Yolk with Doak 31: Municipal Golf, the Renaissance Cup, and Apache Stronghold

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Speaker 1: Welcome back to another edition of the Frida Egg Podcast. Today's episode is brought to you by our friends over at the USGA. We all know the USGA for the things like the US Open, the US Women's Open, the USAM, the US Women's Am obviously, then the rules, the handicapping, but they are also the biggest investor in golf and they do that through programs that help golf courses manage water, fuel and resources. They're focused on sustainability, they are expanding junior golf, and they're really focused on diversity. How they do all this is with their USGA membership. If you visit USGA dot org backslash Frida Egg, you can sign up for USGA membership and get a bonus. You get twenty percent off the usgashop dot com purchase, and they've got a lot of actually great stuff in that USGA shop. They have championship gear from last year, they have championship gear from this year. So I would go go to the us GA shop dot com check that stuff out. But the biggest thing is, you know this, this membership really helps drive important things in the game. So USGA dot org backslash Friday eyg Today's episode is another edition of The Yoke with Doak. It's been a little while. Tom's been really busy. I've been pretty busy, and we had a couple hours in Washington, d C. While we were there for the National Links Trust Municipal Golf Symposium. So we talk a little bit about municipal golf, but we talk about what's going on in the industry, how busy Tom's been with just you know, potential projects and a bunch of stuff. So this is a good catch up, you know. It's it's the holidays. So as a quick housekeeping thing, we will be doing a substantial Black Friday Cyber Monday sale. Sign up for our newsletter today or tomorrow you will get a early access code for our sale. Otherwise Black Friday will have twenty percent off everything that includes our prints. I just got back from Bandon Dunes and took a ton of photos, lots of great photos, some of the best ones I've ever taken. So at least go check it out. Beyond Beandon Dunes, we have stream Song Sand Valley, We've got Wing Foot, We've got a ton of great golf courses up there. I think we probably are getting close to fifty or sixty golf courses featured in the print section, so that is a great thing. On top of that, we have Frida Egg merchandise. So this is one of the longest ad intro combos. And without further ado, here is Tom doak I miss the green for example, I'm already upset. When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.

00:02:55
Speaker 2: And when I find my ball in a Frida Egg Friday Egg the dread and Friday Frida Egg.

00:03:01
Speaker 1: Brian Egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off of thelf. Tom. It's been a little while. I gotta ask you, you know, I think there's the golf boom. Was the COVID boom of playing, and now it seems like there's a boom in terms of work and court whether it be restoration work or new projects seem to be for floating around. Is that true? Have you seen an uptick in the amount of phone calls you've been getting since COVID.

00:03:52
Speaker 2: There's definitely a boom and phone calls, you know, and and you know the people that are calling hour or a year or two away from how actually start in building a golf course, and and four or five years away from opening a golf course. So so it's hard to tell whether that that will really pan out and it'll last. But I've had more more calls, more really good calls about new jobs in the last six months I've had probably the last five years before that. I mean it's crazy, like, you know, multiple, you know, four or five calls from Florida and four or five calls from Texas about wanting to do a new project, and you know, and most of them sound like pretty good projects, and some of them are like I listened to all your podcasts, so thank you.

00:04:43
Speaker 1: What uh in terms of does it rival any period in your career or is this kind of you know, in terms of how how how my you know, how much interest is out there in in jobs?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, honestly, it's it's been so long since it's hard so it's hard to remember. But you know, like just before the crash in two thousand and eight, I think we were we were supposed to build five or six golf courses in two thousand and eight two thousand and nine, and all those projects fell apart with the financial crisis because because a lot of them were tied to development of some kind. It wasn't just a golf course, it was a housing thing. That was really the first time I should have known it that, you know, once my name got to be like, oh, you know, we'd like to you to design a course with development. You know, up till then, my name wasn't well enough known that it. You know, it wasn't going to add any value to the lots. I'm not sure it would today either, but you know, famous tour pros got all those jobs back in the day because their name was supposedly worth something to the real estate value. And you know, I was just starting to get into that market a little bit, which has never been my niche, and then of course the bottom fell out of it completely. And the only reason I don't feel too bad about that is the only niche that's been left the last ten or twelve years is guys who want to do a special golf project, I mean, and who aren't really you know, they're they're hoping they don't lose money on it, but they're not really in it to make money. They're in it to build something special that they'll enjoy and hopefully leave as a legacy.

00:06:20
Speaker 1: Have any of the projects that have been reaching out been real estate place, like, is that real estate golf starting to creep back in? I just this is something that just popped in my head because of how hot real estate is in so many places.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it is in Texas and Florida for sure. I mean not all of those things are connected to real estate, but half of them are. And I think in general, you know, as oddly as that they've come through the pandemic as outlier states and they never worried about masks or anything else. I mean, it looks to me like their economies are booming because of it, or at least it's helped them. So there's a lot of interest from there. I've never I haven't built many courses in either place. I think probably in Texas. The fact that you know, we did the course for the Houston Open a couple of years ago. I'm on people's radar there more than normal. But it also helps a lot that Bill Core is like booked up for the next couple of years. So all of a sudden, I'm one place higher on the list.

00:07:19
Speaker 1: It's what's obviously Texas is that's an interesting place in terms of golf architecture because I don't think you know, it has some Golden Age golf it's got, it's got really like every era of golf, more so than northern cities baked into it. And and you know there's some good you know, midcent you know, mid century stuff there. But then you know, there's a lot of what are the constraints with Texas? Is there are there good pockets of like topography or sand. You know, obviously you've built down in Houston and uh and and Lubbock, But what you know, are there parts of Texas that are undiscovered that could be really great break golf?

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Speaker 2: Oh? I think so, I mean there's you know, I mean I happened to have worked the two projects. I happened to have worked on Houston as as clay heavy soils as we could have got, and Lubbock was pretty much the same. I mean we had to you know, we didn't just have to move dirt. We had to strip topsail and move dirt and then put the topsail back. So that was a pretty hard job to do. But there's sandy parts of Texas. Apparently, according to Do Mahaffey, there's even some sandy parts around Houston, just not where anybody's developed right now. There's definitely sandy ground. I looked at something years ago up in the far north, like north of Lubbock in the I don't know what you call it.

00:08:40
Speaker 1: The top Hat or you know, by Kansas right.

00:08:43
Speaker 2: Well underneath the panhandle of Oklahoma kind of Okay, and there, you know it's it's kind of the same kind of land as prairie dunes. It just follows this river and the river goes dry in the summer and the sand all blows around and makes dunes. So within a couple miles of this river or for miles and miles of miles, there's some pretty good land for golf. And I've I've heard, I've heard rumors about a couple of potential new projects up there. I haven't really had a call about one of those. And then I've talked to somebody else that's looking at another part of Texas that doesn't really have many golf courses yet, but they have some nice sandy ground. So we'll see if that anything happens with that one or not.

00:09:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, I say that those two states also, you know, they are advantageous economically to live in because of like taxes and then obviously great weather. You can play golf in both of them year round, what you know, as long as you don't mind being hot, right.

00:09:38
Speaker 2: And that you know, so that that Northern Texas part, you know, think of it as the same kind of place as sand Hills are bally Neal. Not quite as open as those, but probably a two or three month longer golf season would be a huge difference as opposed to the economics of those.

00:09:54
Speaker 1: Those places get really hot in the summer both, you know, like sand Hills, Yeah, they're all hot in summer exactly.

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Speaker 2: The only thing that saves you is they're windy places, so it's not like, you know, it's not oppressively hot.

00:10:06
Speaker 1: And still speaking of you know, we're talking that part of the country, how did the you know, we haven't talked sinto Dorinik Hills. You were just at the beginning of the process. How does that project progress? And I think they're probably getting close to opening up right.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know what they're doing for the opening of it. I just heard from the main donor to the project, and he's hoping that he's eighty now and he's hoping they'll let him out early so he can set the course record before anybody else comes back on it. Whi's good for him, But it sounds like they're not going to open until after New Year's instead of pushing people out right now. I mean, you know, the the greens have been planted for like two and a half months, so it'd be you know, it's kind of like you could go play it now, but you don't want to get a lot of traffic on it now. So I don't know how long they're going to wait on that. I haven't really heard. I'll find out that the superintendent's playing in the Renaissance Cup next week, so I'll find out from the source what he's really thinking. But you know, I haven't I haven't seen it since the middle of August, I guess. But you know, everything went swimmingly. They didn't really have any nasty thunderstorms during the end of construction or early grow in, which can set you back sometimes. So so it sounds like they're in a pretty good place and they're all excited to get back on it.

00:11:32
Speaker 1: It's the that's the one that is going to be exciting to watch. Along those lines, you know, that's a course that you know, you I think had written about wanting to see restore George Waters, who we saw on the in the elevator on the way up.

00:11:49
Speaker 2: Here, as a question came up with the question he.

00:11:51
Speaker 1: Said, what course that hasn't been restored would you most like to see restored? And I think putting out a thing this is, this is not necessarily restored by you, could be restored by anybody.

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Speaker 2: You know. Well, yeah, let's keep it to that, because I I think I've pretty much retired from the restoration business. I think I'm going to have some new golf courses to build it and and you know, I will say, you know, the Dorna Kills thing I volunteered to do put my time in for free. Yeah, and it was great because I didn't have to go to any of the meetings or anything I didn't want to do. It's just like, you know, I'm doing it for free. You can't make me do that. So maybe I'll do one under those circumstances again someday. But in general, it's just like, you know, there's a lot of club politics that go on at some of these big places in order to get these projects through, and I'm that's not really my forte and I don't know that I'm gonna do a lot more of that. But so I have to think now, because you know that the two that I that the last time I named to it was bell aar and Dorna Kills, and I wound up doing both of those, which I did not expect. And I don't know that. I have another one on the tip of my tongue right now that I really feel is super important, like you know, and a lot of things are like so you know, like so you know that I guess I mean to be politically correct. The one that I should talk about is East Potomac Park, which is right across the river from where we're sitting. I'd love to see that happen, partly because Mike mccarton, who worked for me for years, you know, that was a college thesis to what you'd have to do to restore East Potomac Park. So I'm totally supportive of that. And and because you know, I don't even think you know, one percent of people understand that it was a reversible design from a hundred years ago, and that would be very cool to try to put that back. You know, I don't know where they're at with fundraising on this thing. You know, it's a really complicated project. You've got the Nownational Park Service involved, You've got DC involved. I think to really you know, what would what would make it happen is if they actually do some dredging around the island, which they're talking about doing, because the you know, the golf course now is pretty low to the water and it's hard to get it to drain and you know, we could do a really expensive drainage system. But if somebody's like trying to get rid of pill that would make things a lot easier and and kind of light a fire under the project. It's like, if they're if they're going to do that, they need a place to get rid of the fill, We're going to be over there waving like, yeah, but it will take it. How much you're paying us to take it, hopefully enough that we can do all the rest of the work we need to do out here too.

00:14:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a I remember with the the Tiger Woods project in Chicago that it might be dead, it might not be dead, but the big part of it was was getting they were going to be the person that took the fill from the Obama Library that was going you know all this, you know, digging the dirt and right over right across the street for the dirt. I think, you know, that's something I've been thinking about obviously, you know, with Gill set to do Yale and I just saw that Lookout Mountains, you know, getting restored. And you're starting to go down the list of of courses that you think of like big time clubs or courses that could be really great with restoration, and the list is getting small, like it seems like almost all the places you want to see restored have gotten restored or you know that can be restored or getting close to that. And where I keep falling is most of the restorations that you'd really want to see are in the municipal space.

00:15:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, it could be that could be true. I mean, as you were saying that, the the one that keeps coming up for me that comes to mind that I absolutely would do if I get a chance to do it is high Point my own first golf course, you know, but that's you know, Dornic Hills, the by far the you know, the hook for me was that was really Perry Maxwell's first golf course and it was very personal to him and it was like it's a shame to see that be a mass you know, I mean I and I could totally relate because of what happened to high Point. It's like, you know, you know, please somebody try to preserve something like that. And if you know, if I really thought about it, there's probably some projects for other architects that that was like.

00:16:32
Speaker 1: I was thinking, like, oh, hi, for George Thomash.

00:16:35
Speaker 2: Would be one ye. Yeah, And they they quote unquote restored some pieces of it. They put back that one hole that was in his book a few years ago.

00:16:45
Speaker 1: But oh, the guy, and I think they're perfectly well intentioned, But neither the people that were running the course or the architect who did the work knew that George Thomas, there are pictures of the hole in this book. They didn't know.

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Speaker 2: That pretty amazing, But yeah, I've heard the same thing.

00:17:04
Speaker 1: So it's but that that, yeah, I think that's like I was.

00:17:08
Speaker 2: Another one another one that's that's similarly hard and the you know, the club's gone opposite directions and I don't even know if they could restore a couple of the things that are in Thomas's book, the La Cumber on the other side of Santa Barbara. You know there were some wild holes on that was it.

00:17:26
Speaker 1: The sixteenth with the canyon along the right and then the kick.

00:17:29
Speaker 2: In, Yeah, and then like a ninety yard part three with trouble, you know, with a canyon in front of it, you know, and it's hard to you know, that's it's like all wooded in there now and then there's houses and it's like, I don't even know if he could do it.

00:17:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, That's that's the thing I've been thinking about with obviously this and then I visited George Wright a couple of weeks ago.

00:17:51
Speaker 2: I've never been there.

00:17:52
Speaker 1: It was spectacular, I couldn't you know. Obviously they have a lot of maintenance issues just because of labor and then the constrictions on the labor you know that they have with the city. They have to be city residents. But you know, the one thing I really appreciated about it the superintendent's doing a great job there in the sense that he's got all the green pads mowed out as short grass, right, you know, whether or not they aren't out to where they should be, but at least they're moaned out, you know, And just I mean I think, you know, I hadn't been to Boston and just this how how dramatic the landforms are there, with the with the rocks, and it's on the side of a hill. You know, it's just got a lot of great golf holes out there.

00:18:35
Speaker 2: And that's a good point. I mean, I you know, everybody talks about restorations now, like it's got to be some five million dollar project to restore something, and it really doesn't. I mean, when I started doing this, nobody wanted to close the golf course or spend any money. And you know, a place like Sharp Park, which is another one that you know, we've talked about restoring. You know, I'm just trying to get him to do the simple stuff. Just you know, mow the you know, the greens were twice as big. Just mow that all down. I mean, you didn't have to build usc greens there. The the you know, the the rest of whatever the green pad was is the same construction as the green that's there now, So you know, why not just mow it out farther. And of course they're I mean they're so understaffed there, they're even balking at that, like we don't know if we can keep up with the mowing, if we make the greens all fifty percent bigger. But you know, simple things like that go a long way. And plus that's the kind of stuff that'll be like that will convince people to take the next step. If you if you could just start bringing back a few things that are cheap to do, then everybody sort of is like, wow, that kind of makes a difference. That's cool, or what you know, what else could we do? Maybe we could put back a couple of bunkers, you know at Sharp Park, like we were standing near. I think it's the old eleventh or twelfth green. It's the one that came back to the clubhouse before it started going around the Inchier well in the other way. And and you know, looking at how much bigger the green was, and there used to be a green side bunker and there's no bunker there anymore. And I'm like, give me a shovel, and I just stick a shovel on the ground and see it right there. I mean, you know, all you have to do is really side cut away the side and there's a bunker. And they're like, oh, that would give us more to mean that.

00:20:30
Speaker 1: I mean, imagine though, if we got to a place with bunker Maine. Like, obviously, bunker maintenance is one of the the biggest things for you know, golf, especially public golf. Yeah, because of the expectation, and it's not a nice course if they don't have nice bunkers, right, And one of the I thought, you know, one of the silver linings of COVID was the no rake thing. And I thought true bunkers with no no rakes, like no expectation of getting a good lie was one of the healthiest things that golf could have continued to go down. If the rakes had never gotten put back in, it would have been really you know, like you know, we talk about sustainability, there's obviously like a huge labor problem with golf course maintenance in that industry, and if expectations and just general that especially at the public level, that would make superintendent's lives better. But then it also could make the golf courses better.

00:21:31
Speaker 2: Yep. Yeah, And you know, people don't think about it. When you're playing an inexpensive golf course and the fairways are bad, you got two choices. You can either play the ball down and just deal with that, or you can roll the ball over and it's fine. And people, you know, because the bunker is a hazard. You're not supposed to do that, but that's what people were doing last year. It's like, you know, are we going to play out of the footprints or are we not going to play out of the footprints? Let's just make a call today, and it's like, Okay, do you want to spend more money or less money. There's a lot of areas that if the expectations just came down a little, it's like this still plays well, you know. And I just think about it because when I started playing golf forty fifty years ago, conditions were nothing like they are now, and it was fun, you know. And that's like, why do people not understand that? Why does it have to be so much better? I mean, I know we have all the capability to make it that much better, and I know the clubs that have the money to do that are going to want to do that, But why does that have to come all the way down the chain to everybody else where? It costs twice as much to maintain because we're shooting for this new standard that we didn't need forty years ago.

00:22:48
Speaker 1: That's the thing too, I and I don't want to bag on the northeast. But like when I was up there this fall, I just I couldn't believe the speeds of the green and in turn what the speeds of the greens did to where pins could be put on greens. And you're on these really cool greens and it's like and you ask somebody, you ever see the pin back there? No, No, they can't put it. They only put it back there on like special occasions for you know, greenskeeper revenge day, Superintendent's revenge Day. And it's like and it's like, you know, and it's all because of speed. Like they have this battle going amongst clubs. And I imagine you get calls or questions and you're consulting about greens and softening historically significant greens.

00:23:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I'll tell you a good story. One of the of I can't remember how long ago, maybe five years ago, I got called to speak about greens at an event for the Metropolitan Golf Association in New York anyway, you know, I mean I don't usually do presentations, but I actually did like a slideshow presentation for him and showed him and you know, talked about just what you were talking about, how how green speeds have kind of screwed up where you can you know, how much of the green you can use. And so after the presentation was finished, a guy came up to me and said, yeah, but don't you think there's there's like some point at which the greens are too severe and you just got to rebuild it because it just doesn't work anymore. I'm like, well, you know, it depends on what speed you're going for. I said, I haven't really seen many. He's like, well, my home club, you know, it's clearly over the top, over the line. And I like, where's that? And it was North Jersey Country Club in northern New Jersey is a Travis course. I'd never heard of it. I was like, really, a Travis course in northern New Jersey. So Brian Schneider was with me at the event. I was like, yeah, this guy says the greens are too severe. Let's stop by there tomorrow before we go out. I just want to see. I just want to see what the greens are that are so severe that you can't use them anymore. And we got to blow them off. And so we you know, we just we just showed up unannounced and walked into the pro shop and I said hello to the pro and told him that story, and he was like, oh, yeah, you know, I probably know which member that was. So he's like, yeah, just yeah, go out and have a look. And they they had they'd already rebuilt a couple of them, but there were three or four of the wildest looking greens that I'd seen in a long time. And you know, maybe a couple of them that you'd tweak just a little to make them work better for modern speeds, but but you know, they were kind of like, boy, I really hate to modify that. I mean, it'd be hard to get that character in a softer version. And Brian's working there now, yeah, you know, I haven't. I haven't been. The only day I ever saw it, I was just like, well, there's some cool stuff here.

00:25:57
Speaker 1: Some of the photos I've seen recently just looks so cool that his story. He came on the pod and he told a story about how you know where all those mounds came from on the course, you know how they are all those mounds, How the golf course was you know, it wasn't ready to be played, and they made a deal with the members, well you can play it, but you got to pick up rocks while you play it, and then they just drop them in all these piles. And that's why they got all these mounds everywhere. It's the rocks from the fairways that members were picking up. Like the first two years it was open.

00:26:27
Speaker 2: Wow. Yeah, I mean people try to try to make chocolate drops now and it never looks right. It's like not random enough.

00:26:37
Speaker 1: You just got to just get piles for rocks, have people stack them by hand. I also heard a story that Matt Schaeffer at Marion. He said he asked his crew who's built a rock wall before? They were building a rock wall and he said, who's built a rock wall before? And the people that raise their hand, he goes, okay, you're not building it. I want these people, the guys to build it that have never built rock wall before, because he figured it would look better.

00:27:06
Speaker 2: That's interesting. Stonewall went the other way when we were When we were working there, there was some broken down stone walls on the golf course and after after it was all done, one of the Mexican guys on the crew raised a hand and said, yeah, my uncle who works on the crew, he was a stone meason. Managers, Like, really, could you like restore this little wall right here, and the guy, you know, three weeks later it's just awesome. So you know, they had a local guy restore all the stone walls. But yeah, I mean a lot of times doing stuff sort of ha has. You know, like when I built you know, when I built Greens. I mean I was never nearly as good on a piece of equipment as Brian Schneider or Eric iverson are but you know, I could kind of get myself halfway there, and I was really good at deciding when to get off and say, Okay, that's not exactly what I was trying to do, but that's looking good. So we'll go with that. Here.

00:28:05
Speaker 1: Here's the question having with like tilling Hass. You look at tilling Hass and you see the greens at Somerset, you see greens at wing Foot, and then you know you can see the later in his career work where he started to tone stuff down. Do you think as architects age like I think, do they get more refined in other areas and then more cautious in others just because of years of feedback, whether or not you know it or not, feedback from committees or owners whatever.

00:28:39
Speaker 2: I think there must have been even back then, you know. I mean it's hard to say, like now, obviously, any of us that have been in the business the last twenty years know that. You know, some greens we built twenty years ago and we were talking about, you know, you never want to get these greens above nine and a half or ten, you know, when I built Stonewall, and now you know now they're always faster than that, and there's not even a discussion about going back. So so we you know, we do get more conservative because we've seen where that the trend is clear.

00:29:13
Speaker 1: I never thought about that, is that the speeds increase over the thirty forty years you work.

00:29:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, now, I'm not sure that was so true back in the day for tilling Hast or whether it was just you know, golfers not liking having that much contour in the green, but I know there is you know, George Thomas in his book tells this story about that little what's now the extra hole at La Country Club, that little short part three with the really severe green. You know, he tells a long story about that they played the like a I don't think it was the La Open. I think it was just like a one day tournament, but on that green when it was brand new and it was really severe and it got kind of baked out and it was so it was it was almost like a Shinnecock Hills. It was almost like a shinnecock Hills type situation. Any any you know. He he made a point of saying that, you know, there was only like one pro that figured it out, and McDonald smith late in the day just approached it really cautiously and made sure he stayed short of the whole and made sure he stayed short of the hole from there and he's like, you know, I never admired anybody so much as that for you know, it's kind of saving my butt where it's you know, because everybody's already like it's impossible, you know that hole has to be blown off, and it's like, no, you just have to play it really conservatively when it gets when the conditions get like that.

00:30:32
Speaker 1: The guy made it like a Ford save bogey.

00:30:38
Speaker 2: It's like, see, it's not so bad.

00:30:41
Speaker 1: It's uh, that's funny. It's the Uh, You've got your Renaissance Cup next week, which I've I've been to one I regrettably won't be at this one. I think it's one of the neat things you do. Can you tell the story behind starting it, and you know your idea, your thought process behind doing the Renaissance Cup.

00:31:05
Speaker 2: So the first Renaissance Cup was in nineteen ninety four, so we've been doing it a long time. And you know, when I opened High Point, I tried to have a party for the opening of it and invite people to play the golf course before it opened, because you know, the client wasn't going to have like a big grand opening or anything. I mean, one of the things that I learned from that and my early courses is, you know, most of the most average clients just want to open the golf course as soon as they can open it and start making money. They don't they're not going to wait for the big grand opening day that they picked months ago. It's like, no, let's get it open. It's ready. So I tried to do something before their real opening in the fall, before it was going to open the next spring, and I invited a bunch of people and we just got dumped on with rain. I mean like I had like fifty people there and three finished. It was ad and so but you know, as I said, so in nineteen ninety four, I had built three or four courses by then, and I was I The thing that focused me was was that all the you know, a lot of my friends who were raiders of some kind or other or whoever, just everybody now was only going to the course and playing it once and moving on and see another places. And the whole idea of the Renaissance Cup from day one was like, let's get them to stay and play a couple of days and see, you know, see the holes with different whole locations, and play the course at least once where they kind of understand what the hole is doing, because you know, my style has always been about having some local knowledge out there, and it makes a difference whether you're coming in from the left or the right, and you don't always know when you're standing on the tee for the first time that that's what you got to do. And you know, I don't don't really want to spell that all that out in the yardage book, and you know, I'm trying to make it interesting for you. I don't want to then give you all the you know, it's like I've given you a puzzle. And by the way, here's all the answers. You know, you want people to try to figure it out a little bit before they look at the answers. So so the Renaissance cut from the start is like, invite all our friends from all facets of golf. You know, players, good players, senior guys, you know, architects, photographers, superintendents, whoever, and you know, just get feedback on the golf course after they play it for a couple of days. And it's been a really fun event. And you know, we've had the who's who have golfed there at one point or another over the years, and you know, you never really know who's going to turn up, even the day before sometimes. But it's been a really fun event, and you know, there's it's hard now because you know, I'm trying to keep it. The first few years it was stroke play and so so like the second day, instead of chatting with people and mingling and having fun, I was trying to collect scorecards and that sucked. So I was like, you know, let's let's do match play where we don't have to keep track of anything. You know, they kind of keep track of it for themselves, and you know, that changed the vibe a lot and it's way easier to run, and I enjoy it a lot more now. But because of that, you know, we kind of need sixty four players. And really that's good too, because if it's bigger than that, I just don't have really, you know, two days divided by sixty four people, you don't have that much time with any one person anyway. You know, if it's any bigger than that, it's really hard. So it's nice to keep it small. So now the hard part is like who do we invite. You know, everybody wants to come back, but we want some new faces too, So like trying to keep keep the the field change in a lot little bit without pissing somebody off that they didn't get invited back is really hard. So you know, some of your more now more I'll try to like think, okay, like when we had at the Loop, you know, I wanted as many architects as I could get, and I wanted all the all the young guys that had worked for me over the years, because a lot of them knew I'd been thinking about that concept for a long time, so I wanted to see what they really thought.

00:35:22
Speaker 1: Probably talked all of them at some point about the concept.

00:35:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, And like when we were in Melbourne last year or two years ago at the National I invited a lot of greenkeepers and only a few. You know, we actually wrote to the greenkeepers for most of our courses in the States and sort of invited to subsidize them if they would go, because I thought, you know, with all due respect to greenkeepers in other parts of the world, those guys in Australia kick ass and maintaining golf courses. They do it without a lot of water, They do it without a lot of inputs, and think the conditions are phenomenal, and and I thought it would really do good for some of our guys to get to go see that because they never you know, some of thee might have traveled to the UK on their own, but you know, not many people just are like, yep, I'm going to go to Australia this winter. You kind of need a little nudge to do it. So only a few of them took us up on it. But it was great, you know. We we had you know, we had a little like private event at Roll Melbourne two days before the Renaissance Cup because you know, I've been consulting at Roll Melbourne for years. And I said to him, well, I'm going to probably have like thirty people come into this thing that have never been to roll Melbourne before. So you're either going to get thirty individual calls or you know, maybe we could do a little group. They're like, yep, do a group. Save us the trouble. We'll do an outing for you in the afternoon. You can have dinner here. But I got Richard Forsyth, the greenkeeper, to have dinner with us and spend about a half an hour talking about I mean we were playing a couple months behind the President's Cup. Yeah, and the golf course was still in perfect shape. It's that that set up three months after the President's Cup was still that's the best conditioned golf course I've ever played on a single day.

00:37:14
Speaker 1: That's amazing.

00:37:15
Speaker 2: And you know, and he talked for twenty minutes about set up and everything else, but it was all about the playing surface. It wasn't about grass too much at all.

00:37:23
Speaker 1: That's the one I'm I'm kicking myself for not going to because you know, who knows when I'll be back and be back able to go to Australia.

00:37:31
Speaker 2: Who knows when I'll be able to go to Australia. I mean we just got in into the wire. We came back the first of March twenty twenty, and things hit the fan pretty fast after that.

00:37:41
Speaker 1: Let me tell you, don't you think that I didn't think about that almost all quarantine long? Why did I go to Australia? But was it you said? You get you so you get feedback. What's the best or what's a memorable piece of feedback that you've gotten at one of the Renaissance cups on the course.

00:38:02
Speaker 2: I can tell you for a fact, I've never put this out there before, so I hope it doesn't ruffle anyboy's feathers. But we had it at Apache Stronghold years years and years ago, and that was a really cool piece of land and we thought we'd done a pretty good golf course on it. But Bill Gore came and played among other people. There were a lot of actually a lot of people there Tommy, and that's when I met Tommy Nacarado. He came, but Bill Core came and he spent like two or three hours with my crew going around the golf course and pointing out like finished work that wasn't done very well, like you guys, really, you know, this is a great golf course, but you guys got to do a better job on that, and something that I probably could have never said to him, but coming from him, that was like it started getting a lot better right then.

00:38:58
Speaker 1: That's crazy.

00:39:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, they all took that really seriously.

00:39:03
Speaker 1: For him to say that to him, it's you know, the amazing thing too, is him saying it to him. You know, like so many people would go around and probably keep something like that to themselves.

00:39:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, or just nice, yeah, be nice and kiss your box. But that's I mean, that's one of the nice things about well, I mean, that's pretty good relationships with a bunch of people who have been in business for a long time. But that's one of the nice things about the Renaissance Cup is you know, you're welcome to come and tell us your honest opinion. You know, we don't want you to just kiss our butts and say it's great.

00:39:35
Speaker 1: We haven't ever really talked very much about Apache Stronghold, and it's a course that whenever I think about going to Scottsdale or that area at this time of year, I think about going to see and I always read you know what you know, the the course isn't a little disrepair, but just still like unbelievable. You know what made that place unique? And you know, when was the last time you were there?

00:40:05
Speaker 2: The last time I was there was my brother lives in Arizona in Tucson and took we took like a family vacation out to Arizona to see him and go up to the Navajo lands. My brother's an archaeologist, and you know, he always said, yeah, you should come see this with me. So we went up to northern Arizona with him, but stopped through Apache Stronghold for half a day on the way. My kids were still it's got to be like fifteen years ago, just thinking how old my kids were when we did that, and I don't think, you know, other than a high point, they'd never seen most of them had never seen one of my courses before. So that was interesting. But you know, the golf course was in really poor shape, and you know, it's been kind of like that for fifteen or twenty years now. It was such an odd thing. You know, when it opened, it was probably really overrated because certainly different than the other courses in the desert.

00:41:03
Speaker 1: What was different about it two things.

00:41:08
Speaker 2: One the Apache you know, we built it for the San Carlos Apache tribe and they have all the water rights in the world. You know, there's like underground aquifers that run through there. And and actually like at this you know, during the golf course, there was like a controversy that came up where like the town nearby got caught like directional drilling for water down under the tribal land and the Apaches basically threatened to cut off Tucson. That's how much water they have. So they're like, you know, you're not restricted on how many acres of turf you can have, Like you know, we're you know, we govern ourselves, So throw those rules out. If you want more turf, we're all for that. And you know, I've always thought, you know that the you know, environmentally, having less turf in the desert is the right thing to do. But from like if you're trying to do a tourist oriented golf course that people just flew in from Minnesota and they haven't played golf in three months and they're hitting in the cactus all day, it sucks, and you know, so to build a course that felt more you know, like the there's certainly desert areas, but the upland areas felt more like a parkland golf course. Was kind of one of the objectives. And then the other one was there was all these cool little desert washes and arroyos that came down through it, and my idea was, you know, clean them up a little and use them like bunkers instead of like building bunkers separately and staking those off like hazards. Just just try to clean them up and use them as much as we can and not build a lot of other.

00:42:51
Speaker 1: Bunkers, almost like a baranka.

00:42:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, like the stuff in George Thomas's book, it's harder to do in the desert. You know, there's a fair amount of eli on that. So when they do get a big rain, which is only really a couple of times a year, that'll wash out and they'll have to fix it up some. But you know, even if the thing's running all the way down the side of a hole, realistically there's only like small stretches of it where people are likely to hit the ball in there that you know, if you get that cleaned up, it should work okay. So it really did feel like a more natural golf course in the desert, and unfortunately it feels even more like that now because the grass is really struggling as it would in the desert.

00:43:33
Speaker 1: So the just sad maintenance has been the thing that's play good or it's I'm trying.

00:43:41
Speaker 2: To think of how what's a politically correct way to say it, because I don't want a bunch of Apache Indians mad at me. That's not a good idea. But you know, finally figured out, you know, five or ten years after the fact. You know, the tribes are kind of like a small town, a small community, and you know, two or three different factions take turns being in power. So you know, one faction builds something and then they go out of power, and the next faction kind of doesn't take care of that very well and they do their own project and it just keeps going like that. So they don't really take good care of things long term. Yeah, very much so. And you know that's been the that's really the problem. The guys who were behind that project are not the ones seeing it through now, and it's a shame, you know, I mean, and part of it was just just like government work, like you're talking about when we built the golf course. They wanted to use tribal labor to build the golf course, but when we actually did the construction on it, we could pay construction wages which are better, and we got we got all the best workers, and you know, they really did a good job. But then when it went over to maintenance, those were lower paying jobs. The good guys left to do a their stuff, and you know, you had exactly the same problem you have on a lot of municipal golf courses. You have some low paid employees who don't really want to be out there or take much pride in it, and they're locked in and you just you just stick with them and you don't turn them over.

00:45:16
Speaker 1: And there's no incentive to make it better, right you know, Like that's the uh I think that's the thing with municipal golf that it's started. Like you know, if I, if I, you know, bust my ass to make it better, is it does anybody even notice? Or does every anybody even care? And then the other thing with public golf, which I've kind of started to learn, is like it's really hard to shut down to douce do good work, you know, like to to actually like do significant work. It's not like a club. Your dues don't keep coming in, you have to shut down and you don't get greens fees. That's your revenues lost.

00:45:54
Speaker 2: So it's like almost days are hard to come by on public golf courses. In fact, I just you know, I'm a part owner in Saint Patrick's. So we were just having this conversation last month there. It's like, you know, George really needs a few maintenance days. And you know, the one saving grace of Saint Patrick's and Rossapenna is, you know, most of the customers will be staying at the hotel in Rossipenna and there's other golf courses to ply, so you know, if you're going to be there even one night, it's like, as long as the course isn't shut down two days in a row, you can kind of like schedule so, okay, we'll close on Tuesday, but you know, if you're there Tuesday and Wednesday, you can still play Saint Patrick's Wednesday. So so we're gonna you know, so we just picked a few dates off the calendar, you know, especially in early summer and fall when he can overseed stuff and just like give him a day here and there to try to do some of that work because it is hard. You know. It's just when you when you've got a small crew to maintain a golf course, like you know, you lose like three or four guys just to do setup, just like go out and rake the bunkers and cut the holes in different places and put the tea markers in the ground, you know, before you're doing anything else. And it's like, you know, if you don't have to do that on one day, it just like freeze up another half of your crew to actually go work on something.

00:47:19
Speaker 1: That's what we were talking about with bunkers. You didn't have to rake bunkers all the time, you know, That's right. It's what I feel like a lot of your courses. One of the things that I appreciate is that they always are different and have different themes. All right, do you have any ideas that you're kicking around that you might have proposed that are just different than say, you know, your recent courses are recent trends in golf architecture.

00:47:48
Speaker 2: Uh, well, one of these days I'm going to bring my list and talk about it a little more, because I'm realizing I'm getting to the point that you know, for a while, I've been keeping it kind of close to the vest because it's like I want to do that, and I don't want to give this idea to somebody else, and hell, what's your idea.

00:48:03
Speaker 1: Nobody's going to do your idea as well as you do your idea the way I like to think about these things.

00:48:09
Speaker 2: But at this point in my career, it's like, you know, I just want to see somebody do this. You know, if it's not me, it's okay now. But the you know, the one that I'm actively working on is the six thousand yard par sixty eight or whatever a golf course. We may not even have par on it, so it'll be you know, client is like slightly worried about that and whether we even need to stir up controversy by saying par what par is instead of just saying whatever, And it's like, yeah, I'm okay with that, but you know, I'm as soon as we do it and don't put par on the scorecard, like you know, people are going to be emailing me and asking in your podcast, like what's par on that? All? You know, what's par on that golf course? So it's hard to.

00:48:57
Speaker 1: Avoid unless you're telling of event. PARR has no significance. The only only utility par serves is for a viewer to understand what's going on in a tournament.

00:49:10
Speaker 2: Well, it's I'd like to believe that too, but I know that it does. It sets people's expectations, and I've you know, there's been a few times, like, you know, the last time I saw Mike Clayton, we were talking about the thirteenth at Saint Andrew's Beach, which is a really long par four, and Saint Patrick's has a hole like this, the sixteenth at Saint Patrick's big downhill hole. It's like five hundred yards from the back teees. We're going to call it a par four or par five. Well, okay, it's downhill, it's usually downwind. I mean, it's really long, and it's you know, it's it's pretty you know, even if all the factors in your favor, it's pretty hard to hit that green in two. But if we call it a par five, it's like a pretty open easy hole. If we call it a par four, people are going to be grinding on it, Like God, that's really that's pretty hard, and especially considering you know, you think about that and then you think about the holes around it. And there's a you know, short part three before it, and there's another part three after it that's fairly hard, but you're not going to make seven there and a short part four to finish, so it's like, yeah, that's a part four. Otherwise people are gonna think the finish is really easy. But at the end of the day, it's still the same tea. You're still trying to hit the green into or not. I understand that, but you know, people's people's expectations. You know what I said to Mike about saying the whole of St. Andrews Beach is if it's a par five, nobody talks about it. If it's a part four, it's controversial. Everybody's like, you know, they everybody has an opinion. Some people like the whole. Some people think I'm I'm crazy to have a part four that's that long. Okay, I don't you know, because I don't care, because you're you're making four or five, and I don't care what you whether you call it par or Bogey.

00:50:52
Speaker 1: At Ridgewood and they have one of the part five they turn they're turning into part four for the US AM out there now year. It's the one that goes up the ridge before the downhill par three and then the diamond five hole or five and dive hole, and it's it goes up and you know, sure it's like I hit I think I hit driver three iron on a fall day, like it's it's definitely a two shot hole for especially USM players, right. But then you get up to the green and it's like, well, you hit like a towering high cut to a blind green from like you know, probably twenty twenty feet below the green height, and it's like, this is a par five green right on a par four. You know, it's just this is why the silliness of par you know, it's just a par four and a half. You got par four and a half followed by two hundred and fifty yard par three and a half, right.

00:51:50
Speaker 2: And you know, I don't think a lot of people understand that some of like you know that used to be the standard one championship courses that they would take a par seventy two course and turn into par seventy for the US Open, like like WINGFA. The sixteenth oll at Wingfa was a par five for the members forever.

00:52:06
Speaker 1: I think it still is.

00:52:09
Speaker 2: Maybe I'm not. And there's one of the holes on the front. I can't even think what one it is, but it balts for all the first holes a par five for the members. But they played as a part four the US Open since the nineteen fifties, and they just you know, they put the tea a little farther back every time, so you're essentially playing the same tea the members play as a par five. Even even Memorial Park in Houston, the first hole is like a five hundred and twenty yard hole. We called a par four for the PGA Tour, and it's a hard par four for the PGA Tour, but be just you know, they can all hit five iron at the four or five inn at the greens, so you can't call that a part five.

00:52:45
Speaker 1: Are you going to the tournament again? You're going at least one day or all week.

00:52:50
Speaker 2: I'm going all week after you know, leaving tomorrow morning and go down there for the week.

00:52:54
Speaker 1: You know, last year you watched a ton of golf. Is there anything that you're keen to watch this year that you didn't see last year? Do you have like a list of things that you want to see? How players play the course.

00:53:06
Speaker 2: I'm hoping to talk to the players a little more. You know, last year, it'd being the first event, I didn't want to, like, I mean, I'm not the kind of person that wants to bother those guys anyway, but I didn't you know, they really hadn't played the golf course yet, so I didn't want to get in their heads and talk to them about things. You know, I want feedback, and so this year I want to talk to some of the guys that played the first year and see what they really thought and what they don't like and what they do like, you know, not that we're going to change it all around. I think, you know, I figured at the start, if the client was happy and brooks Kopka was happy, I was happy. You know that those were the two main constituents. And obviously it's still playable for sixty thousand rounds a year for the city of Houston, and it's been doing fine on that on those grounds too. So I don't really think I'm going to see much this year that's going to make me think we want to change. But that's why I'm going. I mean, part of my contract was to go to the tournament for the first two years and observe and then decide if there's anything we ought to do. But honestly, the the you know, the main things that we considered doing right at the end of construction. Before the first year of the tournament, we put in three or four back tees that we considered just you know, the client was a little concerned. No, you know, you know, we don't want them to shoot two low numbers. And the tour played well that The tour always on Thursday and Friday, at least they play the half par holes back as far as they can because it's slowly, you know it. Yeah, backs up play if you've got you know, you know, we had that thirteenth hole that's a driveable part four. They left a tee further back for that, and then the seventeenth hole. My intention was that they'd move it up for at least one day of the tournament and let guys try to whack it straight over the water onto the green from however far. I mean, we built it so they could put the tees at two eighty or two sixty or three hundred or whatever they think to try to do it. They didn't do it at all. Last year. They were really concerned with that. You know, they thought about it a little bit. They told a few of the players, you know, we're not going to do it this year, but we're thinking about doing it. So in a practice round, try it and tell us what you think. But I'm hoping that they're gonna you know, I've talked to them a little bit. They're like, I won't know until I get there whether they're going to do it this year or not. But I'm hoping Saturday or Sunday they'll.

00:55:27
Speaker 1: Do that seventeen just to see how, you know, they will start a social media campaign, make seventeen.

00:55:35
Speaker 2: That will that will ensure that they don't do it. They want them to not do something, just press them.

00:55:42
Speaker 1: All right, we got a hard stop, so we got to end this now. But this is good to good to catch up for a short little while. We'll have to do something maybe this winter and uh and and get a get a full batch together. But uh, Tom, thanks as always for coming coming, uh and talking and uh excited to watch Memorial Park again.

00:56:04
Speaker 2: I am too.

00:56:14
Speaker 1: Today's episode was edited by Meg Atkins. Thank you to Meg. And as a reminder, we do have that Black Friday sale coming up on Friday this week. I hope everybody has a happy Thanksgiving and safe Thanksgiving. And if you are looking for a gift for a golf lover in your life or looking for a gift for yourself, check out our pro Shop at proshop dot Dofriday dot com starting Friday through I think Monday or Tuesday, it will be twenty percent off. Thanks and talk to you soon.

00:57:00
Speaker 2: S