Kapalua, Sand Hills, & 35 Years at Skokie Country Club

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

00:00:02
Speaker 2: When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.

00:00:05
Speaker 1: And when I find my ball in a brid egg.

00:00:07
Speaker 3: Friday egg, the dreaded Frida egg Friday Frida egg Egg, fridagg brid egg.

00:00:11
Speaker 2: Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the up course.

00:00:37
Speaker 4: Welcome back to another edition of the Friday Golf Podcast. I am your host, Andy Johnson. Today I am really excited about this podcast. I'm joined by two great guests. I'm joined by Mark Roffing from the Golf Channel and obviously when he's known as particularly in January, he is mister Hawaii. We are going to talk about not so fun situation, the crisis kind of in Capaloo and Maui with water. So we will talk about that situation and we'll get into some other tales, some fun stories from his time working with Bill Core and Ben Crunshaw at sand Hills. And I'm also joined by the superintendent at Skokie Country Club, one of the legends of Chicago land turf, Don Cross. So Don Cross joins me and we chop it up about his incredible career nearly fifty years in turf and thirty five at Skokie Country Club in Chicago, one of Chicago's best golf courses. So don big thanks to Don and Mark for joining. Before we get to Ralph, let's talk about our new partner Away. I travel a lot for work, and before I started this company, when I was working my other job, I always traveled with Away luggage. This is an awesome luggage ran I have been using it for ten plus years now, basically since they started. I remember I got one of their smaller suitcases for Christmas and it is awesome luggage. It's durable. I still have that same piece of luggage. I use it all the time. Luckily, I just got a new piece from them with the fried Egg branding on it. It's really cool. But they make just amazing luggage. It's beautiful design, simple, but it is with really thoughtful design for travelers and how you can fit everything in there. So like the biggest thing about it is they have like an interior compression system, a system which helps you fit in extra stuff in your bag. I think the thing that I love about it is I can really like get a lot in a smaller bag and one of their bigger bags. I can really get a lot the wheels and the just moving it around is awesome. They obviously has that hard shell and is durable, so this is just a great, great piece of luggage. On top of that, we you know, if you're looking for like corporate gifting, this is a great way.

00:03:11
Speaker 1: We just got ours with some branding on it.

00:03:13
Speaker 4: It is awesome when you travel and you're playing golf or you're going on a golf trip or a business trip. Seamless travel is so important, and really what helps that is having reliable, well designed gear that lets you focus on the trip and the courses you're going to play. If you're interested in a Way luggage, you get ten percent off your first order at Away. So you go to away travel dot com slash Frida egg and you get ten percent off your first order at a Way. All right, big, thanks Away. Let's get to Mark Rolphing.

00:03:54
Speaker 1: Rolf.

00:03:55
Speaker 4: I got to ask you a question out of the gates. I think we might be brothers in arms here. One of my colleagues saw you traveling a couple of years back, and he saw you and crocs and socks. Are you still traveling in crocs and socks? For those not watching, I just got a visual of the crocs and socks. Uh, it's the only way to travel.

00:04:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, why wouldn't I Like, what do I care what I look like when I travel through an airport? I mean I used some Roger Malby still goes in a sport coach. He believes he should travel in a sport coat. Roger does. And you know that's gone crocs and socks. That's perfect for me.

00:04:35
Speaker 4: I I gotta I've worn out my crocs.

00:04:38
Speaker 1: I have to get a new pair. And I just had to fly.

00:04:42
Speaker 4: I just you know, I just got done with a flight, and I'm just wearing regular tennis shoes and it's just it's just not the same it was. It was a downgrade and comfort and uh and and uh in the airport this week.

00:04:55
Speaker 1: So we brought you on.

00:04:56
Speaker 4: You know, I think golf golf, you're known pretty much as Miss Hawaii, and you know, I think it's a very interesting situation going on with.

00:05:06
Speaker 1: One of the most.

00:05:07
Speaker 4: Iconic golf courses in the professional game, Cappelua, the Plantation Course.

00:05:12
Speaker 2: Uh.

00:05:12
Speaker 4: There have obviously been some troubling photos coming out of Cappelua, where the golf course is very, very brown, just for people that might not be aware of what's going on. Can you give us a high level overview of what's happening to the Capealua and the plantation course as well as their other course there.

00:05:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, let me start by just going back six years for Andy to lay a little groundwork for this conversation, because that was, of course the COVID time, and particularly in Hawaii was a very difficult time because we're so tourism and travel oriented in terms of our economic base. So you know, we had the COVID situation six years ago. Then in twenty twenty three in August, our main town, Lahina, burned to the ground and we pretty much lost all the infrastructure on the west side of Maui. Didn't affect Kapolo is about ten miles short north of Lahina, but in fact that everything else on the island and certainly put us into a situation where we had to really start figuring out what we were going to do about the long term water issue because we didn't really have sufficient water and access to sufficient water in twenty twenty three during that fire, and since then we have probably had I'm going to say, in the twenty five to thirty wildfire ranges, not big ones like the Hina fire, but because we've been in the sustained drought and because there is no more farming on West Maui. When I first went there, Andy we had pineapple and sugarcane where both the big crops and all the way for ten miles north of Lahina everything was irrigated. It was farmed, and when it was irrigated, he didn't have all the brush and all the potential fire issues that we have now and the need for water and particularly reserves of water in the event of a fire. So we are in the worst drought West Maloi is right now that we have been in since I've been there, and that's been four decades now, so it's a prolonged drought. It's a very severe drought. Having said that, the real issue here in my mind, is not the water itself. There is a dedicated watershed above Coppolua in the West Malui Mountains. It's nine thousand acres that was dedicated when I first got to Coppoloa by the chairman of the company at the time, who is whose family owned Maliland and Pineapple Company. They dedicated the Poukooi Watershed in perpetuity to provide water to West Maui, and it still rains two hundred inches of Europe there. That never changes. The rain up there is still not affected by the drought situations at the lower levels. The real issue now on West Malli and for Coppolo in particular, is the water delivery system. There is about an eleven mile waterway that comes down the mountain from the watershed that's basically a ditch that's over one hundred years old. It is a really old system that is failing and has never been kept up and repaired and would be a very expensive fix. But the real issue now is that system is not fixed. I don't see with the litigation that's going on out there now, I don't see that being resolved in short term. And therefore, the only way to keep the golf courses alive there is to use surface water, which is questionable at best, as you can see by the decision to not play the century.

00:09:07
Speaker 4: I imagine the you know, obviously, so you know what you're describing is an infrastructure issue.

00:09:17
Speaker 1: And given you know the disaster.

00:09:22
Speaker 4: That happened, the tragic disaster that happened at Lahaina, I imagine that has put a kind of a you know, beyond anything, whether there's some mismanagement or you know, anything that's put a huge infrastructure strain on the entire island with building and you know, access to you know, uh, you know, workforce to even build stuff because there's such a high demand to rebuild you know, just a lot of areas with that fire.

00:09:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, the biggest issue is housing. Uh. And you know, the golf has gotten you know, the highest profile you know, look at by the world in terms of, oh my heavens, we're having to cancel a golf tournament. But the fact is that we don't have sufficient water for the affordable housing that needs to be built, and people are leaving the island literally in drove Sandy. I mean, it's just amazing to me how expensive it has gotten there, and the whole west side of the island basically has relocated either towards the center of the island or some affordable housing up on Coppoloo Away. But you know, it goes way beyond golf. I'm kind of on both sides of the fence of the issue because I really am concerned about the long term water situation. I think what needs to happen is the state needs to step in to the two parties. You've got the golf course owner mally Land or the golf course land owner of the infrastructure mally LANDA Pine. And then you have the golf course owner, which is Tadashi and I of the Ty Corporation. He bought that plantation course I think back in two thousand and seven. It was for fifty million dollars, which he wouldn't have done if they hadn't guaranteed him sufficient water. And he was guaranteed that water, and they have not been able to deliver that now because they haven't been able to repair the waterway system. I think that it's probably going to have to get addressed by the state itself. The state theoretically wouldn't be involved, except that when you have an emergency like we have going on out there right now. If I were the governor and I've talked to him about this, and I'm in fairly constant contact with him on it, I would sit the two parties down in a room. I'd take him into a room, mister and I, mister Randalls from may Land and Pine. I would put him in a room and I'd say fellas, we're closing this door and locking this door, and we're not going out until you figure this thing out. And I think something like that probably does have to happen. But you know what happens when you get into the lidication and now it's just nothing but a bunch of finger pointing.

00:12:10
Speaker 4: Yeah, and expensive lawyer fees. You know, that's the other thing, you know, the lawyers. The lawyers are getting getting off on it with the obviously, I think like an important thing that you hit on. You know, the water situation is a huge, huge problem in other ways that are way, way, way more consequential than the golf course and the golf tournament. This is a golf podcast, though, so we are going to talk about the golf aspect of this. Has this made you think differently about water and golf.

00:12:46
Speaker 2: It definitely has. It's had a huge impact on me. But my life with water and golf really changed. Andy back, Oh, it has been in the late nineteen eighties when we had just finished building the plantation course, Bill Core and Ben Crenshaw and I and they decided to you know, and we were selling two million dollar lots and building luxury hotels and things things were cranking along quite nicely. And then they convinced me I needed to go up and look at a piece of property in Mulla, Nebraska that they thought we could build a really cool golf course on. And I was a reluctant participant. I finally agreed to go and went, and that was the experience to change my whole view of water, because I remember the first trip up the sand hills. I kept asking Ben and Bill, like, Okay, where are the condos going you know, where's the airstrip going to be? What that would be a nice place for a hotel, like right over there? And they go, no, you don't quite get what we're talking about here. And I didn't at the time, but I do now. And I literally, from that point on have become, you know, more in your half of being a minimalist when it comes to water. And I'll tell you this. I was watching the two thousand Mercedes Championship at Kapolo, which was the greatest finish in the history of the PGA Tour with Ernie and Tiger. I was watching that not too long ago on the Golf Channel, and the golf course was brown. It was brown back then, and both those putts that putt Tiger made on the first hole, on the fourth playoff hole or whatever it was. I mean that thing bounced about four different times. And the course wasn't at all like it is now or like it was prior to this drought where it was lush and green. It was. It was a brown golf course. In fifty years from now, I think most of them are going to be grown. That's the way we're going to be. And I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing.

00:14:46
Speaker 4: I think that, Yeah, I think we're in an interesting period with maintenance, and I think in terms of what's happened over the last twenty years, there's been just such advances, and you know, I think technical expertise of these superintendents is off the charge charts, you know. I think that's something that's not talked a lot about a lot in golf. That's that's been one of the most you know, you know, from a from a you know, you think, I think about the municipal golf course that I grew up playing at Lake Bluff Golf Club. It was just soft and spongy greens. The ball would bounce, you know, when you play on a spongy green and you'd hit a wedge and the ball bounce really high, but then stop like right on its tracks. And now you go back over there, and you know, I it's it's world's better and it's you know, the maintenance standard of even like your low end municipal golf course is so much higher than it used to be. But I do agree there is there's so much and I think this is this is happening. You're seeing it with some of these Zousia grasses or some of these Bermuda grasses that are you know, there's so much research that's being done on turf grass that is pushing in that drought resistant category. You know, there are there are strains of grass that can go prolonged periods with very minimal amounts of water. And it seems like in certain parts of the country area I live in in California, obviously what's going on in Hawaii, these these grasses are going to become paramount to the long term feasibility of golf. And I think, like you know, I in my area, for example, you know there you know, there are golf courses that purchase water from you know, water districts and that's a great plan, but you know, when it comes down to where you get to historic levels droughts which are completely feasible and happen, you know, they these things are cyclical and happen, and you know there could be factors that are making them happen more often. But when you get to a catastrophic drought situation, when when a county or town or whatever has to choose between water for people or water for golf, Golf's going to lose every time.

00:17:10
Speaker 1: And that's where we have to in.

00:17:14
Speaker 4: Particularly, I think, I think just the expectation for golf courses and what they look like has to change, starting with the PGA Tour. I mean, you're a part of these broadcasts, like they mess with the saturation levels to when you broadcast golf so that it shows up as green.

00:17:31
Speaker 2: You know, Yeah, yeah, you're right. The expectation levels and the way we view things has really got to change. If you think about it, Andy, the three biggest issues that our entire golf industry are facing right now are the same three issues they were facing when I got into it over forty years ago, and that is the game is too difficult, it takes too long, and it costs too much. Those three things. You can pretty much boil everything down to one of those those three pots. But all three of those can be affected and can be improved with maintenance that is less severe than what we're doing now in terms of the amount of water we're using, or the heights of grass that we're mowing, or the length of our courses or whatever it all is. We can make the game easier, you know, firmer, faster golf courses with good green speeds are going to lower scores, lower costs because to the consumer, because it's going to lower cost to the owners of the courses. I think all three of those can be solved if we can get everybody on the thought process that, you know, everything doesn't have to be green sitting up on a tee so you can hit your two driver, you know, like the tour pros do off the grass like who cares. I think maintenance could be a big, big part of the future of that well.

00:19:00
Speaker 4: I mean, you think about Augusta National and its impact on the golf world, and one of the things that always frustrates me is there's so many great things to take away from Augusta about you know, its restraint in design, the lack of bunkers, the way that it really uses the land as it's like main hazard for the best players in the world. The green construction in terms of the slopes on the greens and the undulations around the greens. These are all great things that you could take away from Augusta National. But the main thing that everybody takes away is like the maintenance, which is it is like a you know, unicorn in terms of the means and the staff and the.

00:19:48
Speaker 5: You know, the philosophy, but that is what you know, the general the general population takes away from Augusta is that and none of the other wonderful things like Augusta's green in the contours for the most part, are not more expensive than boring greeds, you know, like you have to pay somebody to build them. And if more golf courses had really fascinating greeds, the game would be more interesting for the beginning golfer. I think about this all the time.

00:20:19
Speaker 4: It's like, you know, your spot on nail on the head about like the three three problems with golf, and it like so often we as a golf society prop up the things that just continue to perpetuate those three problems what we do.

00:20:38
Speaker 2: And if you think about my first one was that the game is too hard. So let's address the beginners and new people that are being introduced to the game. I mean, the game is much easier played along the ground than it is through the air. And if we discourage playing along the ground for beginners, they're going to quit because they're not going to be successful. Uh, And you know, let's let's make it attractive for them and have them enter the game thinking, you know what, I'm going to use the ground here, and let's keep Augusta National what it is, which is, you know, maybe the greatest golf tournament in the world, one of one of the top couples for sure. But it should be one week a year. There is no other place in the entire world like Augusta Nationals, the club itself or the courtse So one week a year is just fine. And don't anybody else try to do that.

00:21:30
Speaker 4: Back to the situation and in Kapalua, you know, we had a little divergence there, but what do you you know, kind of like think is the best outcome for the situation? Getting the guy you know, you suggested getting these two in a room. Obviously it's made more difficult by litigation. But what would be you know, the the ideal outcome for this situation.

00:21:58
Speaker 2: Well, the first thing is, and I don't think there's any scenario where the Century can be played in twenty and twenty six. There's still, you know, all these conversations about oh, why couldn't we play somewhere else or whatever. The schedule is basically full, and we're eighty five days away from the start of the tournament. It's too late. There's just no time for the planning. So let's just say, Okay, we understand what happened, and it's too bad. But the fact is we need to really start thinking about two thousand and twenty seven for the Century and for the Sony Open. Those two were joined at the hip in Hawaii. Let's start thinking about two thousand and twenty seven, and how do we overcome the issues that are starting to I would say magnify themselves that are going to make it more complicated for Hawaii. You know, for Hawaii forever, we had eleven televised tournaments one year out there, Andy, I think in the early two thousands we had four LPGA events a couple of senior events, a couple of PGA Tour events, a Skins game, you know, a Grand Slam of Golf, all this stuff. We're down to four now, and it's for a number of reasons. The cost of doing things out in Hawaii has just skyrocketed, the shipping being number one, and I don't even know what Sony Open is going to do now that they're going to be the only tournament of the two. There's no way for Golf Channel to advertise the shipping costs, you know, for equipment or anybody else that's shipping stuff, let's say to the Sony Open. So you got that problem. You've got TGL which is now you know, taking its spot in January. Uh, you know, and a lot of the guys are Florida based guys. Uh. And then you've got the Middle East. And if you take a look at where Roy McElroy's going in January, and where ship Shane Lowry's going and where Tommy Fleet was when they're going to the Middle East, So you got this stretch of Abu Dhabi and Dubai and all this is kind of screaming to me. Uh. If Hawaii wants to kind of maintain and continue in the future to be a part of the PGA Tour. It's really gonna have to get creative in terms of how these events out there are subsidized. You're you're seeing places like South Carolina and Utah and all these places they're paying huge type fees, uh to have tournaments. And and I think in order for Hawaii to be successful going forward with Centri or Sony or both, hopefully you know, they're they're probably gonna have to help subsidize because the costs are just out of control out there.

00:24:44
Speaker 1: I uh, you know, that's it feels.

00:24:47
Speaker 4: Obviously there's there's a new regime in the PGA Tour, and I think a lot of things are you know, being looked at. And I think one of the the the aspects that's being looked at is like the cost to run a tournament week to week. And obviously you hit on that, like getting all the equipment and the way that the game has grown. You know, in two thousand, which you were talking about, we didn't have to have like shotleg cameras and all that stuff all over a golf course. That that wasn't a part of it. But you know, as you're looking at this and as you kind of illuminated the reduction in Hawaii golf it you know, with this, it does feel like, you know, there's there's a feeling of this could be the end of pro golf in Hawaii, which I think is like a huge shame. And there are a lot of reasons why a kapalua in January is like for for a golf fan, is like a religious experience.

00:25:50
Speaker 1: You know. It's that first Thursday of the year I have.

00:25:54
Speaker 4: I think like one of maybe my first Instagram posts ever of the platform was me like I was working on normal. This was before I was working in the golf world. I was working in normal. I think I was in my mid twenties and it's like I poured a bourbon and I sat down. I was in Chicago. It's the middle of winter and golf is back. Like it is a epic time of year for a golf tournament in Hawaii. It's an epic time slot because you get primetime golf, you know, which is something that frankly, with the way the schedule is set up is sorely missed on the on the golf calendar. Like the fact that we don't get more primetime golf. I think it's one of the big shames for golf fans, and like there's so many It's yeah, it's a young tournament in the grand scheme of things, but there is so much iconic history and so many great finishes at that at particularly the Capelua event, and then you piggyback it with Sony and you get this great start launch of the season, and I think it would just be a real shame and short sighted if it went away.

00:27:05
Speaker 5: Well I do too.

00:27:06
Speaker 2: It's become appointment TV. There's no question about it. And you know it's interesting. I've been so looking forward to January of twenty seven because that's the proposed date for the rollback experiment, because I just keep laughing to myself thinking, if we have this drought, the twenty percent rollback is going to go twenty percent further on every shot that they hit. It's going to hit the little knobs and billcore, but bounces out there that are going to take it even further than it was before. It would be absolutely hysterical. It's a project they would have to abandon. They couldn't do that. But anyway, I am looking forward to twenty seven. You know, and while if you think about Whyley Boy, when I first moved to Hawaii, the plantation course was the monster when we built that, and while I was the easy pitching putt, perfect green, low scores, and it's actually flip flocked almost totally now, while I've become more of a ball striker's kind of test, and you know, they've been playing golf there since when the nineteen fifties. I mean, in my heavens, to not have a PGA Tour event a while, I just I don't know. Something would be wrong in our world if that were to happen, and so I'm doing whatever I can to help. I'm involved with the Century folks Mali, and we're examining all the potential options for twenty seven and beyond. They do have a contract as a title sponsor all the way to two thousand and thirty five, so they have a long term contract. They just don't have a sight right now.

00:28:41
Speaker 4: It's crazy. It's something you said is illuminating, and I thought it was. You know, it's a very astute observation, the idea of Capaloua being the monster and then now Sony presenting the tougher ten. It's such a a wonderful example of how the difficult questions of the game have changed over the last twenty five to thirty years. How it used to be, you know, like it used to be about power and accuracy off the tea was a hard skill, you know, figuring out like you know, knowing what you had on a daily basis was a complete mystery to where it seems like now it's like tee to green. Game is very, very reliable for all these great players, you know, for to a certain extent, with like power and grace, and what Wili presents is kind of almost like a quirkiness and it being being a smaller ballpark that doesn't necessarily fit, you know, the modern game presents these weird quirks that make the game more challenging for today's modern pro either there no doubt.

00:29:58
Speaker 2: And I will tell you, you know, last two weeks ago the Ryder Cup was probably and you know, I've been working the Ryder Cup since nineteen ninety one, that was my most disappointing Ryder Cup by far. And yeah, the fan abuse was horrible and I hated every minute of it. But I will tell you the biggest disappointment for me was bet Page. You know, because the Beth Page that I knew from two US opens and a PGA championship was gone. It wasn't there. You could hit it anywhere you wanted, you know, the entire island, a long island. You could hit it wherever you want it, and it basically turned into a putting contest. And we know how that turned out.

00:30:38
Speaker 4: Well, we just had Joseph Lamania of Our of Friday. I just did an interview with Dodo Molinari. Obviously the stats was and he said that they were quite pleased when they arrived at Best Page on Monday and saw the setup. They they were we had they I think it's quote was something along those lines of we had a lot of a lot of long hitters that really really appreciated that setup, and we kind of lit up when we saw it, which is, you know, it's it's awesome. I got before we get you out of here, I got to ask for a favorite Sandhills story from that project with Ben and Bill. Maybe a favorite story, but I'd also like to hear about your reaction when they were talking to you about where this course was going to be and and what research you did before you went there for the first time.

00:31:32
Speaker 2: My only research was I went no, no, no, I'm not interested in this. But you know, after the success we had at the plantation, it was pretty hard to say no. I think my favorite story was, you know, if Bill cor famously had camped out there and you know, found one hundred and thirty different golf holes, and I mean, you could have started anywhere, you could have finished everywhere. I remember the first day that I was there, they kept going, yeah, you see that, you see that. I couldn't see anything. I could not see a thing. But I will tell you this. I went there with them when we approved the last routing plan, and this was going to be okay, here's the goal. There was basically five founding investors. I was one of them. Mike Heiser was part of that group. Back then. This was before he found Banded Dudes. Actually he kind of got his attentions diverted actually during Sanjels, I think it was. But so we went for the final routing and we're going along and we get to like the thirteenth hole, and I can't it was either Bill or Ben or somebody said there's something we got to tell you, And I said, yeah, like what that. Now, keep in mind that we had to buy two thousand acres to build this golf course. We had to cobble all these parcels of cattle grazing ground together to do it, and we only needed two fifty down there by the river sort of thing. But anyway, Ben goes over to this fence, which is the property line, and he jumps over the fence and he goes, you got to see this, And I said, like what, Like I got to see what? Well, you got to see you got to see this? Comes come look at this.

00:33:22
Speaker 1: Well.

00:33:22
Speaker 2: So, to make a long story short, basically he had found forty more acres. We had two thousand. There wasn't enough for an eighteen over god, we had to find forty more acres to buy to build the eighteen holes. And like, I just couldn't comprehend that that's what we were doing, but we did, and you know, it worked. It was just an incredible project. It changed my entire view of the game of architecture. Obviously, that's when I started really really kind of getting interested and involved in it. And yeah, and sand Hills is a great story. My other one was when Ben and Ben's crunch on. I went up to Mullen one day. We went to the little nine hole course up there and there was a sign outside that I had my picture taken with next to it, and it said eight nine holes five dollars, eighteen holes three dollars. And I went and I went in and asked the guy, how can this possibly be? How can it be cheaper to play eighteen holes in it is nine holes? And they said, well, we're trying to encourage play, And okay, I got but I guess those are two of them. I got a bunch of sand Hills stories.

00:34:38
Speaker 4: I you know, I can't urge people enough to go do the you know, I haven't played all of them, but you know, you can't make a sand Hills trip without going to play some of the MA and PA courses that are in the sand Hills where you know, one of my favorites is Pelican Beach where you it's and Hyannas and you just you drive in. You know, there's an honor box you drop your money in and it's just sublime golf. It's you know, with with the way Scotland has gotten so like so monetized, where you know, you know, and I think like those those experiences are amazing experiences, but the price of them has just gone through the roof in recent years.

00:35:25
Speaker 1: You know, these golf courses have figured out where you know, if they charge more money, they get more tourist play because they associate the price with the course.

00:35:36
Speaker 4: Like Scotland. There's a couple areas of the US. Scotland and Northern Michigan are two of are I mean, the sand Hills in Northern Michigan are two of these areas in the US where I still where I feel like there's an old world golf feel to them. And and that sand Hills project, you know, when you look back on it, obviously like the cost, there's so many unique aspects of it of the time, and you know, Dick Young's cap was such a you know, I had a drink with Dick Young's cap on Ben's porch years ago when we were filming something and he was telling me the story about how he dug the mainline for irrigation all by himself, like in doing that, and it's like, if you think about the time and place, that just wasn't how golf courses were done. And so many aspects of it where the owner, the you know, the the visionary is out digging, you know, instead the visionary of the of courses then was thinking about where the you know, the high end homes were going to go.

00:36:39
Speaker 2: Well, i'll tell you an interesting story. You know, shan Hills is a four month a year club that basically goes from Memorial Day until the end of October in September, sorry, and that's it. And that club has operated at a profit every year for however many years. It's been in existence over twenty five years, which shows you that the correct thing was built. But one of the interesting things about the beginning of sand Hills was that we had to figure out how are we going to deal with all the residents and we needed a lot of employees. Like Hooker County, Nebraska doesn't have that many residents. They live in two different time zones and it's just kind of extremely difficult. So, believe it or not, when we first opened sand Hills, if you were a resident of Hooker County, Nebraska, you played sand Hills for seventy five dollars a year. Seventy five a year.

00:37:32
Speaker 1: And best steel golf.

00:37:36
Speaker 2: Well it was and you know, if there was a tornado coming or a snowstorm, everybody would come out and cover the greens for us and you know, kind of help us get the place ready. It really was a community even though it was a private club. You know, from the beginning it was a community golf course in a lot of ways.

00:37:53
Speaker 1: I think it still is to a certain extent.

00:37:55
Speaker 4: You know, you go there and like we did a maintenance video about the maintenance program. There was one of my favorite projects we've ever done.

00:38:04
Speaker 1: And you go in and and it's just amazing the mix.

00:38:08
Speaker 4: You know, like Kyle Hegland, the superintendent's there there, has done like a wonderful job figuring out how to recruit you know. He he has like you know, members of the girls basketball team, and he's found that the the these.

00:38:21
Speaker 1: Girls are are more precise.

00:38:23
Speaker 4: With green mowing than you know, the than the boy the wrestling boys that you know, they're they're better with like you know, they're doing the like the fairway, like you know, air ration.

00:38:32
Speaker 1: And it's just like an amazing name.

00:38:35
Speaker 4: Like it's so cool to go into a maintenance facility and just see high school kids that are their main labor force in in the middle of summer and it's it is a it is such a community place and and you know it is uh, it's just such.

00:38:53
Speaker 1: A wonderful place in the world.

00:38:55
Speaker 4: Like I you know, I think like everybody for the most part that gets to go there or one of the other great clubs there, they they have this contained aspect of their trip where they don't venture beyond the club grounds. But I'll tell you, like some of my favorite times in my ten years doing this were with my staff, my great the great people I work with, like in those remote towns, hanging out, you know, like those are times I remember. I remember going to a diner in Gothenburg with Garrett and Cameron and sitting and you know and just talking with the with the waitress like there are great there are great people, and it's you know, like you should go explore. Go if you're gonna go, go drive down. I can't remember the road that goes right through the sandhills. That road is epic. I mean it's like driving through almost like you know, it's driving through like some like the dune systems are just amazing, Like it is a it's a site to behold and it's so wonderful, Like everybody's talking about how to how to get this digital talks like go to the sand.

00:40:01
Speaker 1: Hills for a week.

00:40:02
Speaker 4: Your phone won't work most places, and and you will see amazingly beautiful scenery.

00:40:08
Speaker 2: You know, whenever the day Bill Corr retires, and that may be never, I don't know, but at some point he will, all of us will. I could see him in Mohan, Nebraska. That is his kind of town. He absolutely loved it there.

00:40:23
Speaker 1: It's uh, it's funny.

00:40:25
Speaker 4: I I asked Bill once a question that that was like kind of you know, approaching, like when are you going to retire? And he looked at me like I had three heads and he gave one of the best best responses you know of in this podcast history of It was like retire like if you're living your dream, you're just praying you don't ever wake up from it. Like why would I ended this dream? It was it was one of my favorite things. He's he's just he's a legend. And it's that project. I mean, you think about where golf arket texture would have bet would would have gone, or you know, it's like one of those things when you look back on your life and you think about like landmark decisions that you made. That golf course had just such a seismic of impact on where golf architecture has gone today.

00:41:17
Speaker 2: It really really did. And I truly believe I if that course were on either coast, if that were on Long Island, or you know, somewhere in northern California where you are, it could well be the number one course in the world. I don't know it it is. It is that good, but it just was such an eye opening, an incredible project for me to be involved in because it was so different. I remember Dick Young's cap called me one day and wanted to come to Hawaii to meet with my lawyers to figure out how to put together a limited partnership. He didn't know how to do that, and so he flew out the plantation course and met with my lawyer that did the plantation course partnership and read all the documents, including a water agreement back then between Maui Land and Pine and our joint venture that we had put together guaranteed water. So that goes forty years back almost, But anyway, he came out there and I said, look, you can talk to my lawyer and figure out how to use this as a model. Maybe for generating some funds. But I don't want you to take anything else that was done here back there, because there is nothing that was done here this relevant, you know. And just asked Bill Corr because I remember the first first time I ever went up to the plantation course, it was just me and Ben Crenshaw, and he called Bill Corr afterwards, and Bill asked him to describe the land, and he said it was, you know, gently rising from the sea to the mountains. And the first time Bill cour saw it, he immediately called Ben and said, Ben, how many coronas had you guys had when you told me this was gentle, you know, gently rising from the sea.

00:43:04
Speaker 1: But those were the.

00:43:05
Speaker 2: Great times, and you're right, I mean, the transition from the plantation to the to the sand hills could not have been more I mean, wow, abrupt, it was a duel.

00:43:16
Speaker 1: It's it's yeah.

00:43:18
Speaker 4: I mean, I don't think if you pulled any any PGA tour player, they would that the few people that walk the plantation course, any of them would use the term gentle to describe the.

00:43:32
Speaker 1: Topography out there.

00:43:34
Speaker 4: Ralph, thank you so much for the time, the stories and the insight into what's going on at Capalua, and I was, you know, I was with my parents this week and they asked me like, hey, like, what, how many states have you not been to? Because obviously I'm on the road a lot, and one of the states that I haven't been to. I'm kind of sad to admit this as I'm almost forty years old as Hawaii. So it's one of five states in the United States that I have yet to visit. So I need to make amends to that. And maybe we could get together if I get out there.

00:44:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's do it. You should come out when we get this all solved. So give me a few months and then I'm going to take you to a place on the north shore of a Wahoo has got sand dunes. It's got three of them over fifty feet and uh, you'll be amazed when you see Cahuku up there. It's my favorite course in Hawaii.

00:44:26
Speaker 4: Uh, that's one of Zach Blair's favorite places. I've been. I've dreamed of going to Cahuckoo.

00:44:32
Speaker 2: It's it's it's classic. It's an absolute classic.

00:44:35
Speaker 1: All right, thanks so much, and we'll talk to.

00:44:37
Speaker 2: Eddy yeah about it.

00:44:50
Speaker 4: All right, let's take a quick break and talk about our friends at Toro. When selecting golf course maintenance equipment, reliability is essential. That's why Toro products are the choice of golf courses around the world. They know they can count on Toro mowers, utility vehicles and more to work. They also know they can rely on Toro for the innovations and engineering that blend high productivity with beautiful golf course appearance. For products that get the job done, visit Toro dot com slash golf. All right, let's get to Don Cross and we'll talk about Skokie Country Club and his great career.

00:45:32
Speaker 1: All right, Don a legend in the Chicago land.

00:45:37
Speaker 4: Superintendent World, Don Cross, We've been tried to set this up for maybe six years, maybe five years.

00:45:44
Speaker 6: I must count, But in a minute.

00:45:46
Speaker 1: We finally did it.

00:45:48
Speaker 4: You've been obviously working in the Chicago area for a very long time, and I think you've been one of the few superintendents that's been there as really the philosophy of agronomy has changed in in the in the area. How would you say that agronomy and the approach to agronomy at golf courses has changed during your career?

00:46:15
Speaker 3: Oh gosh, well, early on, I think there was much more interesting, you know, everything being lush and green and pretty and you know, not too much out of place. Really, everything kind of kind of perfect to today, where you know, certain areas we obviously always want to have perfect, but definitely much more. Seems like more players are more interested in faster, firmer conditions, drier conditions. They don't seem to have much of a you know, they don't seem to be bothered much by drier conditions that we might get from time to time and and you know, intentionally trying to keep it keep it pretty dry. You know that that's been a that's been a big change. Really, you know, it's faster, firmer. That's that's what seems like most players want today. I mean, even even players that maybe you know, higher handicappers, they like the firmness for the for the ball roll. Of course, the better players like the firmness so they can you know, hit hit their shots a little crisper and get a little.

00:47:40
Speaker 6: More spin and so forth. So I think I think everyone.

00:47:45
Speaker 3: Enjoys those kind of conditions today.

00:47:49
Speaker 4: Do you was there a moment where you were kind of watching what was happening and you there was, hey, we have to change our approach on how we're maintaining this golf course. And what was that maybe the moment or what was the process like in in changing the the real agronomy philosophy of Skokie.

00:48:15
Speaker 3: Well, you know, one of the things, you know, I don't know if it was a given moment.

00:48:22
Speaker 6: I just I think the trending was.

00:48:27
Speaker 3: Drier, firmer, and oh gosh, I wish I could tell you exactly. It's probably been probably almost twenty years ago. We decided at that point that we were going to take and begin our a program of fairly heavy sand top dressing throughout the property. I mean, we'd been doing that on greens forever. I mean I've been here, it's my thirty fifth year here, and you know we've been top dressing greens the whole time, sanding them various forms of aeriation, deep aeration, standing, and so forth. But then we took that approach and took it to to to the approach is initially, uh, to try to get those firmed up. Now, you know, I'm not here to say that. You know, everyone needs to be sand top dress and their fairways. It really depends on each individual property. In our case, as you know you've been here, this tends to be a fairly low property. At certain parts of our property are very low. There were some there's I mean, the Skokie Lagoons are just to the west of us, and we've got a big channel that runs through the you know, the property and our water table.

00:49:51
Speaker 4: One that grew up in the north northern suburbs of Chicago knows that effectively every golf course is built in the same flood.

00:50:00
Speaker 6: You got it, that's true.

00:50:01
Speaker 3: Yeah, So so we have our particular area here. We've got some areas that are really pretty firm clay, and of course that makes a beautiful fast and firm surface when it dries out and turns into brick, right, but then it's pretty hard to get water back into it when you get into extended you know, heat and drought.

00:50:26
Speaker 6: But we have a lot of areas.

00:50:27
Speaker 3: Where we've got a fair amount of organic matter, kind of more you know, lowland boggy type material soil, and so in that case, we felt like sand was going to be a pretty good approach, and so so we started, as I said, probably twenty years ago we were doing the approaches, and then a few years after we liked what we were seeing, so we took that same approach out onto the fairways. We first of all, we did some of those low lying areas around our are low areas of the course, uh, and we treated those entire fairways.

00:51:05
Speaker 1: And then.

00:51:08
Speaker 3: We like the results of that, the smoothing the and we did find that we get firmer conditions, especially during drought, you know, or during rain events. Shortly after rain events, we could let the carts back on without creating a lot of mud tracks and so forth.

00:51:27
Speaker 6: And so we.

00:51:28
Speaker 3: We we've continued with that fact as much as I speak. We're going through that process right now out on the golf course. We're I got Sam getting dumped in my parking lot right now, and we're out spreading it and punching holes and dragging.

00:51:43
Speaker 6: It all in.

00:51:43
Speaker 3: And so we kind of carry on that every year about this about this time. You know, it's something that we aeration, something at least the aerration is something we all do, and as superintendents don't partially like it anymore than you know, the golfers don't like it. You know, it's not necessarily the most fun for us. There's always breakdowns, there's always a machine you know, something going haywire with it and it's scaring more than you wanted to, or those kinds of issues, but we got to do it. You know, it really makes for much nicer surfaces come you know, next May, June, July, August.

00:52:35
Speaker 4: In a similar vein in your thirty five years at skochie, how would you say when you reflect back, your approach to what you do has changed.

00:52:48
Speaker 3: Well, let's start with interacting with membership. You know that that's one thing that you know, I always I always knew that that was really important and I really enjoy interacting with members here. Sometimes they'll ask me a question and then a few minutes later they'll regret it because you know, you asked me a question, I'm going to tell you the answer and and some of that. Sometimes that's going to mean that it's it might be a little bit of a detailed answer. I want to let them know the you know, the specifics of what we're doing and why we're doing it, and you know, hopefully it helps them understand some of the things that we need to do on a regular basis. So I've always always done that and I've always enjoyed it.

00:53:38
Speaker 6: Staff obviously, daily interaction.

00:53:44
Speaker 3: It's it's become I guess one of the things that we've started to use this last year.

00:53:51
Speaker 6: Uh, there's been these.

00:53:55
Speaker 3: The programs called task tracker, like job automated job boards and so for and and they've had this for a long time, and I know a lot of guys have used them, but this was the first year that I started using something like that. The one I particularly use is called Greenkeeper. It was developed not initially for the for that kind of task tracker type of program, but it's called Whiteboard. And so now we've we've started using that this year and and I I really enjoy It's been great because we can I can wake up, you know, in the middle of the night and I just you know, think to myself, Uh, shoot, I forgot to you know, schedule that or whatever. I can get on this whiteboard on my iPad and and make a change right there. And so guys can come in first thing in the morning, they see what they're doing, they know where they're going, they know the direction that they're going to be mowing, and you know, any specifics we put notes and so it really it really takes away a little bit of the personal interaction that we used to have every every morning when we kind of go through the jobs. They they walk in, they see it on a big screen and that's their job and they you know, fortunately they're not waiting around to be told what's on the screen. You know, they're getting out there and getting after it. So which is great, but it does you know, it does mean that now you know, I'm going out and stopping on the course and seeing them out there and asking them how things are going, you know, looking at looking at how their operations going, looking at their you know, clipping yields and things like that, and you know where they're parking their equipment, and you know, occasionally I'm having to give them a little bit of advice on you know, let's let's vary where you're going every day instead of the you know, I've got guys have been here twenty five years and it sometimes they get stuck in a in a rut and they're always in the same path. It's like, hey, let's let's change this up, you know. So so I that's been a change that the technology there. It's great. Uh, it's awesome to have it. And and we can be out on the course in the morning and then we can be looking at things and we kind of already knew from the day before, two days before whatever, what we were planning to do. But if we need to make a change very quickly, we can. We can do that from our phone, uh and change it here in the shop, and it gets broadcast on that screen and guys come in for and they look up their second jobs and they're they're out again, you know. So it does certainly adds to the efficiency of moving about the course.

00:57:01
Speaker 4: The technology in terms of you know, thirty five years ago versus now, has to be just insane how much it's progressed.

00:57:13
Speaker 1: What would you say is the thing that's made the biggest difference.

00:57:17
Speaker 6: You're right, there's so much. I go back to the time of Andy.

00:57:24
Speaker 3: This is my this is my forty seventh year as a superintendent. Forty seven years right, So, and I've been working on a golf course for fifty years now because I worked three years while I was going to school and so forth on the ground screw and of course that was wonderful. So a lot has changed in fifty years, right. Obviously I used to I used to have to go out and plug in sprinklers, right, You know, and there's it's probably still some courses out there doing that plugging in a quick coupler. You know, you'd get on the Cushman uh in the you know, at dark, right, and you'd load up a bunch of sprinklers and you go plug them all in. You'd go back to the shop and you know, maybe you should have been letting those things run for you know, a half hour or so, and but you know, forty five minutes later you go out and rotate them, you know, And so you're out there all night long. Which it's kind of interesting out there, but it's also.

00:58:34
Speaker 6: You know, not a lot of light.

00:58:35
Speaker 3: Some nights you got some moonlight to work by. Sometimes you don't see those bunkers so well, and you might end up in I can't say that that didn't happen. Uh. Fortunately I didn't end up any ponds or anything like that. But you know, the light's not always the greatest on those those old Cushmans.

00:58:58
Speaker 6: Uh.

00:58:58
Speaker 3: And they were the old one they had like a single front wheel. Dangerous as hell really uh. And then I'm sure there's guys out there that still have them. But anyway, so.

00:59:08
Speaker 1: I remember we've gone.

00:59:09
Speaker 4: I remember playing growing up playing, and I grew up playing Lake Buff Golf Club, so just up the road from you and me and my my buddies would be playing always till sundown, and it'll always be a race against the sprinklers. And they were the you know, you had to they get twisted in. And then the water smelled like rotten eggs because it was like salt. It had sulfur in it, and it was I mean, I will never forget like the smell of it or the visual of it, because of it was so distinct, and like you just prayed that you didn't hit a ball anywhere near the spring clots.

00:59:46
Speaker 1: You know, sometimes you're able.

00:59:48
Speaker 4: Away from the fairway just because if that sprinklers in the landing area, I don't want to go anywhere near that eggwak.

00:59:53
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's right, that's right.

00:59:54
Speaker 3: Well, especially excuse me if if you if you've had a rain event and you're not having to irrigate for a little while, that water sits in that pipe and it it gets pretty pretty anaerobic in there, you know, and that that that's what you're that's what you're finding out. Then the next time you go to use it and that water comes out yeah, it's not it's not pleasant, but you know, we go from plugging those things into two sprinklers that were put in the ground that could have been hooked up automate automatic.

01:00:30
Speaker 6: One of the.

01:00:31
Speaker 3: Courses I worked at not not long my.

01:00:35
Speaker 6: Kind of my kind of my first.

01:00:40
Speaker 3: Well, right out of school, I went up and worked at a worked at an executive golf course, up and opened up an executive course, Michigan City Municipal Golf Course, and I worked there from literally the day after I graduated from college to that December when I went to work for a private club, and that private club had sprinkler I was there for eight years that that they had sprinkler heads that could have been hooked up electrically, but they didn't have the money to do the controllers. So I upgraded from having to plug in sprinklers to going out with a with a half inch nut driver and actually, you know, actual waiting a knob that would turn on the sprinklers. So basically I was still out running at night running these sprinklers, but I just didn't have to haul the big quick couplers around anymore.

01:01:36
Speaker 6: But then I.

01:01:38
Speaker 3: Moved from there when I when I actually moved to the Chicago area. Uh I started working at a club that had an automatic system controllers.

01:01:49
Speaker 6: We could set.

01:01:50
Speaker 3: Those controllers, you know, before you leave the shop at the end of the night, and you get them set up and and that was it too.

01:01:59
Speaker 6: So that was thirty five years ago.

01:02:04
Speaker 3: So now you know, I can operate these sprinklers from my phone from an iPad at home. A lot of times, I'll I'll set up irrigation, you know, at the end, you'll go home and have dinner and after that, I'll set up the irrigation for the night or whatever, and just download it from my hook into the computer here from my iPad, and I can change it if we get a sudden rain. It's great because you get a sudden rain that comes through and you know you want to shut.

01:02:36
Speaker 6: It all off. It's easy to do that.

01:02:39
Speaker 3: If it looks like we're going to have rain and then it's not, well, you can you can program it quickly and get it get it on. So, you know, so you can run the sprinklers from I can operate it from my phone, from a radio, from an iPad at home, from the computer here in the office. So just so much more, you know, technology available to us in that area. Like I said before, this whole this whole whiteboard or or task tracker thing, now that's incredible. So those technologies and of course you know the big one among you know, just kind of getting getting started. It has been for a couple of years now though, is the the whole robotics thing, right, Yeah, you know there's there's in the Chicago area here there's a club that's using a some of those firefly mowers. Those are those are fairway autonomous fairway mowers. And then you know many clubs are using smaller units that they're using for more and rough areas. We had a couple bit a couple of demos out here this year.

01:03:52
Speaker 6: And they're great.

01:03:54
Speaker 3: They're we're gonna we're gonna look at you know, getting some getting some of those and they'll allow us to take care of some things that just on a constant on a basis and things that you can just don't have to be asked concerned about those areas that the robotic mores will take care of those areas, do a nice job, mow those areas frequently, and it allows me to have my guys do things that you know, robots can't do.

01:04:28
Speaker 4: Yeah, what would be the stuff that if when you think about the robotics and if you got to a world where you know, fairways and rough were taken care of, maybe how would you what are things that you would reallocate staff towards.

01:04:43
Speaker 3: Well, there's never a shortage, it seems like, of diivots to fill in, right, you know, never a shortage of that.

01:04:53
Speaker 6: So there's always that.

01:04:54
Speaker 3: It's all the little detail stuff, right, You're still going to have these the sprinkler heads that need to always, you know, frequently be edged around. You've got card paths at least in some places that you want to edge and you know, keep the edges nice. As I said, the divots, ball marks on greens. You know, we we we currently will go out and we'll use this little devices like a little called a bullet Like you'll take a ball mark that's been dried out or maybe it was repaired wrong and it's been cut off by a moll. We'll make a little dimple in it and we'll fill that with with green sand and seed. You know, you could we do that periodically, but you know, if you had a if you had extra labor, you weren't worried about mowing around, uh, you know, mow and rough and banks and you know all that you could be using that that labor for that.

01:05:57
Speaker 4: You've worked with a lot of different architects in your years at Skochy. I'm curious how what you've observed from from their different styles.

01:06:09
Speaker 3: In nineteen ninety seven or so, right, well, it was nineteen ninety seven is a year of our centennial here, our Grounds and Greens Committee asked the question, Okay, where do we go in the next century. Do we just kind of stay with what we have, do we want to maybe visit, you know, some older, more traditional style that we had before. Our bunkers had changed a lot from over the years, and we could see that from pictures that photographs that were taken from back when honestly back when we had the US Open Jean Sarahson won the US Open here in twenty two. We could see that things have changed since then, and our bunkers had gone from being grass faced and fairly rugged and rough to where they had flashed way up high sand flashes and those were a real problem in the oh, you know, early nineties when we when we had those still throughout the nineties. Actually, every time we had a big heavy rain, all that sand would come washing down and be a mess. It would take us three or four days to kind of get it all back in place and get them even reasonably playable. You know. So the original style was, sayd it was grass excuse me. We had gone to that style somewhere along the line, and you know, enter, so our committee decided, hey, let's look at let's look at you know, perhaps considering going back to our you know, earlier style. And so we kind of a acted at that point in time. We contacted Donald Ross Society and we were given the names of a few architects and we interviewed them, had them come out look at the play look at the course. They all had real similar.

01:08:14
Speaker 6: Thoughts.

01:08:16
Speaker 3: They all said, you got way too many trees. You gotta you gotta, you know, open up some play quarterers.

01:08:23
Speaker 6: You know, your.

01:08:24
Speaker 3: Greens have lost some of their original sizes because they've they've kind of shrunk over the years. And then they had other and and the other theme was they all had a similar thing. They all said, you know, you should very you should consider restoring your bunkers back to grass faces.

01:08:47
Speaker 6: And so.

01:08:49
Speaker 3: We ended up at that time engaging Ron Pritchard and and then Ron. What he did is he looked at a lot of these photographs, uh uh. And he looked at drawings that we had, but he.

01:09:05
Speaker 6: Didn't really look at any aerial photography.

01:09:07
Speaker 3: So he he was basing a lot of his what he was planning to do on drawings that we had from Donald Ross in nineteen fifteen and Langford and Moreau in nineteen thirty eight. And he was trying to kind of tie those two styles together, and and and he did, and we uh it was It was great working with Ron, a lot of fun. He wasn't one that he didn't get in a machine and do work. Like I'll talk about Brian in a minute. Brian Schneider was one that would get in and he still does to this day.

01:09:51
Speaker 6: He's a shaper.

01:09:53
Speaker 3: A lot of architects are today, I think a lot of the a lot of the younger, you know, really good architects. But Ron Ron wasn't that he was out in the field. He'd do it beautiful drawings, pretty elaborate, really really beautiful drawings to explain to a shape or how they how we wanted to build a particular bunker and so we went through that process, and I thought he did a great job of kind of tying the styles together, putting us back to grass faced bunkers. If anything, if any mistake we may have made was that perhaps we didn't make the bunker faces steep enough, and so what often happened because of the angles that we had, a lot of times balls would end up hanging up on the bunker faces. We were intentionally growing fine fescu, which we are to this we're doing the same today. Really, that particular grass was a little bit a little bit you know, we're not cutting it real short, so you know, ball can hang up on those faces, and so that was a source of a lot of oh consternation, if you will. You know, some members got pretty upset about it. But we stayed with that style really for twenty years because he did that work in two thousand. We first talked around in nineteen ninety, Like I said, nineteen ninety seven ninety eight, nineteen ninety seven was our centennial. Ninety eight we started to do some work on some teas. We were going from a kind of a free form tee to a squared off, rectilinear style tea and those, So we started that in like ninety eight, and then we actually did a lot of the work. Wadsworth Golf Construction did a lot of the you know, construction work for us in in two thousand and you know, we we redid all the bunkers at that point in time, and we we did a lot of the like green expansion ourselves in house, and we did a lot of the t's ourselves, and Wadsworth did a lot of the tea's as well. So we have a lot of T surfaces and so that that style, uh you know, kind of put our grass faced style back. Very challenging. But when Ron, you know, so so Ladder latter part of in Ron's I think Ron is still doing some work. I haven't talked around in a little while, but I think he's still doing a few things. He was working with Tyler Ray as you know, you probably talked to Tyler on this podcast asked before. And Tyler's doing a great job, great guy. But at that time the club decided that let's just kind of see what other let's talk to a few other architects and see, you know, what they might have to say, and so we did. We talked to several and brought him in and long story, but we then selected Brian Schneider and then so the difference. Brian came in and he was able to acquire aerial photos from back pre fifty one, pre well, yeah, nineteen thirty eight, and then also nineteen fifty one. So we looked at those nineteen thirty eight photographs aerial photographs, and that was right about the time when Langford and Moreau came in and it started doing work, and so any we felt like anything. Obviously at that point in time, we could tell that some construction was going on, but not everything had been completed. And so we looked at that nineteen thirty eight aerial photo and then we compared it to nineteen fifty one aerial photograph, and so we knew at that point that we could very we could we could determine that the work from that area in fifty one was after Langford and Moreau. We didn't feel like none of our documents showed like any kind of construction from you know, nineteen forty to nineteen fifty, right, they're just the war.

01:14:55
Speaker 6: Was going on.

01:14:55
Speaker 3: There wasn't a lot of construction going on. So we felt like the pre thirty eight was a lot of a lot of Donald Ross architecture, and the post the nineteen fifty one aeriel showed all the stuff that Langford and Moreau had put in. But because the club sold some property on our north end and acquired some property on the south end, and that's when they brought Langford and Moreau, and and we could tell what they did. We could tell what they were very respectful to Donald Ross. And as it turns out, approximately half of the course is Donald Ross's style and the other half of the course was kind of lang was Langford where Langford had made some changes due to the rearrangement, but they kept a lot of the Ross stuff. So Brian used these aerial photographs and he very accurately restored essentially all the bunkers except except a couple. There were a couple of situations where there might have been a big drain line or a big main line, or maybe a big tree that we decided, hey, we better, we're not going to take it down. He might have, you know, flipped a couple of bunkers or slit a bunker here and there, But he did a I thought he did a tremendously You know, accurate job of putting these bunkers back. And he was looking at these drawings while he was building. He was there's a measuring tool within it that he's saying, Okay, this was you know an eighty yard or eighty foot long by you know, thirty feet wide that and that's what he built. So really really pretty neat. And there's a that same nineteen fifty one drawing showed our thirteenth hole at the time did not have a pond by it, like, and that pond was added by Rhys Jones. And of course Brian that that's kind of Brian would love to restore that.

01:17:09
Speaker 1: The next frontier. That's what's that's that's the ext frontier.

01:17:12
Speaker 3: Maybe, yeah, it's possible. There's been a lot going on here over the last thirty thirty five years, but it's not out of the question. It's but it's not a given necessarily. I just I know Brian is a he's a true restorationist, right. He feels like, you know, these guys were pretty good architects and the old the old classic, you know, guys like that, and so he he would he would like to see us, you know, really strongly considered doing some of that.

01:17:57
Speaker 4: So what would you say, you know, in working with it, you know, an architect that you know worked with contractors versus someone who who's doing the work themselves. What what would you from the superintendent sense, what are the pros and cons of beach.

01:18:13
Speaker 3: If you're working with A and I'm there's nothing against you know, I don't have anything against either one of them. It's just the new guys like like Tyler and Brian and you probably could name more than I could. Uh, the guys that are you know, getting Andrew Andrew Green, I guess he's I think he does a lot of his own shape. And the guys that prior to that that don't do that. You're not nothing against him at all. They I just think there's a they have to depend on the shape or a little bit more to interpret what what it is that they wanted to want to have done. Whereas you know, when Brian's in a machine, he can he can decide, you know, is he going to be absolutely exact this to what it was back in you know, well seventy years earlier or whatever, or or or more than that even or does he want to shift it a little bit?

01:19:13
Speaker 6: It's a little.

01:19:15
Speaker 3: I noticed that I spent I spent less time talking to Brian because he's in his machine, he's doing his work than I did with Ron Pritchard. Not not the you know, it was just different. Nothing nothing wrong with either one of them. I mean they're both were great to work with for sure, and Tyler too. These are all great.

01:19:43
Speaker 6: Guys, you know.

01:19:44
Speaker 3: They they love what they're doing. They do a great job. It's fun working with them.

01:19:50
Speaker 4: Don Before we get you out of here, I gotta ask you, gotta you gotta you gotta Blackhawks car.

01:19:55
Speaker 6: I do.

01:19:56
Speaker 4: Yes, it's the start of season here. What how are you are you feeling about the squad? I mean we're in the rebuilding process.

01:20:03
Speaker 6: It is Yeah, No, I think we're.

01:20:05
Speaker 1: Proud of that.

01:20:06
Speaker 3: We're probably a little ways away from, you know, repeated playoffs. Boy, it was fun in ten, ten, thirteen, and fifteen, man, I that was such fun.

01:20:19
Speaker 6: The club.

01:20:19
Speaker 3: The club bought me that cart ten years ago from my twenty fifth anniversary. They they knew I was a Hawks fanatic and it's a great cart. And I've since had I should have had, you know. I see Patrick Kane's been here a couple of times. See him once in a while, talk to him once in a while. It's pretty cool. Taves has not been here, so Kane said earlier that he might try to get him back out, get him out here. Sometimes when that happens, I'm going to freak out.

01:20:52
Speaker 1: But uh, you gotta get him to sign.

01:20:54
Speaker 6: Well, yeah, I was.

01:20:55
Speaker 3: Gonna say, Jeremy Ronick was here this year and I did run into him.

01:21:00
Speaker 6: Great guy. That was a lot of fun.

01:21:02
Speaker 3: I go out and catch him on the thirteenth toll and uh, you know, acted like he knew me for you know, forever.

01:21:08
Speaker 6: It's just a real friendly guy. And he said, here, here, let me do this.

01:21:14
Speaker 3: And he go goes and grabs a black pen out of his cart and signs it. Signs in my cart, you know, right on the front of the you know, right on the front of the cart. So I got I got Jr's autograph and on the front. So now I gotta get Kane and hopefully Tastes to come and sign it too, so.

01:21:33
Speaker 4: We can get We got to get Connor Badard into into golf. But it seems like he needs to spend more time playing.

01:21:39
Speaker 6: Yeah, I think so, I think so.

01:21:42
Speaker 4: All right, Don thanks so much for joining and uh it's been a number of years in the in the making, and it's it's been really cool to see uh what you've been able to do it at Skochy Uh over over the you know, the last ten years that I've been watching, but obviously over the you're in entire career. It's been one of the best spots on in Chicago for a for a long time and a lot of that's your stewardship. So congrats and and look forward to seeing you.

01:22:11
Speaker 6: Thank you, Thank you so much.

01:22:12
Speaker 3: It was it was really it was fun having your group out here last Monday. It was well, thank you Andy, this is great nice talking with you.

01:22:31
Speaker 1: All right.

01:22:31
Speaker 4: Big thanks to both the guests, they were fantastic, Mark and Don for joining the podcast. Also big thanks to p J. Clark for editing producing this show. We will be back next week with a new episode and we'll talk to you then.