Mike Cocking of OCM on Breaking into the U.S. Market and Remaking Medinah

00:00:00
Speaker 1: I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset.

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Speaker 2: When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset. And when I find my.

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Speaker 1: Ball in egg Frida egg, the dread Frida Egg Frida egg Bride egg Lie, I'm.

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Speaker 2: About ready to run off the golf course. Welcome back to another edition of the Friday Egg Golf Podcast. Today's episode is with Mike Cocking. Mike is a partner at the golf design firm of Ogilvy Cocking and Mead O c m Uh. They are out of Australia and uh, I think they're one of the rising names in American golf architecture as well as worldwide golf architecture. They've been big name down in Australia for years and UH the last couple of years have seen them really build their profile here in America with a number of new designs on the way. And I guess the biggest project of name is their redesign of Medina number three. So I wanted to talk with Mike a little bit about what they had going on there, as well as just a general catchup. He hasn't been on the pod for six years, so it was it was fun to chop it up with Mike talk all things design and yeah, so without further ado, here is Mike Cocking. You want to hear something crazy just with In regards to time, your last appearance on this podcast was over five years ago.

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Speaker 1: Well, I was thinking about that actually the other day. Last time I might have been. I had no idea what was five years, But.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe it's closer to six than five, which which is scary scary stuff. You know, I like remember that viv leave that conversation. So I wanted to I want to start off. You worked at Shady Oaks, legendary hangout of Ben Hogan. You guys did the renovation there. What's your favorite Ben Hogan story that you learned from working there?

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Speaker 1: There was one good one where Mike Wright, so he's the director of golf. So Hogan basically got him the job. He was a twenty three year old for whatever reason, he took a shine to Hogan, took a shine to Mike, and he actually loaned in his jacket, he's like his sports coat for the interview. And you know, I mean Hogan was unofficially the president really of the club, not entitle but he basically told the club you're going to hide this guy. So he knew him. He became friends with him and his wife. He was a pallbearer at his funeral. And when he died, Hogan left him like a thousand clubs, twelve hundred clubs, which are still scattered around the pro shop and the clubhouse. And you know, I was lucky enough. He actually gifted a driver to me when we finished the short course as a as a thank you, which was pretty cool. It's got the you know, it's got the coat hangar wire in the back of the grip. But it's got you know, it's it's the classic Hogan driver. It's not just a it was one of his. It was actually one of his clubs. You know, it was one of his ones he'd use in rotation. But he told me a good story once. He he said, because he was a he was a mad tinkerer. I mean he he would go. I mean some of the clubs that he had. He had counterbalance putters, he had a hybrid, he had metal metal woods. Back in the sixties he was playing around with He was an innovator. He had cavity back in Irons way before they were on the scene. Instead of ironically, it's almost like he was he was searching for clubs that were easier to use, even though you know that in his you know, he would never let himself use a cavity bag. You know, had to be the had to be the most difficult clubs to ever use. But he said, Mike said, one day he bought in Mike was in the pro shop and he bought in a wedge that he wanted him to He wanted to try because he would go out on the Little nine and kind of play around with these different clubs and decide whether they were good, bad, or indifferent. And it was like a I don't know, it was a new wedge, but it had no no bounce to it. It was just dead, dead level. And he put a grip on it and went into the It went into the downstairs bar where he would always sit and kind of got down on his He said, I'd always get down on my hands and knees and get down on my knees and get sort of eye level with him, and he sitting on a mister, Hogan, I've got the wedge for you. So he grabbed it and he went out there, and Mike went out to watch him, and he sort of hid behind a tree, and Hogan sort of grabbed a ball, kind of stood over it, had a waggle, and then and hit like, you know, two inches behind the ball, just straight over the ball, and just kind of looked down at the divot, kind of looked up, grabbed another ball, same thing, just laid aside, straight over it. I think he did it a third time and then just helicoptered the wedge just into the tree light and walked straight into the pro shop, and Mike wasn't sure what to do, so he grabbed grabbed the wedge and he kind of skulkily walked into the pro shop. Found mister Hogan said, I'm mister Hogan. I think I think you might have left your wedge out on the range. And he just kind of looked at him, you know, with those gray eyes, and said, that ain't my goddamn wedge.

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Speaker 2: That's great. You ever hit the driver? Do you ever hit the driver they gave you? You play it?

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Speaker 1: Yeah?

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Speaker 2: Is it hard to hit?

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Speaker 1: Yeah? It just I mean, I it just dives low and right, just straight off the club. It's almost impossible to turn.

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Speaker 2: It over to be partly the ball, I guess.

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Speaker 1: But you know, for someone that struggled with a hook, it's almost like he created clubs that he couldn't that wouldn't have hit that shart. So, you know, everyone talks about the swing, but I think he complimented it with crowding clubs that were extra stiff, super deep face no role in bulk because so it's almost a straight face.

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Speaker 2: Is it a Ben Hogan?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so it was. It was once the company was up and running, and it apparently he didn't like the roll in bold you know that used to have on a per simon, because he wanted that he wanted to understand where he'd hit the ball. He didn't want it to compensate for you know, if he'd mishit it and it slices back on the fairway, it draws back, that's amazing.

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Speaker 2: He didn't want forgiveness.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, he didn't want forgiveness. So I would have to tee it up extra high and almost sort of come from inside and almost deliberately try and hit a snap hook just to hit it straight. The irons are good. I used the irons quite a bit. I haven't got them, but just playing the core, so I used them quite a lot. And they were. Yeah, they were like four or five degrees flat, quite short, so you know, I would grab a four iron, it would feel like a seven iron or something, you know, but they were easier to hit. But the woods are really tricky.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I got I got a set of old blades. They used a bunch, but before I got them bent, they were super flat, and it was just I just was laying side over everything. It's crazy trade hit flat clubs.

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Speaker 1: It was so strange. It was good for my game because I used to kind of all my clubs were way up right and it probably led to a lot of bad habits. So I quite liked every now and then using something that was like, you know, four degrees flat or five grees flat. It kind of forced me to do, you know, to make some good moves.

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Speaker 2: So your desired partner, Jeff Ogilvie, he once told me, he's like, you know, Mike could make cuts out here if you wanted to. I'm a PGA tour and I would love to know from your perspective, if there was a moment when you knew pro golf wasn't for you and it was time it was golf architecture was for you.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I I kind of was. I guess I was always on. I always kind of wore two hats. So I loved design. To be truthful, the thought of being a pro golfer never sat that well with me. Just this thought that, you know, one year you've got a job and the next year you basically got your unemployed. You know, just just the insecurities of not knowing, and maybe to my detriment, I had a fallback. You know, a lot of guys, you know, leave school in year ten or year eleven or whatever, and it's all or nothing. They're just in the golf. Whereas I'd gone to university, I've got a degree, I was getting into golf course design. I loved it, so I sort of had other options, if you know what I mean. So maybe that didn't I wasn't forced to sort of just go down that path, and then I just found myself. For a couple of years, I would constantly sort of be switching hats. You know, I'd have a good tournament, like I had some good success as an amateur, and so you know, everyone around you would sort of just assume that you're going to turn pro, and suddenly that would feel a bit more comfortable, but then you go through a bad stretch or we want a job, you know, and I was more involved with the golf course design. Probably the clincher was I had a couple of operations on my wrist and that put me out for quite some time, and that kind of made the decision a lot easier. It was kind of at that point I'm like, yeah, I don't I don't need to try and do this. I think I'm quite happy with If I could make it as a golf course designer, I'd be delighted. So I was kind of all in on that. So I was probably twenty probably about twenty three, I would say about that time.

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Speaker 2: So you've been traveling the world a ton. Obviously, you guys got your Australian You got a big start in Australia. And since you've kind of we'll get into a lot of the projects that you're working on, a lot of them are in the United States. What you've been traveling, you've seen a lot of courses. Are there any golf courses that you've seen that have really made an impression on you in the recent years? Like that, you think about a lot that you hadn't seen before, you know, recent years.

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Speaker 1: Probably, I guess in Chicago, because we've been working in Chicago. I hadn't seen Shore Acres before, and many years ago I got to see Chicago golf, but i'd really not spent much time there. So seeing those two golf courses I think has left quite a lasting impact. And then I actually got back to the UK. I hadn't been there for fifteen years, and spent quite a bit of time around the Heathland, which I've always loved, but to be honest, i'd forgotten a lot. You know, you think you have a clear memory of certain holes in certain courses. I've got to see a bunch of new ones that I hadn't seen before, So that that was Both of those are probably the most memorable in recent times.

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Speaker 2: I would say, Uh, I guess for each, for the Heathland and then for the Chicago Rainers. Uh, you know what, what's one thing that you took away from each? Just one specific thing?

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Speaker 1: Maybe I guess that the Heathland I kind of love the I love the use of the sort of the diagonal elements some of the particularly some of the ridges, say sunny Dale Old for instance, and just the sort of the the eroded, sort of evolved look to a lot of the bunkering that are just sort of the product of eighty years of evolution. They're not they're not They're not clean and crisp. They're I kind of love how you know. There will be old bunkers that are filled in where the head has kind of taken over part of it.

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Speaker 2: Or I feel like everybody likes that look. But it's got to be the hardest thing to do with a new build is have it look old. All new bunkers looked new.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah it is. Yeah, it's really hard. It's really hard.

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Speaker 2: Are there any tricks?

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Speaker 1: I mean, the heather is a helps, you know, it's such an amazing plan. Anything looks good with heather on it. You could put a crappy looking mound, a really artificial man. You throw a heather on, it looks unbelievable. Whereas if you rip the heather off and just put feskie or something on it, it's not going to look quite so good. Yeah, I mean, we sort of we spend a lot of time looking at the bunkering there and the ridges and some of those quirkier elements. I guess, and I guess we'll get to it. But one of the courses we're working on that we've just finished actually is very much inspired by the heath land, and so we spend a lot of time trying to create that style of bunker, which was challenging. And it was almost like we would create the bunker and then go back into it and start sort of caving in some lips and moving the grassing lines and trying to get it an old and I'll sort of look as though it has been eroding. And then we had a crew doing a lot of handwork that would kind of pull down lips and then we would basically see the whole thing with a native blend on the backside. And then once it grew, we had another go at kind of edging it out. So that that's been kind of an interesting process. I think it's worked well.

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Speaker 2: You know the idea. The idea is to build it once yep, and then go back into it to continue to almost rough it up.

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Speaker 1: Right.

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Speaker 2: It would be like if you had a brand new table and you didn't want it to seem new, you'd build it and then just kind of distress it pretty much.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. Yeah, take take a little nix out of it and kind of rough it up, put some sandpaper over it, and you sort of and then you get another chance to do it again once the roughs and things have grown, because you might edge in a bit of a lip, but then we typically hyde receipt over that lip well down the walls of the bunker, even into the floor. You might have some washouts, so you're sort of chunking. You're taking material from the floor and patching areas, and then and then you'll have another cracket. Okay, where is the lip? You might change the grassing line again. So it's an iterative sort of process, you know, that needs two or three goes at it, I think to get that look, whereas something like a sand belt bunker you're not doing that. You're kind of you're creating that flash sand look and the clean edge from the outset and then you're kind of preserving it really.

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Speaker 2: In a way like the sand belt edge makes it easier when you're you know, in Australia, because that's what everybody wants, right yeah, and it's like okay, we're doing this and this is how we know how to do it, versus when you come somewhere, you know, you come to the States, for example, and you have these different soils. You're you know, not necessarily able to do the sand belt. Look everywhere, it's you know, you have to make a decision, and then you have a lot of different variables at play.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean the soil, the climate, the grass types really do influence the style of the bunker that you're able to you know that you're able to create. And yeah, I mean lots of people see the sand belt bunkering and just think, yeah, you know, that'd be great. Do that. It's like, it's just not possible. Sorry, it's just going to do it. Like I mean, anytime you're in the heavy ground like clay, I mean, it's it's going to be a challenge because you have to that lip has to be like a sandy soil that holds together and packs tight. It's got to be kind of angular particles that sort of packing. And you know, if you're in the middle of America, that's not something that's readily available, and you get and trying to create it is going to lead to all sorts of problems through growing and maintenance and all that. I will say though that and at some point you'll see photos the two courses we're doing down in Georgia. One of them is inspired by the heath Flame, the other one is inspired by the sand belt. And we've actually been able to not only build sandbalt bunkers, but cut the edge of the greens to the edge of the bunker, which I think a lot of people previously have said it can't be down outside of Melbourne, But yeah, we've managed to do it there. And I think that people will, you know, people, I think they'll lose their minds when they see that because it's I can't imagine it's ever been done in America. I would say, yeah, intentionally, at least intentionally.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, sometimes I've found a place that like you're you're looking at the bunkers and you're kind of like, what what were they going for here? But it kind of kind of sand belt in a way. But I don't think it was intentional sand belt. But what what's the what kind of before we move on, what impression or what thing did you take away from the courses in Chicago Shorreakers and Chicago Barth.

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Speaker 1: Well, the template thing is sort of fascinating because we don't have there's no such thing really as templates in Australia.

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Speaker 2: So well, if there's lines, vale lenks your course, that's.

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Speaker 1: Right, and yeah, exactly right, which is heavily inspired by the templates and our love for Rainer and McDonald. Yeah, and that was really part of the pitch to the club. They wanted to point a difference down there. They wanted something completely different to everything else that was being built, and it was only the course could never be really long, it was it was sort of I think it's like sixty three hundred yards would say. And we talked a bit about this template idea and doing something really different, a lot of you know, straight mowing lines and obviously the template greens and that we're all in, which was great. But yeah, I just I found it fascinating. You know, I'd read a lot about it, and you know McDonald going back to St Andrews and you know when Chicago Golf Club was originally National Golf Link. Sorry, in Chicago Golf Club, we'll built and yeah, I think I just found that the concert fascinating and so yeah, so being able to see a lot of those templates and play them was was Yeah, it was a high lot.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, those courses are so different. I I haven't been to the stand Belt obviously, but I imagine, you know, there's there's similar like kind of like courses that are great that are that have similar aspects but are so different from like a what they're built on. Right, Like I think everybody is so quick to dismiss Chicago Golf's ground is bad, but I think like the ground for golf, like on on the golf side, like with the with the way the fairways move with some of the land is actually better than shore acres, like the golf ground where like where you're playing, but then everything with shore acres on the outsides and like those ravines that cut across are so dramatic and they influence you know, the golf. But like if you hit the ball in the fairway at short acres, it's like a runway.

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Speaker 1: You know.

00:19:19
Speaker 2: It's like every fairway is like a you're hitting from a driving range, right, but there's so much interest in the land on the outside. And then you know at Chicago Golf, like people say it's flat, but it's like the first fairway. If you don't hit like a card cut up the right edge, you're not holding the first fairway, it's gonna roll into the left rough right it moves.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, And I was impressed with how much ground game options, not just options, but how it rewarded, you know, so much ground game play at Chicago Golf, I was not necessarily expecting that, you know a lot of those very subtle sort of hollows just in fronts of grains, particularly when the panes were at the really forced you to kind of figure out what to do. You know, I was constantly trying to land my ball twenty yards or thirty yards short. So and that is kind of similar to the sand belt, which which does reward you know, some landing the ball short and actually sort of bouncing and running a ball in. So there were some parallels I guess between those two.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a lot of things that are that should be you know, put on a pedestal from Chicago Golf and in short acres. But I think both of their agronomy teams are just unbelievable. Craig Smith, that Chicago Golf has that place just I mean, it plays, It's bouncier than some links courses if you catch it on the right day, right, and it's just unbelievable to do that in Chicago. So last time we talked, you'd very little work in the US. Now I think you're pretty busy. You probably do. You spend more time in the US than than Australia at this point.

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Speaker 1: Well, the crew stical number is one eighty three, and that if you spend more than one hundred and eighty three days in the States. She taxed as a US resident. So I've got to keep under that number because it just complicates life. So I think this year is going to be like one seventy five something like that. So, I mean to be honest, half our business is in the States these days, and it just it really did. It's amazing how things happen, and really through COVID, which seems ridiculous in an industry, in a niche industry like golf, well more so golf course design. You would think that would be one of the first things to be thrown out, you know, with a global pandemic. But it just kind of exponentially went up, you know, from really from the time we finished Shady Oaks and then it just kind of things just happened in really quick succession. So now yeah, we've sort of got five or six projects in North American Canada. You know, we were building two this year or three really and then another at least another two next year, and then probably another two the following year.

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Speaker 2: So unbelievable. What's been the most surprising or like the thing that you you know that about working in the States that you didn't really expect or you weren't prepared for.

00:22:24
Speaker 1: I mean, we're pretty it's fairly similar to Australia. The one difference is that we in Australia we're kind of more of a turn key so we have a number of shapers and a number of staff, so that like the two projects we've just started here, which are both sand belt sand belt courses, you know, we'll have four or five people on each project and we kind of do it basically do everything, whereas it's just not practical in America. We've got one of our shapers has a visa and we've also got a US shaper who's based out of Denver. So what typically happens is we have one shape run a project and they work in with a large contractor so the and look that's you know, it's not that we're not that unfamiliar with that way of working. Probably the shock has been just the speed that we've had to work. So at Madona, I mean it was an intense six months. You know, we started in early April. We finished basically on this trip. So I just got home two days ago or three days ago. That was my last visit. And you know we built like twenty five or twenty six greens in a in twenty four weeks. Agreen a week, a green a week. Yeah, So it was just yeah, so there's no time really to you know, I love nothing more than once you've roughed something in having the ability to go back to the hotel and think about it and stew on it, and then you get back in the morning and maybe we'll tweak this or move that or move that. Beyond maybe one night's sleep that was about it was. That was the limit to what you could stew over something. You know, you just have to keep moving.

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Speaker 2: So you know that's a hard thing too, with just getting busy, right, is like you'd love to have like the single project where all you think about is one thing, but it's not a reality in life, right, you have life aspects. But then also you know you guys as architects, do a lot of other stuff other than just build the golf horse.

00:24:24
Speaker 1: Right.

00:24:25
Speaker 2: I imagine everybody's dream is a golf architect would be like I just go worry about the golf horse.

00:24:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I just it's unrealistic, that's right. It sounds great that, you know, we just want to work on one project at a time, but the reality is to work on one project at a time, you've got to be pitching for three other projects, and then you've got to have one or two in design, and then the projects that you've finished, you've still got to keep visiting. So you know, you need a pipeline of work coming in. You're still got to look after clients. You face it. So it's just not you just you don't have that ability. And to be honest, that's what I've always struggled with, Like when I'm on site, I just find you're so busy. In between working with your shapers, you got to see other contractors, You've got to catch up with the superintendent, You've got to you know, invariably you've got meetings with the club. You sort of bouncy, You're pinging around all day and they're long days. You know, start at six thirty or seven, and you're there till you know, five or six at night. And then what happens is when I'm traveling, then the emails starting on Australian time, so then you just your inbox is full by the time you go to bed. Then you get up and there's another twenty and then you haven't got time. You're up so early. You're up at like five, and it's like I've got an hour to kind of sort through a handful of emails, and then it just and then you get bombarded again at the tail end of the next day. So it's it's really busy. And I always I'm amazed at some of the architects who are still able to sit on machines as well, and I think, God, I don't know, how do you do that. You'd almost have to like turn off your phone and just like no one bothered me. You know, I'm shaping for the day. I've never I've never as much as I loved the idea of it, and have tried at different times to spend time on equipment, I just find too many things get in the way, and my time's better spent bouncing between you know, the guys who spend their lives on machines and are going to be much better at it than me. Yeah, So I'm always remarked when I see pictures of Gil. You know, he'll be on a doze of somewhere doing something and I just think, gosh, I mean, he's the busiest man in golf, and I just think, how do you have time to do that? As well?

00:26:36
Speaker 2: He is, without a doubt, the busiest man in golf. I like, I don't understand how he could even like keep in communication with everybody, Like that's like just just one thing, one aspect of his life. I don't know how he does.

00:26:52
Speaker 1: I had a rumor last year that he spent two days in his own bed.

00:26:58
Speaker 2: I mean that makes sense, which.

00:27:00
Speaker 1: Doesn't surprise me when you see you know where he is and his travel schedule. It's just like, I mean, this year, I couldn't honestly, I couldn't sustain. Like this year and next year are both pretty much the same. And you know, when I've come home, like the last three trips, I've been home for like eight days, three of which I have to go to the other side of the country to Perth because we've got a project there, so I'm home for like three or four Mount Lawley, Mount Lawley. Yeah, but we still work at COUNT. But yeah, I couldn't sustain that pace for like, you know, a decade or anything like that. I'd I'd be in a fetal position somewhere in the corner of the room.

00:27:40
Speaker 2: So I listened to this podcast years ago. It's an incredible part. It was with Jim Collins, who's like written a lot of like business books, and and it was on Tim Ferris, Tim Ferris's podcast. And this guy, this guy is figured out. So he's he's written a ton of great books and he's figured out that like he says no to any interview. He says basically like this is like the reason the interview was so great is because he's never on interviews. He never speaks at conventions. And the thing he does is he tracks the exact number of hours he spends on creative work a year. And he and he he has this theory and it makes sense that like why musicians get worse over time or artists get worse over time is that the distractions and demands on their time take away from the creative time they used to spend when they were great.

00:28:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, so.

00:28:49
Speaker 2: This guy he tracks every hour for the year, and like his barrier of success on the year is like very like tied to his creative hours that he spent. I like, personally, I think it's an amazing idea. I know I'm not capable of doing this, but it's something I think about all the time. It's like, you know, he does all these other crazy Everybody should listen to this podcast just for the idea of thinking about how this guy lives. But it's a fascinating thing I think about because, like one of the things you are in a creative space, and one of the hardest things about anything in a creative space is the more popular you get, the less creative time you have.

00:29:37
Speaker 1: Well that's well, that's why recording it to bring out greatest hits albums, isn't it.

00:29:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so.

00:29:44
Speaker 1: The same with architects. It's very easy to pull out tricks or hole designs or green designs or things that have worked in the past, you know, worked and just kind of adjust them to the siding question. You know. The hardest thing. I remember Tom talking about it years ago that you know quite often he said, it's not the first course. That's the hardest. It's the second one. And you do you spend your life, you know with your first course. I remember the first course. I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to to build, you know, you had ten courses. That was the Hillsville course.

00:30:20
Speaker 2: Oh, I always wanted to see that one.

00:30:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's I'm going to see it the next.

00:30:25
Speaker 2: The first time I'm in Australia.

00:30:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, I haven't been back there for a while. I sort of struggled to go in the gate these days, just because I feel like I'm going to be, yeah, disappointed. But yeah, it's yeah, because you have, you know, five or ten years, you have all these ideas in your head and you just can't wait to just kind of, you know, put them on the ground. And yeah, I was like twenty six or twenty seven when that project started, and yeah, it was such a great opportunity. I actually walked it with Tom. Tom came and had a look on one of his trips to the stage, which was pretty cool.

00:30:57
Speaker 2: That's a that's great. Now for a quick word from our sponsor, Club TFE. For those that are unaware, we have a whole membership for people, you know, right now for people that really love golf architecture, there's a ton of content centered around golf architecture and CLUBTFE. We are putting out, you know, probably about two to three pieces of real in depth golf architecture content a week, one of which is a is called the Design Notebook that Garrett Morrison kind of heads up. I contribute there as well as other members of our team. And then the other thing is through our course profiles that come out once a week. So if you're interested in more content, the Club TFE does that really well, as well as early access to our events. We're just finishing up when this podcast comes out from our first ever member guest, our Club tf member guest, that was out at Metal Club in Fairfax, California. So we're going to have some member only events on top of our you know, public events that anybody can come experience, as well as the additional golf architecture and golf content through there and many other benefits. If you're interested in joining Club TFE and supporting what we do here, visit the Frida egg dot com slash membership and it is one hundred and twenty dollars for the entire year and yeah, thank you so much. And now back to Mike Cocking. Hey did you watch any of the Ryder Cup.

00:32:35
Speaker 1: I was so I was in the States, I was in Chicago, and I didn't have any sort of access to basically to TV. So I was just looking at social media highlights. Really, that's all I got.

00:32:47
Speaker 2: So I'm just curious obviously with Medina, that's the next I guess it's the next American President's Cup course, right, yeah, because they go to Matrea and then there are a Madana. Yeah, trap, So next American President's Cup course is Madonna. Were there things that you were thinking about in the design phase with the team with a team matchplay event in mind or not?

00:33:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, there are certain shots out there that I mean, we weren't sort of deliberately trying to make it a match play course, so to speak, because.

00:33:24
Speaker 2: Because like there's other intentions of the golf course, right.

00:33:27
Speaker 1: But yeah, there are Yeah, but there are certainly some shots where you know, controversially, well it may be controversial. We reintroduced a boundary fence there, which I think is really cool, which is sort of a throwback to some old photos of the in the nineteen twenties and thirties that showed kind of a boundary fence along the near the fifth green, just the part five and we sorry to go down a rabbit hole here, but so with five, six and the Old tenth, there was an opportunity to move those holes inward and away from the boundary, which meant we could revegetate the boundary line.

00:34:09
Speaker 2: So why would you do that?

00:34:11
Speaker 1: Just well, it was a really ugly view that that corner of the course, which is kind of the flattest and doesn't really have any endearing sort of features.

00:34:19
Speaker 2: It's really bad face too. I mean, you've got the holes to give people that haven't been there. One of the holes had like the like like a just a chain link fence that had like almost like that tennis you know, like the tennis screen that you put up, the like green tennis screen that like kind of obscures you being able to look at.

00:34:41
Speaker 1: Yep, that's exactly that's right, And it was shocking the first time we saw.

00:34:46
Speaker 2: It goes for like seven hundred yards.

00:34:48
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, the fifth is fine, but it's the sixth and then the old tenth, which is the new seventh, and you know, so you've got the holes around the lake, which have their own character, and the holes through of the trees, you know, through the big oaks in the middle of the property, which have their own field. But then you get into that top corner and it's flat. There's really no nice trees there. They were all sort of introduced, and then you got the road. So we thought, we've got to move the holes away from the road. From a ideally from a safety point of view, but b it meant that we could revegetate the boundary and try and screen the cars and the power lines and things. But then we thought, well, wouldn't it be interesting to reintroduce the idea of a fence as a strategic hazard, and so we incorporated a split rail fence that runs gun barrel straight down five, kind of curves around the fifth greend, down the sixth and then down seven. And to get back to your original question, the gap between the fence and sort of some of the fairway bunkering is is sort of of a distance where I think, like in the four ball event of match play, you know you're going to get one person hitting a driver trying to get the advantage of a much shorter shot, and probably someone laying up and it happens. There's a bunch of holes there, you know, the short pat four sixteenth as well.

00:36:09
Speaker 2: And if you're if you're on the wrong side of the fence, it's out abound out of bounds yet, so you've effectively moved what was the out of bounds line inside the property.

00:36:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I mean some people have talked about it as an internal out of bounds. That's not really an internal out.

00:36:25
Speaker 2: Of bed, just moving the property line.

00:36:27
Speaker 1: It just moved the property line. It looks very cool, and it's an old rustic split rail fence on the other side of its long, longish fscue and you just get this. It's such a cool look. I think when you get that sort of linear, dead straight fairway mowing line, you know it's all in front of you. It's very obvious what you have to do, but we've given you know, there's fifty yards of fairway. If you lay up to a certain spot, you know it's quite wide. You don't have to hit it next to the fence, but if you hit away from it, it's the shot to the greens blind and it's a not a very good angle. So it's a really interesting strategic I think concept but yeah, back to your point, so there are there's quite a few holes where there is a narrow there's a neck between, whether it's water, whether it's fans, where we did kind of think, well, this will work, really, this will be interesting in the match play because you know you're going to get one person in the four ball anyway, you're gonna get one person you know, trying to hit a driver and get a big advantage. And as in the in the finish to a to a match too, if someone's two down, you know they're going to be hitting that sort of shot just to because it gives them such an advantage over you know, laying out.

00:37:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, the I think the thing we also saw, especially this year at Liverpool with the with the open, is just how much of a deterrent out about is. I mean, I don't think there's any And I think this is obvious. It's the stiffest real penalty in golf. Right water water hazard. You still feel like, oh I can make par right, I can. I can hit it in the water if it's a par five, and I'll go for into and worst case I'm dropping up by the green, I'll get up and down for five. Right without a bounds, it's you know, you hit it out of bounds. It's devastating. Yeah, every golfer has experienced this feeling, right, and we saw it play out in the open at at Liverpool with the and they obviously had a few places without bounds, the third hole most notably. It's like these guys were hitting like chunks off the tee, you know, just doing everything in their power to not go anywhere near the out of bounds. And that's to be I you know, I asked Zach Blair, you know what, what would you how would you design a course with pros? He's like outbounds of water everywhere, like it's the only way to get these and it's a fascinating idea. How close is this this fence to like greens and where you want to go?

00:38:58
Speaker 1: Uh that the controversial aspect is going to be six because it runs down the So the mowing line of the fairway is four feet from the edge of the fence. It might even be it might be five feet, because I just we were worried about someone being on the fairway and the fence being in their backswing. So it's we've covered that off. So it's just far enough away that you're.

00:39:22
Speaker 2: Not you don't get relief from the fans either.

00:39:26
Speaker 1: But the green is the same distance, so the green edge is like three feet from the fence on the six. So it was very much inspired by one or the true first at Row Liverpool Atlake. It's the same. And I played the British amateur there in like two thousand and one, maybe two thousand and two thousand and one, one of them. I mean that was such an unbelieving because that was the proper order. And I remember hitting like it was like a three iron off the first tee. You got out of bounds all the way down there down the right. You're as nervous as hell, like hitting this sort of like punchy sort of three iron down the fairway short of the corner, and then I've got like two twenty yards across the diagonal out of bounds to that green right on the edge of the burn. It's like so it staggers me when people, you know, wings or complain about the idea of an out of bounds fance. So that hole has been like that for one hundred and fifty years and it works great well.

00:40:20
Speaker 2: I mean, they got and they got rid of the par three with the obi right along it.

00:40:25
Speaker 1: So that was real. That was a really good part three too. I thought it was it was interesting.

00:40:29
Speaker 2: Did you play that? Did you play that hole?

00:40:31
Speaker 1: Yeah? I played that hole? Yeah, Yeah, I played yeah, So it was it was all intact back then. But it was a very cool course. I loved that course. And what was interesting to me, I liked it. It's very it's quite a flat course, and I thought that the cops is the out of bunds were clever because on a flat course you've only got to raise the ground by two or three feet and it's quite a visual hazard. So it was, you know, it was it really came into view on quite a number. It was a really clever has it on fairly flatish ground. I thought, what was one for the memory bag? You know?

00:41:05
Speaker 2: So what's the fascination around rerouting courses for these matchplay competitions?

00:41:11
Speaker 1: Do you not know? I like it.

00:41:15
Speaker 2: I mean for the most part, I just like I think it's crazy also because for the most part, like aren't most eighteenth holes like just means to an end you have to get back to the clubhouse and we reroute these courses, so that eighteenth hole is in play and it's like half the time the matches get there anyways, and it's great. Are they playing to reroute Madonna? And do you think that's a big Do you think rerouting golf courses is a mistake in general? I mean we just talked about the Open that rerouted.

00:41:47
Speaker 1: I can't comment on Madonna, but if you think back to a lot of these events they've been on rerouted courses, happens regularly, I guess my frustration with and it's been like I think Roal Melbourne here for various events played like a different layout, like five or six times in a row the one, and sometimes it works really well the one. The cautionary sort of comment is that you know when you go routing a golf course and you know you're putting a lot of thought into the cadence of the holes and how the flow of It's not just the individual design of each hole, it's how it works from one to eighteen, you know, like a song or like an album or whatever. You know, whether it's an easy start and a difficult middle stretch. Kingston Heat's a really interesting one. Like the first six holes there a sort of like medium difficulty. I would say the next six is where you make your round, and the last six you're desperately trying to hold on, and when you do start to reroute and renumber holes, you kind of you lose that lose that aspect. And I guess in match play events it's less of an issue because you're not necessarily looking at that. It's more about the you know, the match play aspect. But certainly in drug play events, I always I always think, you know, you run the risk of losing that that flow.

00:43:16
Speaker 2: With the with Madina, obviously, it's it's been a club that their identities rooted in championship golf, in big time championship golf, and I think obviously if you look at the history of Madna over the years, changes have all been predicated on on that. You guys are coming in there, and I think like it seems like the ideas to make it more enjoyable for member play while retaining that ability to challenge the best players in the world. What are the themes that you guys are using to do that or attempt to do that.

00:43:55
Speaker 1: You know, a lot more short grass. I was surprised how little short grass there was on a course that stretched over three hundred and fifty acres, there were twenty four acres of short grass. And to put that in perspective, there is a hole at Mammoth Junes that has twenty acres just on that onel. So you kind of sad and now it's really wide, but it also does sort of point to the fact it was very narrow and it was just a bit out of scale because the corridors. Some of the corridors had a bit of width, but then you had this really skinny ribbon of fairway. So and clearly, you know, in tournament golf, Justin Thomas and guys like that were still capable of shooting way under, but it was an incredibly difficult course for the average golfer. A lot of golf played from the rough. So we've added, we've doubled the amount of short grass. There'd at least be fifty acres now of short grass. And that doesn't necessarily mean it's a lot wider for the tool play. I mean it's some of those instances are wider back to towards the tee or linking it back towards the tea itself, you know, and wider in the areas where the average golfer are going to hit their ball, so that's one aspect. A lot of the bunkering previously was sort of at a set distance from the tee, you know, because that was where the tool player hit it, and it was quite off and on ground not really suited to bunkering, so it was on sort of the flat ground, whereas we've probably come back to building the hazards more where they fit the landscape, which has created a more scattered sort of length off the tee. Some of those are really short, which I think is interesting for the average golfer, and some of them are at the length that's probably more consistent with the length that the tool players are hitting it now as opposed to sort of twenty years ago.

00:45:46
Speaker 2: I think one of the beauty of random hazards is that guy, you know, what's the right distance today in five or ten years is in the right distance. And if you create random bunker schemes and random bunk for distances, then all of a sudden you're a lot more protected against distance gains if every bunker's at three hundred or three hundred and ten yards, and then there's a roll back. All those bunkers are you know, then kind of at wrong distances for the back tis right.

00:46:18
Speaker 1: That's right. And also it's kind of nonsense that, you know, why should only good players have the thrill of trying to drive everybody? You know, if you're you know, if you hit the ball one hundred and eighty yards, shouldn't at some point in the round you have to stand there and actually decide, you know, do I want to try and hit it over that bunker, but do I play way away from it? That is though, one of the good things when you do get a water hazard, like whether it's a creek or if you have the ability to run a water hazard on an angle, you know that that is a hazard that everyone has to deal with because it's not you know, a bunker or a bunker complex. You kind of limited to thirty or forty yards, you know, unless you have a big long string of them. Where As suddenly the you know, so the out of bounds on five six and seven, the water hasard on New sixteen. Doesn't matter how far you hit it, you have to you have to decide how much of it to take on.

00:47:11
Speaker 2: Hey, a question that just popped in my head when you were when you were talking, you've now spent a ton of time in America. What what do you think Americans get wrong with golf that Australians get right? And what do you think is something that Americans You know, American golf does well that Australian golf doesn't do as well.

00:47:33
Speaker 1: I think, well, the mowing lines is the easy one to talk about. Probably you know in Australia fairway bunkers have the fairway cut all the way up to the edge of the hazard, So which is you know, the the ultimate in sort of I guess risk reward is that if it's a well designed hole with a well angled green, you know you're giving an advantage to someone who can play right next to that hazard with the best or the shorter shot. Whereas suddenly, if in America you often see that fairway hazard is ten yards into the rough or five yards into the rough, well, there's a big color of rough between the hazard and the fairway itself, which just kind of dilutes the purpose of the hazard. You know, it's not functioning the way it should. People then can finish in the band of rough between the hazard itself and the fairway, which is not really not the way we like to see golf holes arranged. Now. Sometimes it's not always possible, depending on the grass types and things. Sometimes you still have to have a little band of rough depending on the grass types and things like that. And Madonna there is a very skinny band, but it's only sort of two feet and it's mone rough, so the ball should still bounce into the hazard itself. So I would say that's the easy one. Some of it's a function really of climate and soil types. But firm playing surface is it. We all talk about strategy and interesting holes, but the reality is it's very difficult or it's impossible really to build strategic holes if the greens and the green surrounds are soft. So and it's something that's fairly easy to achieve on the sand belt is firmness. I mean, we talked a bit about it before with Chicago Golf. And it's not like there aren't places in America that have firm greens and firm green surrounds. But I think most people, most Americans get a shock when they come to the sand belt and see that they're preconceived ideas of ferm and then there's like sand belt ferm, and you know, it's like a tabletop.

00:49:36
Speaker 2: So what are you building thirty six holes at the same place. Obviously you talked about this, it's the fall line in Georgia. I don't know if you're allowed to say that. I said it. So you built eighteen sand belt style, eighteen in heathl and style. What other things are you trying to do to differentiate two of your own designs in the same place, Like, is that hard to build thirty six holes at once?

00:50:07
Speaker 1: It is, But I think actually it's been it's creatively sort of freeing because we've deliberately dialed into it all in on so everything from the way the mowing lines are, you know, and a lot of the heathland courses rather than the fairway sort of coming back towards the tee, you'll often find that the angle of the fairway it'll be on sort of a slight diagonal at the start of the fairway, you know, ridges, the style of the bunker, the style of the greens. I mean, one of the things one of our big takeaways was, you know, somewhere like Walton Heath, the greens really are they are on the ground. They are just an extension of the fairway little in the way whereas the sand belt or all the greens are up that they've all been sort of built up the contours of the greens. So it's when we made the decision to go down the path of two different style courses, we've kind of really gone all in on it, and that'll be reflected in even things like in a course furniture and stuff like that. So we want a very different experience on one course versus the other, to the point where it'd be nice if people weren't sure that the same firm had done both courses, you know, because it's a it's not normal. You know, most thirty six whole courses or fifty four whole courses these days, they got a different architects, but it just by the way the project evolved. We were fortunate enough that that didn't happen. So yeah, so it's really with everything. It's it's with the blend of grasses, the grass types, the style of the greens, the style of the bunkers, mowing light, you know, you name it. But I yeah, I think because it is pretty hard if you're designing thirty six holes. At some point, like you sort of get a bit of fatigue towards the end, it would be very easy to go, oh, I guess we'd just make this one a little bit like the fifth of the other whole or the other course, or you know, like you're trying to come up with thirty six different ideas if it's all in the same style as channeling. But suddenly if you're doing two completely afferent style courses, it becomes a little bit easier.

00:52:05
Speaker 2: Do you think it would have been easier to take three years off and come back, or is it easier to do it all at once? It would be I mean, like the chances of you getting another opportunity to build thirty six holes at the same facility at once, it's probably like.

00:52:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, probably one in a million. Well, I think from a from a developer's point of view, it's impractical because they want to make use of the time on site and the contractors and you know the cost of building. They just want to roll through and do it all. But from a creative point of view, it would be wonderful to be able to go, well, I'm going to do one course and then I'm going to think about it for three years, and then I'm going to do the other. That would be it would be the ideal, but I can't see anyone agreeing to that.

00:52:53
Speaker 2: What do you have any crazy ideas, anything that you want to try that you'd be willing to share?

00:52:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, I why I'm still determined to do the one that I spoke to you about a while ago. And so I think if you had a new site on flatish ground and the idea was to recontour it, I think the problem most architects have is that they'll rout the course and then do the bolt grading based on the routing, and whilst they may incorporate the odd little quirk, the grading is like if you looked at a contour plan of some of these courses and switched off all of the mowing lines, I think you could. I think a non architect could probably work out the whole corridors based on the grading. If that makes it? Does that make sense because of you know, there'll be like mounding between holes or like, even if it's not that sort of cause, even if it's a really naturalistic course, you can usually see where the holes kind of move. And I always thought it would be more interesting to regrade the site without any preconceived notion of where the holes go and then do the routing, because I think you would end up with much more interesting holes. You know, you might have some blind seconds or a blind path three or like. You know, I think it has the potential to be a more interesting layout than going the other way.

00:54:14
Speaker 2: I think I've thought about this idea a ton, and I think that you need to have the person who's doing the grading work has to be like on their own, you know, out there. So the idea, in kind of Layman's terms, is having somebody, you know, golf courses get built, and there's stuff that gets built on the edges of holes and gets built all over the place. The idea would be build all that stuff and then do the routing.

00:54:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, because so many of the really interesting holes that are memorable a result of an interesting landform or how they've decided to lay the hole out over that, like the is it eleven at shortcus crazy path with the drug there's no way that you know, I mean that it's such an interesting hole, and I just think no one would create that hole on a flat piece of ground if they were forced to, you know, come up with that idea. It's sort of a function of I mean, they obviously moved a lot of dirt, but it's sort of a function of that particular piece of ground, if that makes sense.

00:55:22
Speaker 2: Yeah. I just was at Pinehurst number ten, a new tom Doak course, and they have a whole, the eighth hole there that everybody's going to be talking about, and it's the hole sits in old mining spoils. So there's just these giant mounds everywhere, and you know, you tee off over a mount and then you go down into it in the fairways, like they had to do some work on the mounds were too severe for golf, but they just softened them enough where there's this cool center line and if if your ball goes right, you get a perfect shot into the green and you you took the most blind shot off the tee. But if you play left, then you're blind into the green. And it's just all these choppy mounts and you look to the right and left of it and you see how it was just this is what was here, This is the mining spoils. Obviously it was softened a little bit, but it's like that idea, right, it was just a giant mess that they inherited and they built this hole, and I think like you're going to see so many pictures of that hole. But what's cool is the idea of this was a complete you know. Yeah, a lot of people would have looked at that and been like, you know what, there's nothing there, but they worked on it, and you know, and it doesn't I like the weird you know. I think the thing that's gonna be hard is like it doesn't necessarily fit in with the rest of the course. Right, There's some features that they have added around to try and you know, blend it in a little bit more. But it's just this one little pocket of mining right on this property. But it's like, what if that was everywhere? Has that stream song?

00:57:01
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, that's right. And I just think, you know, because you all, everyone has their own biases and so we often, you know, you look to the land for inspiration. So when you're given a really interesting bit of land, it's something that's just completely different. That's I think that's when you get the gems where you come up with some idea. That's because you're always trying to build a hole, a unique hole, because there's only so many holes. I mean, they're all you know, there's only so many ways you can do it. So when you do come up with a unique idea.

00:57:31
Speaker 2: It's just like bucker on the inside of green that opens the buck.

00:57:36
Speaker 1: The green either left or right, right to left, tilt forward sideways. You know how many times can you do it? So that's why when you see a hole like eleven at Shoreachers, you remember it because you're like, it is different to anything else I've ever seen. I've never seen a hole like that, and you remember it. And so I think that's why when you get interesting bits of ground, that's when you start. You know, you may find three or four holes that are just totally unique. And I just think, and if you're forced to go the other way, it won't be as interesting and as unique as as if you're given the land. If someone goes and it's like you need a grading. Like with wine makers, there'll be a person that looks after the vineyard and then there's the wine maker. It's like you need that relationship. You need a grading person, someone to go and regrade the ground who has no preconceived notion of where the holes are going. And then the architect comes in and then they route the course.

00:58:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they can't communicate everall with each other.

00:58:31
Speaker 1: No, he just knows. The person grading the ground knows roughly what makes interesting golf, what looks like interesting golf, and they just come up with a really interesting landscape and then they give it to the architect and they should work hand in hand. It's like a new.

00:58:47
Speaker 2: Well, that's I mean, that's the thing too, is like I was at you know, Pier's ten last week and a bunch of dirt had been dropped to build a tea, you know, and it hadn't been moved, nothing had moved. It just was dropped there, right, and it was like rough tracked in and I was standing on it and I was like, you know what, this would be a cool green because it just was like kind of like wavy and like nothing had been roughed in. It's going to be built into a tea. But that's the idea, right, And like you think about the like amazing fairway contours at the old course, right, is if you just had a guy just like pushing some dirt around you, you'd approximate that easily.

00:59:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's one of the I think that's one of creatively why we work the way we do. Because if you were in a if you were at a drafting table and had to come up with aiding green designs. You just it's creatively, it's it's you're just not going to get as interesting a result as if you're in the field with a shapeer and you start dumping sand on the green and exactly like you said, halfway through, they've pushed some of the sand to the side or whatever, and you're like, hang on, this looks interesting. You know. It's like whether it's a man on the left or a hollow just and it may be completely different to what you had in mind, and then and then that might set you on a different path, and then you start refining that and you just end up with much more unique designs because things are being created that you never would have imagined yourself. It's only a result of you know, dir being placed there and pushed around. They're kind of happy accidents. Really, yeah, it's not like you're sitting there chewing on an idea. I mean sometimes they just evolve and it's like.

01:00:33
Speaker 2: In a way, is a little bit of a of a case against like very strict routing plans and like somebody asking and I'm sure this is a lot of I imagine a lot of people in golf. They're making decisions on golf courses, probably skewed type a right, the idea of having a loose plan, but having a lot of freedom within the loose plan, because you might have something you could be building a par five and be like, you know what, like this might work better as a par three? Right to hear, right, Yeah.

01:01:11
Speaker 1: I think it's And it depends on the situation. I mean, if it's if it's a golf course, if it's an existing golf course and there's a particular path three will say that people don't like and it doesn't work. I think you should be good enough to be able to draw an idea and present it to them and say, well, this is more like what we're thinking. And given that there's no trees in the way, it's all on the ground, you know, you should be able to have the skills to go, well, I think we're going to build this, and then when it comes time to build it, you still might make tweaks, but it's more or less along those lines. But so that's one example. But the other way is if let's say you've got two thousand acres of forest and you've come up with this routing. Well, no matter how good you are, you don't know what it's going to look like when you clear it. Like you've got a fair idea, but there's always as a surprise, and so you have to have the ability, i think, to be able to shift away from that, whether it's it might be moving the whole completely, you know, it might move it thirty or forty yards, or you might uncover a really interesting green side or a landform, or the backdrop was different to the way you thought it was, or maybe there's a really nice feature tree that you want to highlight. It could be a whole range of reasons why. But to get the best result in that situation, you have to have flexibility. Otherwise, if you do a detailed plan and give it to someone, you don't know how many lost opportunities there that have been dozed over by the time you actually get back to see it. So you have to sort of be there and see it evolved.

01:02:40
Speaker 2: All right, last question, we'll get you out of here. You've been more of the generous with your tie, But what's your favorite part of the process? Is it? Is it the planning stages, is it in the dirt or is it like you're hitting a shot on your kids that's reopened.

01:02:59
Speaker 1: It's less so that, Yeah, no, it's more. I really the first time you see a first time you see a site, see you've won the project, and it's that first, first and second visits where you're exploring the property and you've got a million ideas and you're trying to figure out you know, like a mental roll index, you know, in your head you're flicking through trying to figure out what's the style of the course, what's the feel, even before you start looking at the specific holes, trying to figure out what's the identity of this place. That is a really interesting part of the project. And then once you actually get and then and then on the ground when you're actually building the holes. They're probably my two favorite times when you actually you get into a great rhythm. Usually not the first hole. Usually the first hole or the first two you're trying to figure a few things out and you're trying to figure out what's the style and the feel and how is this coming together? But once you really get into it, the wholes start churning out quite quickly and you've you've just got this really good kind of rhythm going. Those are my two favorite favorite times. And then it is always fun once you get through growing and you're you're seeing the course really come alive. But actually playing the course is not necessarily it's not like a highlight. I wouldn't have said.

01:04:21
Speaker 2: So, probably a sad moment that's.

01:04:23
Speaker 1: The best it's ever going to look. Is usually just before it open. Not always, No, they often get better time, but yeah, I don't. I love the former, the creative aspect.

01:04:36
Speaker 2: I feel like most people would think it's the.

01:04:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, the ladder, Yeah, I'm sure they do. Yeah. Now I'm more interested in the before.

01:04:45
Speaker 2: All right, people can find you. You're on Twitter, you're on Instagram, at OCM golf. I didn't do buy homework. I hope that's right now.

01:04:55
Speaker 1: Look, we're not super active. Social media users are going to say you're too busy.

01:04:59
Speaker 2: You're too busy, you're flying around too much.

01:05:02
Speaker 1: I love social media. That's yeah. We're trying to be better. We're trying to post a few things. But it's a few more Madonna images that are going to come up soon.

01:05:10
Speaker 2: So yeah, everybody's always trying to be better. That's the thing, you know, whether whether you're on there all the time or you're never on there, you're trying to be better at it.

01:05:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good point.

01:05:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, thanks Mike. We'll make this less than five years before.

01:05:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, that would be good. Yeah, that would be great. All right, Thanks Matte.

01:05:31
Speaker 2: So thank you for listening to another edition of the Friday Golf Podcast. Today's episode was edited by Matt Rushes. Thank you, Matt. Obviously the weather is cooling down. I hope everybody had a warm Halloween. I know probably was pretty cold. It's going to be pretty cold in a lot of parts. But we've got layers. We've got our fall staples, our winter staples in the pro shop. If you want to pick up some merchandise, you know, some warm layers and different things, we've got a bunch in the Frida Egg Pro Shop. Visit Proshop dot thefridagg dot com and you can find all of that there. Thanks and we will be back later this week with another edition of the Frida Egg Golf Podcast.