Southern hills, they're different than Augusta. They aren't like small targets. They're small greens with you know.

00:53:34
Speaker 1: It's not like small targets within a larger green, is what you're saying. It's not like the undulations make these little little shelves and stuff where you put pins. It's more that they're just really fricking small, intimidating.

00:53:45
Speaker 4: Looking at greens, some of them have been restored and they're bigger and they have some of those small sections, but for the most part, a lot of these greens are just small with severe slope. So it becomes you're hitting from an uneven lie and you need to get to the spot where you have a somewhat flat putt. You're gonna see a lot of putts with considerable break on them because of how the greens just kind of a lot of them sit on the land and slope in a general direction.

00:54:12
Speaker 1: Mm hmm, yeah, okay, yeah, and this is sort of similar to Pebble Beach in a lot of ways, where, yeah, the main interesting thing about the greens, if there's anything interesting about the greens, it's that they tilt in a certain direction, and they tend to tilt in a direction that's not advantageous if you have played it safe.

00:54:32
Speaker 4: On the drive.

00:54:34
Speaker 1: And that's the kind of source.

00:54:35
Speaker 4: Of the strategy Pebble Beach with five hundred extra yart.

00:54:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, there you go. All right, so you've talked a little bit about what makes the course challenging. Is it primarily the topography with the small greens? What else is going to be hard out there? And you can talk about stuff that the USGA is doing on the setup as well.

00:54:54
Speaker 4: Yeah, so it's gonna be narrow, It's gonna be super narrow. Yeah, if the fairways are ribboned and the roff's going to be really thick. I was out there in what was at the beginning of May, maybe late April, beginning of May, and the rough was already pretty healthy, and it's only going to get more healthy. I think they did double fertilizer this year, is what one of the caddies told me. And and it's going to be it's going to be a hack out fest if you hit it in the rough. So it's going to be really you know what the USGA likes execution based who could execute the best. Now, you know, it's going to be one of those golf You're going to see guys struggle because of the lies that they get, and there they're going to be forced to, you know, play very defensive and hid it into a spot maybe short of the green, maybe you know, to forty yards and chip up and make pars. It is a golf course that's going to prohibit scoring more than it's going to enable birdies and bogies, if that makes sense, right.

00:55:56
Speaker 1: Instead of spreading out the range of possible outcomes, it's it's going to kind of concentrate the range of outcomes around some higher score, some pars and bogies as opposed to having that spread from the birdy to the disaster.

00:56:09
Speaker 4: All right, So it's gonna be different. It's gonna be different though than Wingfoot because of the topography.

00:56:16
Speaker 1: Oh okay, it relatively flat, and I.

00:56:18
Speaker 4: Think people are immediately going to say, oh, this is Wingfoot. But because of the topography and the greens being up on ridges, you're not gonna be able to bounce it up as much, and the greens being the other thing about it is the greens being so small.

00:56:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, Wingfoot's greens are restored. Those are larger greens with small sections. Here, a lot of players are gonna be missing greens.

00:56:41
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah. So if you're coming from the rough, you lose that spin and if you don't have you know, if you don't have an open front. They have a lot of open fronts out there, but then the greens are so small you don't have the runway necessarily to stop it.

00:56:56
Speaker 1: Do you think this means that there's gonna be more of a genuine premium on accuracy than there was a wingfoot, because what happened to wingfoot is you have these big open fronts to the greens, and so essentially what Bryson did is he hit it as far up the corridor as he could, hoping that he wasn't behind a tree but okay with being in the rough, and then he'd have a wedge out of the rough and be able to kind of run it on to this open front of the green and basically get it where he wanted it to go. What you're kind of saying is that that that openness to the greens isn't as much there, And so does that mean that hitting fairways is going to be more important?

00:57:32
Speaker 4: I mean, hitting fairways is important, right, That's going to be huge, But I don't think it's going to trump distance. I think hitting it far is still going to be the most important thing. It's just going to be the guy that honestly gets good lies. And you know whether that's kind of the corner I feel like that. The USGAS put themselves in with the setup with where they're you know, the way they've been thinking about things is it becomes someone a a championship of chance. I think nothing embodies these changes more than the first, the Primrose one, which is the thirteenth hole. The USGA brought the faraway in about six yards on the right may six to ten yards on the right side, which doesn't seem like a lot, but when you play the hole, it's a it's kind of a snapdog like left. This is the hole that plays over the green to the other green. It snaps hard to the left, and all the green reverse cambers from left to right, so all the fairway, the faariraway is running hard from left to.

00:58:38
Speaker 1: Right, so it's running into the rough that they added.

00:58:40
Speaker 4: They added the rough on the side where the balls naturally go to. So you know, this is a short ish. It's four twenty seven. You know you want to turn the ball over right to left here you have to. It's a hole that you probably would have seen a lot of guys hit three wood or iron on with a little bit more space. But at the you know, twenty yards wide or whatever, the fairway is there and it narrowed in. Your ball's almost always going to run into that rouff. So at that point, why would you ever lay up if you're not going to hit the fair away? And what is going to lead to I'm guessing this is just my guess, is you're going to see guys hitting driver over the trees and they're hoping to end in the right rof, which is going to leave them a short wed shot out of rough, over water into the green. And this is kind of like the cause and effect of I think of how they think of setting up golf courses. Okay, we're going to narrow we want this to play harder. This hole is four twenty seven. It's not that hard. Let's make it harder. And they're going to put the rough. They bring the rough in to make it harder, but they aren't thinking about, like the second effect of that is that when you bring the ruff in, it's going to remove any thought of hitting anything but driver off the tee. Everybody's going to hit driver over the trees into the right rof, which is by the next tea box, so there's no trees there. They're gonna hit driver up there and just wedge hack the wedge out of the rough onto the green, and and that's kind of like the way these things act out. And what happens is it removes all of the variant. So you aren't going to see many other strategies play out here.

01:00:25
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I mean because they could say, well, i could hit hybrid or three wood here, but I'm still going to be in the rough there because they've brought that side of the fairway.

01:00:34
Speaker 4: Want I want one hundred yards in? Do you want one hundred yards in from the rough or do you want one hundred and fifty yards in out of the rough with trees in front of you?

01:00:43
Speaker 1: Classic example of how this kind of set up affects the thinking of a modern, you know, championship field. I think that's a perfect example of that. And that's just what it does. And this is the direction that the US Open has moved recently. I mean, you think of it as the traditional US Open setup, but there has been a move back to this because for a few years there was some experimentation with places like Chambers Bay and Aaron Hills and Shinnakok Hills where we're thinking of wider fairways and greens that are just really really firm and protect par basically on their own. But we've moved away from that because there were so many complaints about it from players. Players hated it, and there's been a changeover in the leadership of the setup crew and we have gone back to more of this traditional US Open setup. And you know what, fine, you know, do that this is the US Open. It's one tournament per year. Moving this direction is okay, but I think we know what to expect from this kind of setup at this point. This heavy rough, bringing the fairways set up, and I think it ultimately it kind of flattens the differences between different courses. So you're not getting a course that plays like the country club. You're getting a course that plays like this, you know, US Open idea.

01:02:02
Speaker 4: I think that's the thing is like this is more of a setup. Of this is we want this to be a US Open setup, and part of that is we don't allow the golf course to be what it is. We're going to bring the faariraways in, We're going to grow the rough up substantially to ridiculous levels, and you know, this is what US Open golf is. You know, I've I've heard that, you know, Los Angeles Country Clubs already narrowing fairways for next year, so that is already happening. That's that's one of the greatest restorations that's happened in this boom of restorations, arguably, you know, along with Pinehurst, the most important restoration that occurred in this restoration boom, and you know, widely acclaimed restoration. And the way of the US Open is we set up golf courses this way. So it's not you know, everybody could say this is the greatest, you know setup in the world the way they have it. That doesn't matter. This is how a US Open is supposed to be, and this is how we're going to set it up.

01:03:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, there are people who are going to try to convince you that there is a kind of Gilhant style of championship course, and there sort of is like that. There are some principles that he often brings to his restoration projects, but ultimately the real determining factor in these tournaments is set up. And so you'll see a big influence of the USGA setup crew at the country club even over what Gilhants did at the course. And I think that we also saw that to a degree at Southern Hills, though. You know, the PGA of America set up, although they seem to be moving somewhat in the direction of the USGA style, they allowed that course to be more or less itself, which was great. But I think people just need to keep in mind that the setup for these championships is so so influential, even perhaps beyond what the architecture has done to restore features of the course or whatever. Why don't we talk about so you know, that's good for some of the critiques that will have of the USGA setup. I think there might be some critiques of the course itself even, but why don't we talk about some of the things that it does really well, some of its best moments. We're gonna talk about the par fives. But is there like one other hole that you think people should look out for, as like, this is a great hole, looking forward to seeing how the players approach this one.

01:04:32
Speaker 4: Gil talked about the third, So I'm going to pick the sixth. It is a par three. It sits right on top of the ridge that kind of overlooks this gorgeous space that the third and the fourth and the fifth holes occupy. The sixth holes this great par three, so you play from ridge to ridge. In between there's a small kind of gully that you walk down and up with that, the green sits right on that, so it's got a vicious false front. What makes this hole really is the green. It's a long par three and it's got this vicious, small front of false front. What I love about it it has really difficult pin positions and a really gettable pin position. So the back right pin is tough, it's super narrow there, and the front pin is really hard because you have to be so precise with your approach shot. You have to land it effectively on the hood of a car because the green right after that false front and that front plateau kind of goes down into a gully and it will remind a lot of people of a Burritz. It's not a burritz, but it's got this little kind of gully gathering spot and that is a really fun pin. So you're going to see a hole that on a day could play the easiest if they want. With that pin in the middle and the tea's up a little, you can make this hole the easiest hole at the country club, and then it could be transversely, the hardest hole of the country club if they move that pin up to the front of the green and the tee way back, because you're just going to have to hit a perfect golf shot otherwise going to end up down or past it, and really makes birdie a premium Now in that back section. What's really cool about it too, is there these chocolate drops around the green and it's just this like little feature. It's super narrow. You got to be really precise, and if you just miss a little bit, you end up with these really dicey, awkward chip shots, which will be really fun in a theme of the entire course.

01:06:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, it'll be fun to see players hit their short you know, kind of dig into their bag of short game shots here, even though a lot of them are out of rough. So it's going to be different than what we saw at Southern Hills. There's still gonna be some real challenges with slope and lie and and things like that. I think Patrick Reid is probably going to do really well out of stuff like that. He might not be long enough to do great in this tournament, but you know, a player like him knows how to deal with those kind of heavy rough lies with some.

01:06:51
Speaker 4: I know how to deal with more than the rough. You know, how are you talking about? You know, heavy rough can help.

01:07:00
Speaker 3: You know.

01:07:00
Speaker 1: You said earlier that the players who happened to get the good lies, yeah, are gonna do well well. You know, Patrick Reid tends to make his own luck in that regard, so look out, look out for pe Reid. Oh, okay, In any case, par fives you mentioned them earlier. They're on the Championship course. They are eight and fourteen long. Par fives pretty long, at least at least one of them.

01:07:27
Speaker 4: Is really they play very very long.

01:07:29
Speaker 1: One of them is they're going uphill? Right, So, okay, what makes these what makes these worth watching?

01:07:35
Speaker 4: They occupy probably the most dramatic land on the property. You could probably make an argument that three and four and five do also, But in the same vein, you're effectively in this bowl and you're going up to the top part of it, to the high point of the golf course really, and so you're climbing uphill so automatically. I think the two things about these holes is that birdies are not given. They are they are not a foregone You're not going walking up to either of these teas expecting a birdie. You know that when you get onto one of these par fives that you have to hit really good shots to get birdies. Now, the eighth hole is going to be the hole that's a little bit more scorable. This is a chance that you could make an eagle here. You can that's a feasible thing you can do here. But you know what this hole. What I think is really neat about this hole is the false front. It's got this tremendous false front that really goes up almost about halfway into the green. So there aren't many pins. It's a very severe green, but it's got this severe false front. So it's gonna be fun to watch approach shots in say somebody's going for in two and it's got that moment of like did he make it up the hill? Did did it get crest the hill? Is it gonna stay? But then also the web shots are gonna be really really fun because you're gonna be people that have to lay up. Say you miss the fair away, you're laying up, you lay up into the spot. It's a blind approach with a wed shot uphill to a green with a massive false front, and it's all short grass. The USGA, to their credit, actually expanded short grass out on the right to make more balls come down, probably getting it out to where it should be. So, you know, we talked about a narrowing. This is a really good expansion here and it comes right down. It'll come right back down to their feet. So this is a hole that could really you could see some chaos happen. You could see balls coming down to your feet. Uh And and I think you know, similar to Tory that thirteenth hole where it has.

01:09:43
Speaker 1: It goes right uphill and you've got the awful respunkers on each side, but a cool the bones of a of a cool golf.

01:09:50
Speaker 4: Oldre there for sure. Well, yeah, that it's got that similar thing where that huge landform really dictates right in there, and that's that's kind of the same nature. And you saw pros really struggle with that golf hole, if you know, last year at the US Open. So in a way, it's got some similarities to that hole. And then the fourteenth hole. This hole is going to get a lot of love this week, and it's a really freaking cool hole.

01:10:18
Speaker 1: Super striking. When you get that shot, it basically jumps up to a ledge in the last one hundred yards or so of the hole.

01:10:28
Speaker 4: Right, it's a big, big jump. I mean you're talking thirty forty feet up. It's a narrow tea shot. This is a hole that was I think I believe narrowed a little bit. It's a narrow t shot. If you have any illusions of getting over the hill, which you have to this this shot is completely blind and this ledge you have to get it up to. So you have to get you have to be able to fly at five hundred plus yards to get it up to this top ledge, and if you don't, you're going to be left with like a two hundred yard shot ish over a ridge, completely blind to a tiny, little, almost punch bowly green. I think it would be punch bowl if it was expanded out to its original size. But it's still a tiny little green. And it's got a tree on the left that kind of blocks you if you're too far left in the fairway, and if you're you know, if you're too far right, you can be blinded by these bunkers. There's kind of bunkers that blind you in. So it's a hole that you have to drive the ball. I think that's The thing with both these par fives, what I like about them is you have to find the fairway or else you're going to be presented with a very very difficult third shot, whether it be you know, hitting a long iron into a blind green on the fourteenth or a really dicey wedge with a severe false front.

01:11:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, it kind of almost functions like a great hazard a little bit. It's it's located differently than the classic like Tilling has Great Hazard, where the challenge is really on the second shot you need to carry it. But that's kind of what what's going on here exactly. It's just accually yeah. Yeah, so it kind of separates. It has this It creates a separation between accurate drives and inaccurate drives because in one scenario you're probably going to be able to get over the hazard, and in the other scenario you're going to find it really difficult. And then that next shot into the I mean, it's just not accommodating to a shot from far out.

01:12:37
Speaker 4: Yeah. And I think like if you get over the fourteenth, if you get over that hazard, the fourteenth becomes a birdie hole. If you don't, it becomes a I hope I get out of here with a par hole. Yeah right, And that's really you know, it really is going to come down to the t shot. And I think that's a it's a good feature in a good way for men's golf to you know, especially with where it's at with distance. That's what you have to have to have challenging par fives. The par fives have to be you know, if you think about the fourteenth of Pebble Beach, that's another hole that really has stood the test of time in terms of a par five. If you don't hit the fairway there, you're you're screwed. You're just like, oh no, like this is really bad. You know, I'm gonna have to hit this one hundred and thirty yard shot into this tiny little green. You want to be in the fairway so you can push it up close there.

01:13:30
Speaker 1: All right, Now, there are also some kind of so so holes at the country Club, and maybe we could just wrap up by talking generally about what still can be improved about the country club, what they have left to do, and how would it make the course better.

01:13:48
Speaker 3: Yeah.

01:13:48
Speaker 4: I think it all comes down to green restoration. You I think the golf course in general and where they've actually restored greens makes a lot of sense. I think I believe there's twelve or thirteen of the eighteen holes on the Championship routing have been restored to their original or close to their original size. Those greens are far more dynamic than the non restored greens. And a perfect example of a non restored green that you'll see is on the twelfth hole, the par four, and I think this one has been the one that screams to be what's going on here more so than any other. It is a really great tea shot, and this is where you know, I think the country club has these highs and lows. You have this tremendous t shot. It's one of my favorite te shots. It's blind to crest over this hill. It's right after the short par three, and you crest over the hill and then you're hitting to this tiny little we'll oval and the green. I don't know what they're going to do here. I think the pins similar to eight of Pebble Beach might move like two steps left, two steps right here. It's a very severe green. It's benched into a hill and it's a very small but where you see, you know, the opportunity for expansion is obviously in the back of it, but also to the front and to the right. It comes down and you see these wonderful chocolate drop structures on the front parts of the green, and right now there's ten yards of real rough between the front of that you know sequence and the front of the green, and you just think this probably used to be green at some point in its life, or if it wasn't, this would make this hole substantially more because it would bring this really cool feature on the hole into play. You know, it's going to be really rare to see somebody in that chocolate drop area because it would require them to severely mishit a.

01:15:42
Speaker 1: Shot because the pins are all going to be in the center. Yes, that's the thing about green expansion. I mean, I think that the simplistic perspective on green expansion is that it just makes the course easier, and we're doing it to make the course easier. But what it actually does it allows you is it allows you to push the pins out toward the edge, toward the hazards and actually bring the hazards into play, and that's.

01:16:02
Speaker 4: An exactle and separate great shots. You know, the person that takes on the hazard and says, I'm going to hit this close to this pin versus especially at the country club, where when you have twenty five feet you're often faced with like ten feet of break and a really dicey putt, a putt you don't want. You don't want to be far from pins at the country club because you're going to have very challenging, hard sloping putts. And that's the thing is when the greens are small, if you hit the green, then you know you're going to have a manageable birdie putt, especially at the twelfth hole where it's going to be you know that pin's going to be in the center of the green and anywhere you end up. Like the biggest thing, the biggest detriment to pros is proximity. You know, the longer the putt, the more they're make, percentage goes down. You know, obviously slope has a huge impact on it, but you know pros are going to make more eight footers than they're going to make fifteen footers. And you know three putt percentage goes up significantly the longer the putt gets.

01:17:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, all right, so twelfth green needs to be expanded. There are a few others as well out there.

01:17:11
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I think the ninth hole is kind of a downer. It's the Primrose nine. There's a pond and I'm not sure what the origins of the pond are, but it just sits right in the landing area and I think one of the neat one of the course's neat landforms sits right there. It's got this kind of bulge in the landing area that's just gonna be an iron wedge for these guys. And I think it would be an interesting, a little bit more intriguing hole if you got rid of that pond, and you know, probably guys would hit more drivers, but we'd see what would happen, and it wouldn't have this really kind of artificial nature feel to it where this pond is just kind of sitting there. And obviously they probably irrigate from that, and that's important. You need an irrigation pond, but maybe be in a different spot or cut back and made deeper. You know, it just kind of is a it's an odd thing and it doesn't really it's a clunky aspect to the routing. I think, you know, they have the short par five fifth, which is going to get a lot of play this the week of the US Open. It's a short par four, but everybody's gonna hit driver. I can't foresee an you know, one of the things about that hole is that there's no real penalty for going at it. I can't foresee any reason to not go for it.

01:18:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's pretty open as well. There there aren't like trees around and stuff like that.

01:18:39
Speaker 4: And the bunkers aren't crazy. Yeah, none of the bunkers are prescribed like you know, certain death. You know you're gonna make a par probably, And I think that's one of the things is that it lacks. Is people are gonna like it because they're gonna see guys hit driver, and it's a really good birdy opportunity. But it doesn't really have teeth. It doesn't have a a And that's okay. Holes can be like that, But I would say that, you know, it's one of those I always like how you say, is this a short part for or a long par three? Right?

01:19:15
Speaker 1: Yeah? And if everybody goes for it, then there's really no reason to call it a part four. You know, it's just a number on a scorecard at that point, if nobody has any reason not to hit it as far up towards the green as they can, then that's what you're left with. And you know, to the credit of long par three's, they're great, and I think that there should be more of them. We don't get to see them very often on the PGA tour. They can be entertaining in their own rights, but I think to call it a short part four, it needs to have some other dimensions to it, Okay, So definitely like some things to improve about the country clubs and ways in which it can get better. It's a course that has always had a complicated architectural heritage and development and so that continues to the present day. But I think it's really cool that we get to see it this year on this stage because it's pretty rare, you know, and this is the course is in really cool form right now. It should be a lot of fun to watch. And the US Open, I mean, I know they're scheduling US opens far far out at this point. I'm not sure if they've scheduled any additional ones for the country Club, as they have for Pinehurst and Pebble and even Oakland Hills, and so you just don't know when you're going to get to see the country club at a US Open, at a major championship again, and so I think it's a good week to kind of soak it up and see what you can see at the course.

01:20:41
Speaker 4: Well, the other thing is just like the golf city. It's Boston. It's one of the most important golf cities in American golf.

01:20:50
Speaker 1: And really underserved by men's professional golf right now.

01:20:54
Speaker 4: So it's it's just neat. I think that's the big part of it. Is a great golf city. The fans will be out, they'll be crazy, and it'll be a really cool atmosphere on one of the most historic venues in golf history. It's not just like we always say, one of the most historic venues in major championship golf. This was a golf course that was fundamental in the forming and really the standardization of golf in America. And I think that is It's just a important thing and a place that as long as it can host major championships, should be a part of the rotation.

01:21:35
Speaker 1: All Right, thank you, Andy, appreciate it always fun to talk to you about golf courses. Should be a fun US Open talk to you soon. This episode was edited by Meg Atkins. One more reminder that our country club video will be premiering on the Friday YouTube channel on Wednesday at eight pm Eastern Time. Hope to see you there and thanks for listening.