Regions of Golf: The Melbourne Sandbelt

00:00:00
Speaker 1: The Melbourne sand Belt boasts one of the densest concentrations of great golf courses in the world Royal Melbourne West and East Courses, Kingston Heath, Victoria, and then if you travel down the Mornington Peninsula you'll encounter some exceptional modern Lynxy courses like Saint Andrew's Beach. Last December, I took a very special trip to this region. I got to know the courses, I got to know the people, and I was bowled over by the experience. So today, on designing Golf, we're talking about the sand Belt. It's history, it's golf, it's culture and how to go about planning a trip there. My guests are going to be Harley Cruz and Lucas Michelle, both Australian golf architects, both intimately familiar with this region. Let's get into it. I'm Garrett Morrison and this is designing golf. There are certain regions in the world of golf that can go by very concise, sometimes two or three word names. These regions have exceptional golf, often because history and geology conspired to make the areas wonderfully well suited to the game. You have the right people at the right time and the right pieces of land. So a few of these regions would include East Lothian. In Scotland, there are a bunch of them. In Scotland, you have Saint Andrews. You have South Ayrshire where Royal Troon and Prestwick are. You have the Highlands with Royal Dornick, Brora and now Cabot Highlands. You know, Scotland is a special place. Outside of Scotland though, there's the Heathlands south of London, There's Long Island. In the US, there's the Monterey Peninsula, There's the North Carolina sand Hills and the Nebraska sand Hills. And then you have what I would consider one of the most fascinating regions of golf in the world way over in Australia. I'm talking about the sand Belt, or the Melbourne sand Belt to be more specific, and that's the topic I'm taking on today in this episode of Designing Golf Now. Quick pronunciation note. Australians say Melbourne, I say Melbourne. Am I mispronouncing the name of the city. I don't think so, And that's because Australians don't really pronounce their rs right. It's a the Australian accent is a non rhodic accent. Often ours toward the ends of words are not pronounced. I speak West Coast American English. I do pronounce my rs pretty much wherever they are. So you know, Australians say copac, I say car park, right, or I would really say parking lot. So I think it's okay for me to say Melbourne. If I said Melbourne, it might feel like I was trying too hard. And at least I'm not saying Melbourne. So that's the compromise that I'm making with pronunciation here. All right, let's do some very quick and dirty history of Melbourne, the city and how golf started there. So Melbourne was a gold rush city in eighteen fifty it had a population of about twenty nine thousand. But then gold was discovered in Victoria, the state or province of Victoria in eighteen fifty one, and this triggered a massive migration to Victoria. Many arrived through Port Phillip Bay, which is where Melbourne is located. So Melbourne really became the gateway to the Victorian gold fields in much the same way that San Francisco had become the gateway to the California gold fields. So by eighteen fifty four, Melbourne's population had increased to over eighty thousand, and as in San Francisco, it wasn't the miners who ended up up benefiting most from the discovery and extraction of gold. It was Melbourne's business class, the city's merchants, bankers and businessmen. Also in very good shape were the land owning gentry in the surrounding area. Sheep farming and wool production remained one of Melbourne's signature durable industries, alongside banking. So Melbourne continued to grow through the eighteen sixties, seventies, and eighties. The eighteen eighties, in fact, are widely recognized as the city's peak. The population reached and exceeded four hundred thousand people, which made Melbourne one of the biggest cities in the British Empire. This was the era of marvelous Melbourne. It was a modern, thriving metropolis with electric street lighting, a cable car network, huge commercial buildings. So this was an era of really rapid growth and prosperity which was never going to last forever. It did come to a halt with a market crash in the eighteen nineties, but by that point Melbourne was established, there were still plenty of well off people who had this new thing in history called leisure time right, and in the eighteen nineties some people in the Melbourne area decided to spend a portion of their leisure time playing golf. This was around the time that golf was catching on internationally. The game had spread from Scotland to England in what the historian Michael Morrison calls the Great English golf Boom of the eighteen eighties, and then in the eighteen nineties Scottish and English immigrants exported the game to both former and current British territories like the United States and Australia. So the first golf clubs in Melbourne were founded in the eighteen nineties. The courses were established on land just outside the city and it's very possible, I think that the land bust of the eighteen nineties in Melbourne allowed for this use of land, because in the eighteen eighties those same properties might have been too expensive to be used for golf. So in any case, Melbourne Golf Club, later called Royal Melbourne, was founded in eighteen ninety one on a site in a suburb just south of the city named Caulfield, so this was just outside the city, just south of the city. Basically, various other golf clubs sprung up in the outlying areas of the city over the next couple of decades. But if we're talking about the story of the Melbourne Sandbolt specifically, the key event came in nineteen oh one when Royal Melbourne relocated from Caulfield farther south, about five miles south to an area called Sandringham. And this was the first time a golf club had been established in what we now know is the Melbourne sand Belt. The sand belt is a geological anomaly in the Melbourne area. Most of the city and its surrounding regions sit on heavy clay soils, but in this one band along Port Phillip Bay, starting about ten miles south of the city center, you have a very different soil profile, which turned out to be really great for golf. So to discuss the geology and vegetation and agronomy of the sand belt more in depth, I'm going to bring on Harley Cruz. Harley is an Australian golf architect and Melbourne native who has developed a tremendous expertise in vegetation management, so he's really the perfect person to discuss this topic with. But first, a quick word from our sponsor for this episode, Club Champion. We at Friday Golf are very excited to have Club Champion as a partner again in twenty twenty five, and if you're looking to improve your game this year, Club Champion has a lot to offer you. They have the most highly trained fitters in the world. Each fitter is trained at an in house university and they receive continued education from manufacturers to stay up to date on all the newest innovations. These are career fitters. They fit all day, every day. There are no distractions by accessories, lessons or anything else. This is what they do. They fit you into the golf clubs that you should be playing. Every Club Champion location has over sixty five brands, which equates to nearly seventy thousand different head and shaft combinations. This is the sort of menu that Club Champion fitters have access to, so they're really able to find the right stuff for you. So this is equipment for every golfer and every swing, whether you're tall, short, have a faster swing a slower swing, whether you're a junior, senior, beginner, or pro. Club Champion can fit you into equipment that will help you shoot lower scores. So here is the offer for designing golf listeners. You can get a free driver or iron fitting with a club purchase using the code Frida Egg. That's one word, Frida Egg at Club Champion dot com slash Frida Egg. Okay, so a free driver or iron fitting with a club purchase at any Club Champion location code Friday Egg. All right, check it out. Let's go to my conversation with Harley Cruz. Harley Cruz, Welcome to the pod. Thank you for being here.

00:09:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, great, Garrett, It's excellent to be here and to follow on from my colleague in things here where I am at Eleanorgolf Club in Sydney Lucas Michelle. So we'll both here this week working on a project which is good.

00:09:57
Speaker 1: Later in this episode, I'm going to bring on Lucas Spashelle to talk about various subjects to do with sand Belt golf, and the two of you happened to be in the same location, which worked out well for I think all of us so hardly I wanted to talk with you about what the Melbourne sand belt actually is like geologically speaking.

00:10:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, look, good question. And sand belt of course sand wind blown sands. Interesting. Underneath all this sand too, is like a bedrock of sandstone. It's like dated back four hundred million years. It's pretty amazing. But I guess, you know, windblown sand that came from the coast of port Field Bay, and you know, the stronger the winds, the more the sand went inland, so it stretches. I guess the sand belts are sort of a patch of ground that sort of stretches inland, probably ten to fifteen k's thereabouts, in various different parts of the coast. But underneath it all not far from Royal Melbourne actually is. You know, it's cliffs of which we stood the we stood the basically the erosion and hung in there and that's part of the original bedrock and the sand of great depths, you know. I guess sand and sand dune has been a variable thing. You know, they can be two hundred feet deep of sand, or it could be you know, twenty centimeters deep of sand or even less in some places. So some sand belt golf courses have more sand than others, and with that becomes also that connection of geology and the vegetation is also part of that mix of the sand as well.

00:11:35
Speaker 1: The sand is pretty deep in the sand belt in certain spots. Right at Royal Melbourne for instance.

00:11:41
Speaker 2: Correct, I think on Royal World on top of the big jernes, it's very deep. I was only there looking at an air off the side of West Course last week, whereas some dams were done a few years ago now, and I mean it's seriously deep there in those locations. And then you get other parts of the golf course. We're doing some work with Yarria at the moment and it's got some good of sand as well. But then certain parts of that site you might only have three or four feet five six feet of sand, and then you hit these sort of clay underneath, and parts of Metropolitan even less again in some cases Metropolite even less because they sold off some of their sand back in the sixties. I think, so so yeah, it's it's it's they're not all the same in terms of the massive depths of sand. I guess is the outset that that variability.

00:12:25
Speaker 3: Is there?

00:12:26
Speaker 1: A historical story here? How did how did this geological formation come about.

00:12:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess it's like all sort of dune country. It was coastal coastal windblown sands of Port Philla Bay. And I guess the sea level of Port Phila Bay might have been lower at some point or high at some point, but you know, just nature's forces of work blowing in, you know, washing. I think a lot of the sand is deposited by the you know, the ocean and the tidal movements on Port Philla Bay, and it was deposited on the coast, and the wind picked it up and blew it inland, and then eventually, you know, plants would colonize the primary dunes and then other plants with colonized inland and the primary dunes along Portfoli Bay, there's probably a width of call it, you know, a mile at most width of sand there that's young, fresh sand with less organic material in it, and it supports very different types of species as opposed to when you get inland where you get that darker lone sand, which is organic material that's broken down in the sand, and it's a very different type of older structured sand. And the sands are pretty fine. You imagine wind picking up the sand, the fire of the sand, the further inland it would go. So yeah, it's interesting and it's different too. We're doing I'm doing work in Sydney at the moment with Royal Sydney. It has different sand again, and if you go to Adelaide you get the red sand. So Melbourne's fame for its dark gray sand. Sydney's got its white sands, and Adelaide with raw Adelaide and Kyunga A, Green Grange, Glenel we've all got the red sand.

00:13:59
Speaker 1: So yeah, so Melbourne you've got the dark gray sand. Is there anything special about what other characteristics of it, aside from color, are unique to Melbourne sand?

00:14:13
Speaker 3: Yeah?

00:14:13
Speaker 2: I guess. I mean bunkers were dug out of that sand, right, so you've got native bunkers dug out of native sand and that sandy loam having those vines in it gives it a structure that means you can get those beautiful sand faced bunkers and those beautiful edges and lips that you know, anywhere from four inches down to sort of you know, a few feet deep on those edges and it stays up and hangs together. And I guess too, you know, Historically all the greens have built out of the naive sands, and so the whole culture of Melbourne sand belts is growing turf on these on these sands. But two, I guess even on one golf course, you'll have a variation of sand, so that we are I guess I be a certain part of a site where historically greenkeepers of quarried sand one spot just to have that native sand for the greens, so and of that particular speck. So it's it's you know, it's the fundamental. It's the foundation, isn't it of that sand belt golf.

00:15:13
Speaker 1: You mentioned. It holds together really well, and that's part of the reason that you can get some of these these sharp edges and shapes that people associate with sand belt golf. Now, that's just because like the particles of the sand just locked together, don't they.

00:15:28
Speaker 2: It's fine, Yeah, it's the fine I guess it's the angular shapes then as part of the structure and that organic material that's in amongst it all that gives it their dark gray color, right, and that's that's where it locks together. Whereas the sands, say in Sydney, in Rose Bay and Sydney where ural Sydney is they're rounded sand particles, less organic and they just don't hold together, not structural, they're very very very soft and very unstable. So yeah, it's a unique makeup in that Melbourne sand belt. I guess hit Austray golf because even when you go down to the Morning Peninsula it's a bit and again. So so it's an interesting, interesting part of the Yeah, the foundation of that sand belt golf.

00:16:07
Speaker 1: It's part of why it's such a unique golf region is it comes from the ground itself, which I think is is really interesting, you know, aside from aside from holding together nicely, and you know, it must be nice for architects to work in this kind of sand because they put it into shapes and it sort of stays in those shapes to an extent. Why is the why is the soil so good for golf in in other senses?

00:16:30
Speaker 2: Well, I guess, I guess you know, of course, as we know, golf began on sand and and I guess it's the free draining nature of it of sand, you know, that fluidity of it. You know, the natural shapes that were there, the natural green sites, the natural tea sites. I guess it's just it's golf country right as we call it so and you know the backstory of course, Royal Melbourne was a couple other locations before they got to black Rock to where they are today, and a few other clubs are same so oldly. Fortunately there was a realization that sandy ground was way better to put golf on than heavy soils, and and you obviously were fortunate to get some influences from the UK, and notably of course doctor Alison Mackenzie. But and those influences, you know, I guess helped identify what's the best land for Melbourne for golf, and off they went and it was you know what too, I guess it was one of those things. It was the benefit of the fact that it probably agriculturally wasn't very fertile, so it wasn't great golf for agriculture. It wasn't great land for agriculture, but great land for golf. And and in fact many of the many of the golf courses were on land that had been sand belt. Golf courses were on land that had been clear at some point for farming.

00:17:45
Speaker 1: But probably the only farming they could do is like sheep farming, they couldn't grow things in it.

00:17:50
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, Craig, you'd be running a few sheep or a few cows and things like that. So I mean, you know, Yariarra Metropolitan, they're all all these golf courses, Woodlands. Woodlands was a farm, so they're all they all had some sort of you know down on the outside of suburban Melbourne at that stage that was it was sort of farmland and relatively cheap land and obviously good land for golf.

00:18:12
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, striking similarity with Scottish Links golf. You know, land that wasn't good for anything else but was perfect for golf exactly, and so golfers found it and they could use a lot of it because you know, it wasn't super valuable and and so that's that's where I guess Melbourne golfers just found found this area and knew what to do with it, which is fantastic. And you know, you could go you.

00:18:41
Speaker 2: Could get the grasses to grow and you can get things to happen. I mean at these you know, when we think about the courses were built with no irrigation system existing, right there was, so you know the fact that it took you know, three or four years to grow a golf course in like the West Course took three or four years to grow until it was ready for play. These course at Ryal Melburne similar two or three is you were relying on mother nature to liver some rainfall to grow grasses. So I guess it was the combination of that free draining nature, a little bit of fertility with the organic material in the sands and just believe for root systems to get down and just provide that great, great golfing ground. So yeah, it's interesting we look back on that non irrigation factor of establishing golf around the world. Actually, I guess, but here it is good golf country.

00:19:27
Speaker 1: Was it easy to establish the turf at first? And that's that's such a common story in golden edge golf. What is the agronomy of the sand belt? So what kinds of grasses are used generally used for golf in the same typically, now there's a variety.

00:19:42
Speaker 2: But yeah, I mean typically in civil terms, sand belt golf is what you would call bermuda, what we call couch, So it's basically couch couch or bermuda on teas and fairways and then bent grass and greens, and that's pretty ubiquitous through the sand belt, you know. So it's it's troop spairways, roughs, teas and then and then and then bent. And of course there was a lot of experimentation with Bent and lots of other backstories. But I'm probably not the best person of the story around the Sutton's mixed at rural Melbourne, but you know it was they were sitting there ordering some seed for some grasses to grow off a British seed supplier and said, we're here in this climate, this, this and this. The seed pliers sent them hold on different seeds and they mixed it up as the Suttons mix, and they threw it out there and what grew grew. But so at Royal Melbourne situation, there's more than ten varieties of different grasses in their greens. It was the shotgun mix, I guess you'd call it, to see what would work. But you know today today the golf course is still primarily primarily couch grasses. You know, you've got hybrid bents on greens. Now. You know Victoria next door to Royal Melbourne's got pure distinction. Pininicia Kings, who has got pure distinction. I think colnwealth as well, and I guess the only difference is probably is getting some of the fescue surrounds of greens. That's happened probably the last fifteen to twenty years to get a more interesting short game around around the greens. So Royal Melbourne woodlands have all got you know, fescue green surrounds as well, which is a little bit more intensive because you know, I guess the other thing. Melbourne's climate is coolish in winter, but then sorry, I'm going to talk since celsius here, but you might get mornings down to one to three or four degrees but nothing much lower than that, and then in the middle of February and our summertime you can get nor Westley winds coming in at forty degrees celsius. Dry. It's a dry heat though, but it's dry and hot, so so you know, the coach is fine in that sort of weather and the events can handle in there, and the fescue is there's a lot of hand watering that goes on, of course to keep the fescuse in good condition, but that's differentie. Sorry, that's the thing that we've got water now and you can hand water. I mean, interestingly, post World War two where there's a lot of austerity going on around in golf courses around the world, and even it was affecting the better courses. Rural Melbourne had fourteen staff looking after thirty six holes of golf. You just imagine that today, you know, so today there's a lot of extra hands to look go after our golf courses and that includes you know, hand watering of greens and green surrounds.

00:22:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, keeping that fescue going. And that's something you'll see at real Melbourne is the you know, the grass changes color as you're approaching the green, and that's those are the fescue surrounds. And I mean when a ball lands on it, it just leaps off of the ground, which is quite a sight to see. But yes, I mean Melbourne is a moderate climate and famously fescue, you know, has some troubles and moderate damp climates, like like where I live in Oregon, where it's just like a battle you around to keep fascue from being invaded by poet anyway, but in any case, that is, those are the kind of varieties of grasses people love to hear about Sutton's mix when you go to Royal Melbourne, you hear about this wonderful bank grass mixture that they have in their greens and it's basically unique to Melbourne. Is this Sutton's mechs And that's always that's always fun to hear about.

00:23:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's pretty cool.

00:23:28
Speaker 1: Actually, yeah, yeah, it's a it's a really good putting surface.

00:23:32
Speaker 2: Yeah. So it looks blockchy like, it looks like a bit of certain times a year, it looks like camouflage on the ground, right, But you know, to the credit of the greenkeepers of the of the the decades and through to today that we've got these amazing surfaces that are not only smooth, but you talk about the bounce and the rescue, you've also got the bounce on the greens, you know. Oh yeah, there's a there's a there's a trick that Vigid Forsyth, the supertender Roy Melburne does. He bounces of all knee hot, you know, just like a basketball. Yeah, and that's obviously that's part of the game, you know, is that incredible firm green, not just the speed of the greens with the bounce. So that's that's the real craft. I think that's the real craft in amongst superintendents, excuse me, in Melbourne, it's getting those firm greens and getting that bounce. I think that the modern tools, anyone can get speed, but the real craft is getting firmness.

00:24:26
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, And the Suttons mixes obviously well adapted to this particular location. You know, it's it is, it's it's made. If it's not one of these fancy bent grasses that you bring in from somewhere else though those those seem to be working fine as well. Yeah, this stuff is indigenous. So when it comes to the topography of the sam Belt, you know you have, uh, this is a sandy area and so people automatically imagine a duneescape are kind of rolling dun escape. Is that some of what you see in the sand belt. What varieties of topography do you see across across this area?

00:25:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, good question. I mean you get a lot of again variation as the same before with the winds, and you know this is all created by wind and ocean depositing sand. So you've got places like Royal Meldern, Victoria. They've got a big broad dune shape. You know, it's not Lynx golf dunes, which are sharp and steep. You know that you see on the coast like your barm Googles and places like that where you've even seven mile where you've got more sort of classic British dunes. These are big, broad shapes, but you know, the vertical differences are quite quite high, particularly say rural Melbourne and Victoria, but then when you get to Kingston Heath the ground is relably flat, so it's all on sand, but it's reliably flat. Woodlands is another course that we're involved with and it's relevantly with that too. The club houses up on the hill doesn't have as much vertical relief as Victoria or Royal Melbourne, but still you know there's special golf courses too, so there's great variations of of that topography and and the height and the relief in the dune system.

00:26:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting how topography how land is. You know, all the sand belt courses are are wonderful and so well designed, but when you combine that design with great land, like at Royal Melbourne West, you have you have the top course. You know, it's it's it's immediately clear. Oh man, this is this is sort of on another level. But even a course like Kingston Heath can be so interesting on flat land, and then it gets to those last several holes and and all of a sudden you see a little more rumpele happening in the land, some some Royal Melbourne like forms that those holes travel over, and the routing is brilliant in the way that it takes you to that land. And so it seems like the land was so well used. Whatever these courses had, they used really well.

00:27:09
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and I think too there was a skill set that was built up, you know, after the construction of and we're talking about Morecambe, you know who was obviously involved with the construction of Royal Melbourne's East and West courses and the bunkering at Kingston Heath. There was a whole lot of skills we learned through these early classic SAMD beilt courses that then you see Morgan's name pop up at Woodland's and you know, different people. So there was a whole lot of knowledge getting built up in Melbourne. And then those those trades were put out to other SAMD Belt clubs and I guess they had role models too. Of the other sand belt clubs had role models to look at as well. So I think it was an incredible amount of skills set, and they were you know, they were working with horse and scoop, weren't they They weren't working with doses and excavators, so they were walking with horse and scoop. But I think you can look at Kingston Heath there was a lot more hand of man make some of those ripples and rumbles you talk about, and the bunkering because it was relatively bland land in certain parts and so there were certainly you can you can certainly see that effort, whereas I guess the bigger June shapes of scale of vic and rayal Melbourne Land. You know, you didn't have to do that work that hard and to get that that sort of results. So now that's interesting, really interesting stuff.

00:28:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, what kinds of indigenous vegetation do you find in the sand belt? What is naturally there? What volunteers?

00:28:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's basically again there's some variation through courses, but effectively we call it the sand belt heath. So on that sandy ground where it's fairly open and the tree coverage may be sparse or nonexistent, then you get this, you know, the incredible ray of species of heath heathland species, which I guess in a way for those watching. I mean you've got the great heathland courses of Barkser and Surrey around London, you know, and that's on the sand belt down their sand belt right where the soals there are sort of a little bit of sidic and you've got a less of a tree coverage and those sort of plants, you know, the heathland plants of their survive and I think so rural Melbourne's and the sand belt of Melbourne should say is is a dry land heath not as wet as British heathlands, but it is. It is small plants, true to low, small awkwards, things that might only be six inches high, incredible diversity. You might have a square meter of land and you might have ten different species growing in that square meter. So it's a fascinating piece of this heathland and that heathland oblique. Kingston Heath gets its name from that local heath. You've got yary Yara Commonwealth woodlands, all these courses Pus the Kingswood, the north course of Pique has probably got the best heathland woodland course possibly in Australia, I would say in terms of its vegetation and just the purity of the original vegetation was there. So so I think where it was drier and a bit harsher, there'd be less trees. And even if you look at a cross section of Royal Melbourne you cross the road through into the East Course, where you got to less sand and the ground that was a bit lower to the water table, so it was a bit damper. The vegetation would change into more of a woodland character. Even some swamp swamp guns were existing there because things were quite wet in certain parts of the low ground of Royal Melbourne on the east. So yeah, it's an amazing amount of range of flora. But then of course there was I guess when these courses were originally laid out, there was sort of hangovers from these things called the Climatization Society of Melbourne, which these acclimatization societies wanted to make the landscape look European, you know, and they wanted to have in the US.

00:31:01
Speaker 1: It was the beautification movement there.

00:31:04
Speaker 2: You go, So it's kind of like this Oussie scrub, this Aussie bush was inferior, and you had to tame it and plant cypresses and pine trees, and it.

00:31:14
Speaker 1: Was savage, savage flora. We have to get rid of.

00:31:16
Speaker 2: It, yeah, exactly. And then and then came the then came the huge you know, the beyond that. And you know even post war, you know, the fifties, sixties and seventies, there was a bit of a native plant boom in this country where they started planting, planting shall we call them horticultural curiosities of different trees from different parts of Australia. So you'll see West Australian trees and Queen trees in Queensland and New South Wales planted on Melbourne sand belt. You know, well intended plantings, but just just ultimately long term probably shouldn't be there if the course is going to be true to the land that they're on. But it's amazing flora and there's amazing people doing some great stuff these courses, and as clats will say, I mean a lot of the golf courses have gone through renovations of their architecture tee to green, and most of the same built clubs have in the last ten, fifteen twenty years been doing tinkering away with things and the missing or the last piece perhaps of getting these golf courses to their true potential now is the vegetation side of it. Where they've gone a little bit off course. I said, not deliberately, but over successive years of planting different things, gone a little bit off course, and where the great opportunity to restore the vegetation is focusing on the landscape.

00:32:39
Speaker 1: This has been part of the life's work of Mike Clayton, whom you work with, and he's made incredible progress in Australia and many other places with restoring indigenous vegetation. One of Clats's bugaboos is the tea tree. Now, first of all, how do you spell it? Because I'm I've seen it. I've seen it both T I and te a tree. And then what is it and what are some of the issues that it presents for for golf.

00:33:14
Speaker 2: Yea, I've set it spelled both ways, and you can pick up texts and they'll spell it both ways as well. I'd probably spell it the more modern way, which is tea and I think Clates might spell it the T I and there's a pupil.

00:33:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the thing I've seen Mike speller with t I yeah, well he probably knows, so.

00:33:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Look, it's an interesting topic in itself, and it's quite it's a little bit controversial amongst some clubs at the moment, but sure coast t tree is its common name, and as the word suggests, belongs near the coast and typically I guess prior to settlement of Melbourne and clearing of land, coast t Tree was in the within five hundred meters of the high tide mark and that was about it. It didn't venture inland from there, but as as was disturbed cleared for some of that farming I was talking, or some subdivisions for housing. It's an incredible plant because the masses of white flowers in spring typically around now this time of the year, and with the profusion of flowers becomes a profusion of seed, and so it's a fantastic invasive plant. And I guess what's happened at the golf clubs where over a period of seventy eighty one hundred years it's and the golf was often on disturbed ground in came the tea tree, and unless there was somebody physically weeding them out and removing them, which cud cockfit at Rayal Melbourne did in the early days. He was the superintendent there Ryal Melbourne from nineteen thirty six. I think for forty five years he would go around and pull out the occasional tea tree signing the germinator. But it's highly invasive, but it looks great, you know, it's got this silver gray foliage, white flowers in spring and it looks great. But nothing else grows underneath it, so it precludes everything else. And so with the invasion or the allowing of tea tree to colonize, it displaces all this beautiful native heath that's there, and there's plenty of all nearly all the golf course in the sandpit. When you go and remove some of that coastal tea tree sitting in the ground for decades, is this late I call it latent seed of the heathland spec He's just sitting there and it pops up and germinates. And the classic example of that's probably Victory Golf Club, which Clayton knows so well. When they took the t tree out on the seventh hole, up comes all the heath.

00:35:35
Speaker 1: It looks amazing.

00:35:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, And the other way of germinating and promoting this heath is to do what is what some of the Sand Belt clubs do is burning like environmental burns. You've felled the T tree down and create this fuel load and you burn it and then up comes a wonderful heath. So it's a tricky one because if you close we sometimes speculator, if you close the gate at Royal Melbourne and went away for five years and come back, you possibly find and a lot most of the same BLD course. So you'd find the T tree invading the whole golf course, right, it's that invasive and he you know, so even down to Saint Andrew's Beach where you know there's one ad holes there, there was land for another ad holes and you know, fifteen years ago it was just just clear fields with just grasses that within ten or fifteen is just covered with a forest of T tree now. So it's it's highly invasive, but it is a subject of great debate. There's golf club members who think that T tree is indigenous and that's what belongs and that's what it's always been there and that's what should be there. And we have a phrase amongst the fewest peak T Tree, which was really probably in the sixties early seventies again post World War Two, where you know, there was less resources at hand and said, you know, low staff numbers. All the focus was just managing with the small amount of resources. Turf, ta de green, the vegetation are as well often thus forgotten about and you've just had masses and masses of tea tree that would come into all the sand belt courses and literally sort of take over. So there's been recently, more recent times, I guess there's been thinning out of T tree. I think even at Royal Melbourne has done for example, behind six West back in the early days of having tournament golf, bringing bringing golf and TV to to golf in Australia where they needed to get spectators to be able to stand and watch. So the rear of sixth West on the hill there they removed all that T tree and it's been cleared like that for decades now. But yeah, it's a it's a tricky one old T tree and the balance and and I guess providing members are sort of satisfaction that when you remove it, you know it's not all doom and gloom and devastation. There's there's a whole lot of other alternatives that will actually standing beautifully in place of the teatrip.

00:38:05
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, well, it's it's such an interesting story because technically it is native to the region, right, tea tree, it grows in the area, but it doesn't. But it's not exactly the environment that the golf courses are in. The golf courses are in more of the heathland environment, and and so it's it's a tricky discussion to have because people, it's not as though it's the it's a you know, a pine tree from North America or something. This is this is native vegetation, but not but not in the particular locale of the habitat of of the golf courses. And and from my perspective, you know, as a golf tree, it's tricky because you know, you hit you hit a ball into it, and it's you don't go in there. You you cannot go in there. It is gnarly low to the ground and there's just no no recovering your ball. That's right.

00:39:05
Speaker 2: I mean literally literally you would have seen the trunks of these trees lying along the ground and the canopy sticking. It's so yeah, but yeah, it's it's it's not great you as you say, you go in there and you don't want to be in there.

00:39:16
Speaker 1: And well you might as well just move on. Whereas when you have the native heath, yeah, you know, it's a penalty and it's it's can be hard to find your ball in the native heath, but there's there's some you can walk through it. It's you know, it's not going to attack you. So that's the Yeah, that's an ongoing project at a lot of sand bell clubs. That is very interesting.

00:39:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, well and it's a bit of an ongoing I guess project and education process and awareness right when when when golf has start to become aware of the alternatives, And I think that's where there's been some really good work done by vegetation managers at various different golf courses. We're working with in particular on the Sandbild at the moment with Yarryarra and Woodlands, two very different golf courses vegetation wise, two golf courses that have distinctly different ecological what we call ecological vegetation classes of of vegetation. Actually the mix of woodlands is unique to anything else on the sand book and Yariera, to its credit, is pulled out a lot of what I almost call tree junk, introduced exotic species, and that happened through you know, the renaissance golf workers removing a lot of the tree junk and getting it out of there, to the point we've almost got a clean slate to start with there at Yariaro of now getting back even just simply on the ground plane, getting back native wallaby grasses instead of having other grasses there or cooch there. Just to get that contrast between irrigated mown couch and that sandy grassy ruff that browns off and goes yellow and summer and gives that great contrast and also good you know, you can find your ball in it, right, So it's not a lush thick ruff that you might get in call wetter climates of North America or s a UK. So and I said, there's some really good people doing good work, professional people in the management team of these golf courses. Their working lives are dedicated just to vegetation, which is great. Great to see you in ten, fifteen, twenty easier. You didn't have those people doing that so much. So it's and so that sort of focus. I guess the awareness and the awareness of the alternatives to tea tree is still a story to be sold and told.

00:41:28
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, it's one of the biggest areas of progress in sam bel Golf recently and you're definitely have been have been a part of that story. So very cool to hear about it from your perspective. Thank you for coming on the podcast, Harley. Very nice to talk to.

00:41:44
Speaker 2: You, Pleasure Garrett anytime. It's been been good fun, so thank you very much.

00:41:55
Speaker 1: So I left off my history of sam belk Golf with Royal Melbourne moving to Sandringham in nineteen oh one. This started a kind of trickle of golf clubs down to the sand Belt from their original locations closer to the city. Next up was the Metropolitan Golf Club, which consisted of some former Royal Melbourne members I believe who didn't make the initial move. Metro arrived in the sand Belt in nineteen oh eight. Woodland's Golf Club was founded in the southern portion of the sand Belt in nineteen thirteen, and then in the nineteen twenties the trickle turned into a flood. Commonwealth Golf Club started in the sand Belt in nineteen twenty, Kingston Heath in nineteen twenty five, Victoria Golf Club and Yeri Yarra Golf Club in nineteen twenty seven. So suddenly you had quite a few golf courses on this excellent terrain in the Melbourne sand Belt. So the last ingredient to make this a world class golf region is, of course archetl extra. Now it seems to me that there was a good amount of local design talent in Melbourne. Kingston Heath was routed by a Scottish immigrant named Dan Suiter, and he did an incredible job. Victoria Golf Club was designed by Bill Meader, a local banker, and Oscar Dammen, a local shop owner. Again awesome work by the two of them. But a major galvanizing moment for golf architecture in the Melbourne sand Belt was a visit by doctor Alistair McKenzie in October and November of nineteen twenty six. Now I've done a whole podcast episode on this visit by Alistair McKenzie. You can find that back in the Friday Golf podcast archives. It's called something like the Doctor. The Good Doctor Goes down Under. It was released a few years ago, but I went into more detail about McKenzie's visit there, but really really subject. Mackenzie was technically there to design a new course for Royal Melbourne, which was moving from Sandringham to a property next door in Blackrock, and Mackenzie's main job while he was in Melbourne was to lay out this new course, which eventually became the famous West Course. But while he was in town, Royal Melbourne basically rented him out to several clubs to make design recommendations because they couldn't afford to just employ him during the entire duration of his stay. So mackenzie ended up helping out with bunkering plans and other design issues at Victoria Golf Club, Kingston Heath and the Metropolitan Golf Club, and to me, his influence on these places is really obvious. He introduced state of the art strategic golf architecture to the sand belt and that brought the region to another level. So the classic courses of the Melbourne sand Belt, to my mind, are the West and East courses at Royal Melbourne, Kingston Heath, Victoria Golf Club, the Metropolitan Golf Club, Yarra Yarra, Commonwealth and Huntingdale. These are almost always mentioned in any discussion of the sand belt. There are very few people who would deny that these courses should be considered kind of the pillars of sand belt golf. I would also add to that group though, Sandy Golf Links, which is right next door to Royal Melbourne and definitely looks and feels and plays like a sand belt golf course. I would add Sandy Golf Links to that group, as well as Spring Valley Golf Club, which is in the same area and again has enough similarities to classic sand belt courses to be considered one of them. Then south of this main area of the sand belt you'll find a few more courses Woodlands Golf Club, Peninsula, Kingswood Country Golf Club which has thirty six holes north and South courses, and Long Island, which is now owned by the National Golf Club. Sometimes these courses aren't mentioned in discussions of sand belt golf, but I think they should be. I think they belong in that category. So that's basically the scope of what I would consider the Melbourne sand Belt. Now, from Melbourne, you can also drive to the Mornington Peninsula, where you'll find courses like Saint Andrew's Beach, the Dunes Golf Links, Ports Sea Golf Club and three courses at the National Golf Club. You can also travel to the Bellerine Peninsula where you can play Thirteenth Beach, Golf Links which is the site of the VIC Open, Barwin Head's Golf Club and Lonsdale Links all definitely worth seeing. And you know, if you go to the Mornington Peninsula or the Bellerine Peninsula, one good thing is that many of the courses in those areas are public and so you won't have to try too hard to gain access and book ty times. They'll be a little bit more accessible to travelers. So with that, I'd like to bring on my friend Lucas Michelle to discuss his perspective on sand Belt golf and what he thinks visitors should see and do in and around Melbourne. Lucas is one of my go to advisors on Australian golf. He's very knowledgeable, he knows golf incredibly well, knows the area incredibly well and it's just fun to talk to him. So let's go right over to Lucas Michelle. Lucas Michelle, Welcome to the pod. Happy to be on you, Lucas are have all always been, have been for years one of my local sources on sand Belt golf. I ask you a lot of questions. You've always been very generous in answering them. Melbourne is your adopted hometown, it's my understanding. Didn't you grow up in Perth.

00:48:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I grew up in Perth. Moved to Melbourne when I was eighteen, really for two reasons, to study. I started an engineering degree in Melbourne, but then also to pursue some competitive golf. You know, Melbourne is really the capital golf city of Australia, and if I was going to get better at golf, I figured I needed to be on the East Coast and Melbourne was the spot. So yeah, moved to Melbourne in twenty twelve and have been there ever since. And yeah, it's just a great place.

00:48:46
Speaker 1: The region has produced so many great golfers like you know, Peter Thompson and everybody knows about Jeff Ogilvie knows about You're in that lineage of golfer Mike Clayton, You're in that lineage of golfers now as a US Midam winner, and it's and so that's one thing that's really interesting about the sand Belt is it's it's way of producing great players with great golf courses and very like high IQ high golf IQ players come out of Melbourne too, probably because of the nature of the of the golf courses there. You're you're now very well traveled, right, so you've seen a lot of different a lot of different regions of golf. When you think about the sand Belt, what is distinctive about the golf architecture there, well, like, what is the thing that makes it the sand Belt aside from the land?

00:49:37
Speaker 3: I guess, yeah, I think it was. It was a little bit of a shock when I moved to Perth, moved from Perth because I think the firmness of the turf was the biggest thing that I had to get used to, you know, understanding where a ball needs to land, you know, sometimes in front of a green, twenty outs short of a green to release and finish near the hole. And then obviously there's contour on top of that, really thoughtful contour on the ground. So you've kind of got those two factors. And coming from Perth, you know, I'd say Perth is probably firmer and faster than most places, but Melbourne was just on another level. So and as I've traveled, I've definitely realized that that is fairly unique to Melbourne I spent. I was fortunate I spent a semester abroad at Saint Andrew's UNI and was there from August through December, and certainly in August, September, October we had a nice dry fall and yeah, it was lovely and that was definitely probably the most similar I can I can think of to that style of golf, but I would definitely say, yeah, it's that firmness. I think it creates a golfer that is more used to thinking their way around a golf course, So think of yeah, Peter Thompson and Jeff and Mike Clayton. I think it was a real benefit to my game of spending a lot of time on a sand belt course my home club Metropolitan and then frequently playing Ryal Melbourne, catting at Ryal Melbourne. I spent also used cuttying there as well, So that kind of helps you think about how how design works too.

00:51:07
Speaker 1: You've constructed quite a life for yourself spending time in Melbourne, going to university in Saint Andrews, like I'm I'm pretty jealous, to be honest, but uh, you know, firm and fast golf is what you get in both of those places, and the you know this at the sand Belt in particular, I found when I went there last year, the first time I saw the ball leap into the air after landing was a real moment. I remember it because I was playing with you actually at that real Melbourne's East Course, it was. It was probably on the first hole when you know, I landed the ball short of the green and it just it's like a trampoline effect and it changes the way that you you play the golf courses. But then you add the design of the courses into that, and these courses are influenced by the strategic school of golf architecture as it was formulated in the early twentieth century, and so you have bunkers guarding the ideal angles into greens. You have greenside bunkers sort of punishing players who are out of position in the fair way, and when you combine that architecture with the firm turf, you just get really interesting golf. The design doesn't have to be that complicated, right, It doesn't have to be anything fancy to be interesting because you have firm turf, you have bunkers, you have hazards exactly where they should be to create strategic questions, and the golf courses just kind of go from there.

00:52:45
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:52:46
Speaker 3: Yeah, the questions are relatively simple. You know, it's generally, like you said, a classically strategic call. But yeah, the why the courses play really exemplifies the architecture on the ground. And I would say, sam Bell golf courses they probably don't have a ton of quirk compared to you know, some of the courses you see maybe the ones that were even built, you know, pre Golden Age, you see a lot of really wacky features. I mean maybe Metro's got a couple. I think you stood on the ninth fairway and looked at the mounds and you're like, oh, Brian Snyder would love this. Yeah. Yeah, but but yeah, I think I think it's just like you said, just you know, classically strategic architecture. And there's there's variations across the sand belt. You know, Commonwealth is probably most known for the tilt in the greens, so that the greens will tend to tilt away from the player if you're playing from the less than ideal line, so that sort of does it more with tilt. Places like Metropolitan probably does it more with the bunkering, and it just varies across the sand belt. You know, Kingston Heath probably has a little bit more variety in the sort of artitecture on the ground, you know, different strategic questions. Not it's not always bungers on the inside of the dog leg. You know, there's a couple, well, the twelfth hole has a bunker in the middle of the fair way. You know, there's there's maybe a little bit more variety there, and there's a bit more blindness there as well, which is pretty cool. But yeah, like you said, you know it is it's it's classic strategic architecture combined with just awesome playability.

00:54:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, Kingston Heath is is so wonderful because the the design is super intellectual, you know, like it's it's really varied from hole the whole, like all the all the tools of strategic architecture are are used at Kingston Heath. Then you go to Commonwealth, which I love, which you mentioned, really love Commonwealth, but there the strategic concepts are are very straightforward, where yeah, you have that tilt, you have the bunkers and the right positions, and you know the question is can can you deal with with all of that? And it makes for very interesting golf, but in a different way from Kingston Heath, in a different way from the West Course at Royal Melbourne, which is which is very complexly designed as well. The East Course has has those incredible greens that you talk to me a lot about when we are playing. The greens at the East Course are unbelievable.

00:55:23
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, I think, yeah. I think as I kind of played the East Course more and more and caddied there as well, I think I sort of realized, you know, there's greens like the third, tenth, eleventh, sixteenth and eighteenth that I think they're way more complex than you get on the West Course. And I think that's I think it must be. I mean it came a little later than the West. I got to think that obviously Russell was left on his own with Morecambe to do the West and at the East Surien and I think there's probably maybe Russell and more them getting a little bit more confident in what they were doing and getting a little bit more creative there.

00:56:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, But yeah, they're experimenting the green experimental for sure, you get that sense that it was like, well let's try this.

00:56:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, whereas you look at you know, Yaria was I think built a round the same time as the West or maybe even like like maybe even finished before it, and so you don't have that complexity, and that was Russell and I don't know actually who built it. But there's a big difference between the complexity of the green greens at yari Era versus rom Elbane's not to say yarrows aren't great, but you know, green like eleven is probably one of the most intricately designed greens on the sandhold at Yarria. But yeah, the East just I think is a notch higher in terms of green design.

00:56:48
Speaker 1: There are probably some intricacies that are Era and the greens that that could be recaptured. But your general point is totally right. You know, you're era I think was twenty six or twenty seven, which is when the West Course was conceived, right when Alistair McKenzie came through Australia and offered all of his suggestions for these courses. And the West Course was built according to Alistair McKenzie's plans, but not finished until the early nineteen thirties, and that's when the East Course was finished too. And by the early nineteen thirties there's crazy stuff going on all around the world in golf architecture. You know, Alistair McKenzie is building Augusta National with some of the craziest greens ever ever created, and there's a lot of there's a spirit of experimentation in early nineteen thirties golf architecture, just as the industry is falling off a cliff and nobody can nobody can build anything anymore. Later in the thirties you have Langford and Moreau come along in the US and do some crazy stuff. And so maybe maybe Alex Russell was kind of, you know, absorbing the spirit of the times. He was a very cosmopolitan guy. He probably kept track of what was going on in the golf industry and who knows, the use course greens might have been influenced by that, yeah, you know, by that atmosphere.

00:58:10
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think as well. Morecambe clearly had an influence because if you look at the Russell courses that were done outside of Melbourne, you know, I was remember at Lake carrn Up in Perth, and before Mike Clayton went through there and redesigned, it was fairly rudimentary. And I think he did plans for that course in the fifties as well. I think he drew up green plans. I don't know if they were ever built, but he definitely relewed the course Russell did, so he built the course in you know, they built the course in the late twenties, and then I believe he went through and did a review and drew some more sketches in the fifties. But clearly when he didn't have Morecambe there, it just couldn't get built to that level. So I think when Clayton went through, they used some of those sketches and then put a bit of their own flavor on the golf course.

00:58:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, so, Lucas, I have a few questions for you from members of Friday Golf Club. I put a call out for questions related to, you know, what it's like to visit the sand Belt and how to kind of plan a sand Belt trip, what it's what it's like to try to get access to these clubs and travel to the area. So, you know, starting with the golf part of it, this is a complicated question. This is a hard question answer, But what do you think the priority is? Like do you stick around the city and try to play as many sand Belt courses as possible, or do you sprinkle in some trips out to the Mornington Peninsula or even the Bellerine Peninsula. These are sort of the Hampton's areas of the Melbourne region with with some great golf in their own right. What would be your approach if you had a week and a half to two weeks in the area, would you would you go narrow and deep or would you kind of spread out a little bit?

01:00:00
Speaker 3: I think I would probably spread out. I think, you know, the sand Belt, it's a little homogeneous once you get past you know, the top two or three or four courses. I think I would, you know, the sand belt style, there is variety, a little bit of variety, like we talked about with Commonwealth, you know, having the tilted greens versus you know a Yaria or Metro or elsewhere. So I think I would definitely do four or five sand Belt courses. And then I think there's so much good golf on the Mornington Peninsula. I think for that variety to spice up the trip, a little bit. I think, yeah, you can't look past you know, you're s Andrew's Beach. If you can get on the National kind of matter or Mona and then yeah, I mean, like you said, the Bellerine has some great golf now, but on Heads is really good and Lonsdale Links is really fun. I wouldn't suggest going out to Port Farry. That's about a four hour drive, but if you did want to.

01:01:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it looks like my kind of place.

01:01:04
Speaker 3: It's really cool. You drive the Great Ocean Road to get there, so maybe that's an option. If you've got a couple of days spare, you can go stay out there. But yeah, I would definitely, you know, throw in some some interesting stuff, even RACV Heelsville it's a course up north north of Melbourne that Mike Clayton did with Mike Cocking probably fifteen twenty years ago, and that's got some really fun green complexes, super different to what you'd see on the sand belt heavy soils, but you know, past sixty eight or six or something like that. I also wouldn't look past Sandy Golf Links. I think that's a really sort of in that shorter courses sort of thing. I think that's super super fun. You know, it's got every element of raw melw into it.

01:01:52
Speaker 1: You know that's right next door.

01:01:54
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, so it's superb.

01:01:57
Speaker 1: I would I would beat the drum drum for Sandy Golflin as well. I mean, it's it's so easy to work into an itinerary because it is a shorter course a par it's like a par sixty five or six or something.

01:02:09
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's a six. I haven't broken par there, I've played it. Maybe it's hard eight nine times.

01:02:14
Speaker 1: It's so hard because.

01:02:18
Speaker 3: Pathlives where good players faced, and then and then you've got lots of plath threes and firm, super firm surfaces and not a lot of bunkers, which I think actually makes it harder for good players because the ball runs away from the green and then there's so much complexity around the green.

01:02:32
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, you're probably right that that is. That is the factor.

01:02:36
Speaker 3: It is.

01:02:37
Speaker 1: I mean that, and that the turf is maintained by the Royal Melbourne team. You know that the courses are right next door to each other and they have a deal, a very nice deal from from the perspective of Royal Melbourne to kind of co maintain the courses, and yeah, it's so the turf is like what you get at Royal Melbourne for all intents and purposes. That designs great. They redid it a few years ago and uh and turned it into a true sand belt course. So definitely would recommend that. And yeah, there's so much good golf in the area around it's a little bit hard to wrap your arms around it. But I think I like your approach. It's the sort of the approach that I took where you try to see as much sand belt golf as possible because that's that's the unique thing about the area. You won't find it anywhere else.

01:03:26
Speaker 3: You know.

01:03:27
Speaker 1: San Andrew's Beach is an incredible golf course, but it is it is like the bandoned courses more so than than the sand belt courses are like the bandoned courses. But I think San Andrew's Beach is one of Tom Doaks's best golf courses. Yeah, it's one of the one of the three or four best of his that I've that I've seen, And and so getting out there and seeing that would it would really spice up the trip. And then you guys are working at Portsya, right now.

01:03:55
Speaker 3: Right, correct, And.

01:03:59
Speaker 1: It's a cool place.

01:04:00
Speaker 3: That's that is a cool place. It's it's probably doesn't have the you know, design complexity of you know in certain certainly the design of the greens and bunkers. But yeah, yeah, solid routing, great land, some of the best land you could ever imagine for golf, spectacular setting. Very luckily where we're working with them and hopefully we can make some slight improvements on what they've already got.

01:04:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think they they're they're pretty close to to having something very special and and worth traveling out to the tip of the Mornington Peninsula to to see it. So yeah, I mean so much good stuff And yeah, I guess that doesn't answer the question in like a firm way for uh, for people who want to travel there, But the basic messages you can't really go to this region and not go not do a little bit of traveling around and seeing the varieties of golf.

01:04:57
Speaker 3: Yeah, and depends what you're into, but there's some good wineries down on the morning To Peninsula. You can make out a trip. Like I said, the Great Ocean Road if you do happen to go Bellerine Side is not that far from from where you know Lonstow and those courses are, so you know, there's definitely other elements to the trip. It doesn't have to be one hundred percent golf. If you're interested in other things.

01:05:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, great wine region, it's uh, I mean just on top of everything else. They there's there's good good pinot noir specifically in the in the Melbourne region. All right, and this is a question from my colleague Boschagins, Uh, can you think of any other cluster of courses in the world that you feel placed similarly to SAMD Belt courses? What's what's kind of the closest thing elsewhere to the sam Belt.

01:05:48
Speaker 3: It's probably if you get a good summer the London heathlands, I would.

01:05:53
Speaker 1: Say it's got to be right.

01:05:54
Speaker 3: Yeah. I played the Walton Heath Trophy in a couple is actually twenty fifteen when I went over to Sanders and then maybe like twenty seventeen, and I actually don't know what the soils are there. They maybe clay because it was so firm, like when the clay dried.

01:06:11
Speaker 1: Out, the ball was bouncing late summer.

01:06:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, unbelievable. So I think a dry summer on the London heathlands. I think it's sort of got that aesthetic too, with the sort of heathland style vegetation as well.

01:06:27
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, I agree. Yeah, the soils are generally pretty good, pretty fine in the heathlands, but there are but it is a mixture of heavy clay and more sandy stuff, and it's just there's more variety than you would find in the sand Belt. I just came back from a trip to the Heathlands and would totally co sign that. You know, both completely unique regions that deserve their own trips. It's not like you would ever stand on Woking a fairway at Woking Golf Club and and mistake it for ye are era. But there are some real, real similarities with concentration of great golf architecture, really good land and you know, some interesting heathland vegetation there are there's some vegetation similarities as well, I guess all right, here's a question from a Friday Golf Club member named Tim Shermer. He wants a little more information on the quote unquote lesser known courses of the sand Belt. Everybody knows about Royal Melbourne, Kingston Heath to an extent, everybody knows about Victoria knows about metropolitan where where you remember when you think about courses like Commonwealth, Woodlands Huntingdale. I don't know if you would consider Long Island part of the sand belt. But that's next door to Peninsula Kingswood to thirty six holes at Peninsula Kingswood, south of of what you would traditionally call the sand belt. What do those courses have to offer?

01:08:08
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, yeah, we've talked a little bit about Commonwealth already, but but Woodlands, you know, I can't remember if you got out there to Woodlands you did, Yeah, yeah, So Woodlands is you know, probably there's a little bit of difference in the vegetation there. It's on maybe a slightly different They call them evc's. It's like Ecological Vegetation Community, I think is the name for it.

01:08:33
Speaker 1: It's a little south of of like the classic sand belt. It's south of bit, yeah, a little bit. It's like it's sort of between Royal Melbourne and Peninsula Kingwood. Right, Peninsula Things was about thirty minutes south of Victorian and Royal Melbourne and then you know Woodlands is sort of in between.

01:08:51
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so I mean architecturally it's I mean any photo you'd see the place looks distinctively sand Belt. You know, it's got the those flared up bunkers with flash sand. It's got the fescu surrounds just like a royal Melbourne, so you can bounce the ball in really well. Green's always firm. We're actually doing a little bit of work there with the vegetation because it got a little bit crowded with tea tree over the years. But yeah, superb golf course. The fourth hole is one of the best courses on the sand Belt. One of the quirkiest golf holes on the sand Belt. Actually just really yeah a really.

01:09:31
Speaker 1: With the green, that's like you can't hit it from any angle.

01:09:35
Speaker 3: I played there about a week ago. I hit a pin high left to a front pin which is about six paces wide and stands about five feet above all the surrounds, So to actually hit the green from that position pin high left was impossible. I putted it and putted it straight over the top of the pin and went straight to the other side, and I was basically playing ping pong from each started the green. So crazy, crazy hole, Like if you built it today, I just don't think you could. I think you would you know that would blow it up.

01:10:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly at like modern green speeds. You know, this was it was built, you know, a long time ago, but it's so interesting because it has survived in.

01:10:18
Speaker 3: The correct So the woodland's just to see the fourth almost but some great short falls there as well. You didn't bring up Spring Valley, but that's probably worth seeing. They're going through like a bit of a green restoration project. But that's got some really good good holes on some great land, very sort of Kingston Heathy sort of type type land. Just you know, it doesn't quite have the budget, and there are a couple holes down you know in more of a wetland area that aren't quite as good, but some really really good stuff there. We talked about Sandy.

01:10:54
Speaker 1: That's Sandy belongs to this group, and.

01:10:57
Speaker 3: Yeah, even like there's might be a little bit harder to get on. But if you're counting Long Island as well, which I haven't seen yet obviously that going through a major renovation at the moment. But if we're counting Long Island, then just another five minutes south is a little place called Frankston Golf Club which has elements of sand belt to it. It's really difficult to get a good history on the place. You know, I've heard stories that Russell did it, but it's got some really cool, cool elements and it's one of the coolest club models I think I've ever seen. It's a little bit like the Dunes Club, Like there's like two staff, there's an un you know, there's no one manning the clubhouse, so you just put your beers in the fridge when you get there. There's a barbecue outdoor barbecue set that you know, you cook your meal on. And the rule of the club is to leave it as you found it, so you know, everyone does their own dishes and and you know, goes out and plays golf and like I said, leave it as you found it. And it's sort of the model as well the club in general. You know, they basically not touch the golf course for I guess almost one hundred years. So in a way, the vegetation, if you leave it as you found it, you're not quite leaving the vegetation as you found it, because it grows. But outside of just clearing a little bit of vegetation, it's it's a really you know, it's super charming place and certainly if you can get on there. I'd recommend trying.

01:12:25
Speaker 1: You're barely even supposed to talk about Frankston as the impression that I got when I was in Melbourne. Yeah, yeah, it's a combination of very private but also, as you say, very casual, where it's you know, it's just the kind of club you'd want to be part of because it's so efficient and you know, it's how how golf clubs used to be, without all the without all the amenities, and so yeah, that's a I'm glad you mentioned that one. Yeah, I love Woodlands. I think I mean, Woodlands is so cool because I mean, the architecture is a little bit different, Like the way the greens are designed is a little bit different than the rest of the sand Belt courses. It's a little more modern, little more mid century around the greens where you can where you can see the artificiality a bit, but not necessarily in a bad way. It's it's it's just a different style. And I think the way that the greens play is is very fun and interesting as well. And then it's it's more it's just more tried. It's more enclosed. The holes are are more Yeah, enclosed. Is the is the word. And and so there's there's not this feeling of you know, open heathland as much as some other courses. Uh, but it's very beautiful and and the combination of the forest and the underlying vegetation is very very pretty and I was impressed by it. I thought it was definitely worth worth visiting Woodlands is Uh. That was one of my most fun days on the trip. All right. So another question from from Tim Shermer. He asks about handling kind of travel within Melbourne, within Australia. I'm going to assume, like like I would, that you would recommend renting a car while you're there.

01:14:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean you could probably you could probably stay in the sand Belt region if you're only doing the sand Belt courses and just uber most of the courses are near train line, so you could even train it from closer to town if that was something you'd be interested in doing. But yeah, renting a car is pretty easy. It's it's a city set up for driving mostly so and if you if you're.

01:14:44
Speaker 1: You're going to go to the Mornington Peninsula, correct.

01:14:47
Speaker 3: It's a must really yeah.

01:14:50
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, the courses, it's really appealing the idea of not renting a car if you're going to go to the sand Belt, because the sand Belt courses themselves are obviously extremely close together. When you look at them on a map, you're like, oh my god, all these all these places are right next door to each other. But but yes, if you want to go to St. Andrew's Beach, that's that's a bit of a drive, and uh yeah, you just have to get used to if you're coming from the US, get used to driving on on the other side of the road, which which I was not used to on the on the first day that I think you followed behind me when we were going to a restaurant and I was struggling to find the right lane to be in.

01:15:29
Speaker 3: It's when you turn like I go to the US obviously a lot now and I just exactly it's like a switch and I'm fine, But yeah, that first day, you've got to be concentrated. You can't be distracted. If you take a phone call or listen to a podcast while you're trying to drive, you'll do something wrong.

01:15:46
Speaker 1: This is my number one piece of advice to any Americans going to Australia or the UK for that matter, is that when you're driving. Don't put people in danger, just like focus on driving only because that it will take all of your attention to navigate it at first unless you're experienced with it. So in terms of accommodations, I stayed at Victoria Golf Club, and I believe they're shutting down their accommodation, that that's no longer going to be available. If you were traveling to Melbourne, where would you stay. Would you stay in the city or would you try to be closer to the courses?

01:16:26
Speaker 3: I think I mean, say you were doing the trip where you play some morning to Peninsula golf courses as well. You could maybe stay a day or two in the city at the front end, and then maybe you moved to Peninsula. Kingswood has some good accommodation. You could stay there and you could almost stay there to do the morning to Poiniculal courses because it's only about thirty forty minutes from there to drive down there, and it's great accommodation. There's two courses at PK, so you know you could stay and play there a bunch, but then you still be able to commute both ways potentially, but there's enough stuff to see in the city as well. Just Melbourne's a cool town. Downtown Melbourne as Lamanya would call it, which it actually is a proper downtown.

01:17:15
Speaker 1: You're referring to when my colleague Joseph Lamania was in Northern Ireland and referred to downtown Port Rush and it went crazy on TikTok.

01:17:23
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, But the Melbourne CBD as we call it, we don't say downtown.

01:17:28
Speaker 1: Melbourne does have a legitimate downtown's it does. This is a way of like a metro area of five million people or.

01:17:35
Speaker 3: So, correct, correct, So it's worth there's some things worth doing in the Melbourne CVD.

01:17:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and we'll talk about some of those in a minute. The Peninsula Kingswood accommodation is kind of the new kid on the block, right The Victoria. You know, rooms that I stayed in were perfect for what I was looking for because they are very basic, bare bones. There was a laundry machine, you know, just like I. It was all I needed and really nothing more. Peninsula Kingswood is going is going to be a little more upscale in terms of its accommodation, and this is where international golf travel is going, right that the places that offer the more bare bones accommodations are are are are going to have a hard time competing with the places that are offering more luxury. And I think that's the direction the Peninsula Kingswood is going in. So you know, it's pricey, but I you're right that that location, if you're doing a Melbourne golf trip and you're gonna sample some of the Mornington courses and then the sand Belt courses is basically the perfect location because you're right in between the two. The other option, I guess would be to find a cool place in Melbourne to stay play the sand Belt courses, then relocate out to Portsy or something like that. They have a nice, very lovely hotel out at Portsy that you could stay and then you know, get to all the more Rington of course, is fairly efficiently. Yeah.

01:19:02
Speaker 3: Yeah, Sorrento options as well. Yeah, so Sorrento's got some good accommodation options down there. That's sort of the bigger town on the morning to Peninsula. That's quite nice. I think they've gotten Intercontinental, which is, like, you know, obviously a bit more high end.

01:19:15
Speaker 1: So but yeah, Sorrento's a high end kind of town, isn't it.

01:19:19
Speaker 3: It is a little bit yeah yeah, Portsier almost is as well, but it's a little bit smaller, just doesn't quite have everything.

01:19:26
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, okay. Something that Melbourne is famous for is coffee. So again, you've been all around the world, You've had American coffee, which Australians are constantly disparaging, and I understand why what is it about Melbourne coffee? Like, why why do people just take it really seriously in the city?

01:19:51
Speaker 3: I think so, I think. I mean I learned to make coffees. I was working at a golf course driving range, and we make coffees. And even at a golf course, you know, driving range, you know, we were taught really well, like people would come in and teach us how to make coffee. Because if you don't make good coffee in Melbourne, no one will drink your coffee. They'll just buy it somewhere else because it's just so competitive.

01:20:14
Speaker 1: So one of the assistant pros made me a cup of like a flat white at Victoria and just went in and then handed it to me and it was delicious. I was like, where, yeah, where am I? Yeah? This is not golf course coffee.

01:20:29
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just it's part of the culture, and I guess all the golf clubs, like you know, if you drank a coffee at Metropolitan and it was no good, like the members are going to tell the stuff because Melbourne people, I guess now just no coffee. So it's definitely a cultural thing. I barely drink coffee outside of home. I've got a decent home set up, but yeah, so I tend to make a lot of coffee and I enjoy that buying the beans from a local cafe that I know has good been and sort of doing it myself. But yeah, it's just it's just a cultural thing, I think.

01:21:05
Speaker 1: So you don't really know the local spots as much because you make more coffee at home.

01:21:10
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean around the sand Belt there's probably there's there's a little place behind Yari Yarra golf Club called Humble Creatures, and it's pretty humble, but it's they do great food as well, So I mean, if you had to grab a bacon and egg roll before golf. A lot of golf clubs don't really do breakfast, so if you have to grab something before golf, that might be a good spot. There's another place in Saint Kilder friend of mine King Sneith member actually owns. It's called Jerry's Milk Bar. They do some really good food and great coffee too. The place I get beans in Oakley which is near Metropolitans called Coke Terra and that that's that's I love the beans there and they make great coffee. So there's there's definitely, I mean, you almost can't go wrong, like I said, because it's so cultural, like the actual the Top Bend, it's it's pretty flat like there's a lot of good places making good coffee, so I can't really say there's a standout because they're all really good.

01:22:07
Speaker 1: They're all good. Yeah, this is this is I think you told me this and I was just like, all right, I'll just go get coffee anywhere. And uh yeah. Right around the Victoria and Royal Melbourne, there's a place called Fabrica that I was a big fan of. They make really good coffee and then they had excellent lunch offering.

01:22:28
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the thing. The brunch sort of lunch cafe lunch brunch culture pretty strong too. Good good food in those sorts of places for a reasonable price.

01:22:37
Speaker 1: The genre of cafe that there there's a lot of Yeah, I mean, a couple of my favorite things right there, brunch, food and coffee. And then on a kind of one of the main streets by Victoria, there's a there's a place called Tu Bob Snob that I went to a few times that was that was good as well, and so yeah, that that was the coffee was great and you and you basically as an American going in there, sometimes you don't know what to order. It's not really about drip coffee. It's about the espresso based drinks. It's a flat white or yeah, you know something something like that.

01:23:14
Speaker 3: Yeah.

01:23:14
Speaker 1: Yeah. Restaurants scene in Melbourne it's a big I mean, you can't really sum it up. Obviously. Where would you suggest people start looking in turns if they want to find a good restaurant.

01:23:28
Speaker 3: Well, I think if there's one place I would look down as Flinder's Lane in the city. So that's where you've got. There might be fifty restaurants on a laneway, but a couple of the spots I've been to that are really good. You've got a sort of Japanese fusion place called super Normal. Gimlet is another one. A different French, sort of modern French. That's another one. There, but I mean there's I mean, and you can't go wrong there. The Chinchin's another one, another sort of Asian fusion. There's a ton of great restaurants on Flinders Lane, so that's probably the place in the city. And then Chapel Street is a pretty vibrant street in Pran, South Earra, so that's a good spot. Plenty of restaurants there as well, different sort of vibe, very young and hip. I would say you're probably not going to want to go north of town just because maybe not because you won't be staying that side, but Brunswick and Carleton and there's great stuff around those areas as well outside of the city or outside of the city and surrounds if you're wanting something quick after Gulf near the sand Belt, Oakley, which is where I actually live sort of, it's a little bit of a Greek hub, like Melbourne has got a very large Greek population. I think it's like in a city, it's the large is outside of Athens or you know, I don't know what the population of Athens, but there's a ton of Greek people and they're all centered around Oakley. So if you want a great Greek meal, you can't go wrong in Oakley. There's probably fifteen Greek restaurants in a little hub just about two minutes from Metropolitan Golf Club.

01:25:17
Speaker 1: So I do want to great Greek meal. I missed it while I was there. That's yeah, it's too bad.

01:25:25
Speaker 3: I love that post golf if you have to head that way towards.

01:25:29
Speaker 1: Town, okay in Oakley cool? All right. So getting back to more kind of golf focused questions, you know, practical for people who are who are planning a trip to Melbourne and trying to figure out where to play. This is a question from a Friday Golf club member, Jonathan Fuchs, which is the name of a character in Barry as Well, so great great last name. So he's basically asking how ris are the local private clubs to visitors these days? This may have changed within the last few years with with COVID. You know, there there is some accessibility for the top private sam Belk clubs, but it's become more complicated, right I think.

01:26:19
Speaker 3: So, I don't quite know, but I think if you have plenty of notice and you contact like director of golf at insert a golf club named King sneath Metropolitan Raal, Melbourne, I think they're receptive. It's just time of year and play restrictions, so you know, I would say get in, you know, with probably if you can twelve months advanced notice because it is limited, you know, member plays prioritized. But yeah, I think with enough notice, and obviously Saturday tends to be the day of the week where you can't. I think maybe Raal Melbourne might do a little bit because they've got the two courses, but Saturday is it difficult. But any other day, you know, Saturday, if you can arrange it, maybe that's the day to go down to the morning to Peninsula and play one of the public options, or maybe it's Sandy Golf Links. You know, you can work in something like that. But yeah, I think they're still pretty receptive to international player.

01:27:16
Speaker 1: That's kind of what I found. You know, I come from a different perspective then I guess the average traveler to Melbourne would. Because I knew a lot of members of SAMD bell clubs before I went, and so I arranged the rounds through them and very generously people took me out on their courses and the guest rates are much lower than the standard visitor rate would be. But my understanding is that, especially if you're a member of a club and you're being introduced by your pro or have some kind of some kind of letter of introduction, I don't know, then then you should find be able to find a way onto even your Role Melbourne's or your King Heats once you get there. It's an expensive round if you're an unaccompanied guest, but it is definitely possible to play these courses. And I would say playing the West Course at Royal Melbourne is worth it. This is like maybe the greatest golf course in the world. Go ahead and pay that visitor fee. It's it's incredible and you won't regret it. There are also you know, you can time your trip with tournaments that are held at these courses as well, and that's a great way to see Royal Melbourne too, and and so that's something i'd recommend. But you'll, you know, you pointed it out with the Mornington Peninsula courses. You'll find more public courses on the Mornington Peninsula and that's part of what's so appealing about that area. And you can just kind of schedule some time down there as well. You know, as I've said before, you've been all over the world seen a lot of different kinds of golf clubs. What are Australian golf clubs like in terms of their culture?

01:29:01
Speaker 3: So I would say they're actually pretty big, like you know, you've got twelve hundred members or so. With one aspect, I think that an American listener probably wouldn't expect maybe, you know, so they're busy. They're pretty vibrant and busy places. So you know, a Saturday there might be two hundred plus players playing. That tends to be the big club days for most golf courses in Melbourne. But you know, very social, very busy, lots of golf. You know, they're doing fifty thousand plus rounds even at the top clubs. But yeah, yeah, golf culture is definitely you know, pace of play is prioritized at Metro. You know, I don't think I've played in over four and a quarter hours in a comp day, you know, in groups of four with nine minute tea intervals. So people play fast. I think there's a pride of playing fast, particularly those first few groups that go out. They think they try and see how much they can be. The guys behind them, you know, get ten to fifteen minutes ahead of them, But yeah, I think you know, when you come down, make sure you play fast, don't take too long, don't hold up members.

01:30:10
Speaker 1: An ultimate, ultimate thing that you gotta with the pace of that.

01:30:15
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, so that's probably a big aspect. And and people love competition as well, so you know, there's daily competitions on you know, where people are, you know, asking each other what they shot, and that's sort of a big part of the culture as well.

01:30:30
Speaker 1: Is there a good amount of forsomes.

01:30:34
Speaker 3: Not not a ton definitely, not as much as those sort of British clubs that do it a bit more.

01:30:40
Speaker 1: That's my understanding. Clubs like metal competition, right.

01:30:47
Speaker 3: Correct. I think Roll Melbourne has like rules around you know, certain days a week before, certain times it's two balls only, so you might see a little bit more foursomes play because four people can go out and play just two balls. So I think that happens maybe a little bit there. But you know, we have an annual couple annual events at Metropolitan that are foursom's and super fun. But yeah, that's probably about it for Fasome's golf.

01:31:14
Speaker 1: You've mentioned Metropolitan a couple of times, you remember there question from Friday Golf Club member Joshua Ralston, who I think you know may have played at one point. How there was a renovation at Metropolitan by Crafter and Margford, an Australian firm with Neil Crafter, who's a great golf historian. I visited the course with you in the middle of this renovation. Is that work done and if so, how is it looking?

01:31:47
Speaker 3: Yeah? So that finished in The course open in April, so it was a pretty quick build or turn around. They did the front nine last year and then finished the back nine earlier this year. It's all better than well. The course is in really good condition. We just had our club championships a couple of weeks ago and it was in great shape for that. So yeah, the course is definitely back in play and would recommend yeah, if you want to play Metro, now the good time to play it because it's in great shape.

01:32:17
Speaker 1: Also, the firm Ogil V Cocking and mead OCM did work at Huntingdale I believe, which is another great sand Belt club. Is that work done.

01:32:27
Speaker 3: That's opening I believe for the members in December. I don't know when it would be open for visitor.

01:32:34
Speaker 1: Play, but I think so for this coming season.

01:32:36
Speaker 3: Basically, Yeah, there's some discussions you know between Metropolitan and Huntingdale. There's a potential merger on the table and so I think we're getting an early look at it in January potentially. But yeah, that's probably the big hot button item at both clubs at the moment, which is interesting.

01:32:54
Speaker 1: Looking forward to seeing that because that's the only sand belt course that or like top sandbal course. I didn't they didn't really see, so it should be interesting. There's also an ongoing project with OCM at Long Island, which is next door to Peninsula Kingswood, and that's a very creative, ambitious renovation where there are different like alternate routes that are being created around the golf course, holes within holes, courses within courses, and that's a very interesting project as well. You're working out at Woodlands. What's the scope out there?

01:33:29
Speaker 3: Probably more vegetation based at Woodlands, so you know a lot of the I mean it is in that sort of you talked about. It has a great sort of atmosphere playing amongst the woodlands. I guess it's very app name. Yeah, but the coastal tea tree there is pretty well, it's an invasive species actually outside of the strip of coastline right next to the ocean, so and it's you know, it can be useful of a plant in certain areas strategically, but at the end of the day, your ball goes in it, you're probably not seeing it again or you're really struggling to recover out of it. So it's not a great golf plant, I would say, particularly when it matures and gets really bushy. So there's selective sort of pruning of that stuff throughout the course happening and then regenerating heathland because as soon as you take that out, there's a lot of native seed bank left under it. So that's yeah, correct, So that's that we're doing something a little bit similar. So it's almost the reverse though at Yaria, Renaissance Golf Design came through and did all the architectural works and then hired Harley Cruz, myself and Mike Clayton to tackle the revegetation aspects of it. So it's almost like, you know, we're putting a bit more of the sand belt vegetation onto that place and maybe stripping a little bit of the more invasive stuff off of woodlands and certainly not to try and make them feel similar or anything. They're always going to have a distinctive field. But in both cases getting a little bit back to a more natural stite.

01:35:01
Speaker 1: That would be great for year Era. That's that's really the the kind of missing piece there, because what a cool golf course. I really enjoyed Year Era quite a bit, and with some of the you know, regenerated Heathland, I think it would it would bring it together very nicely. So uh. And then finally, so Commonwealth was also a recent project not by you, but by Renaissance Golf Design and Tom Doaks. One of Tom Doaks Experience associates, Brian Slonik, did what I thought was a great project at at Commonwealth, and so that's fairly new, reopened before I visited, and and so that's that's available as well. A lot of the sand Belt courses are are rounding into vintage form, which is very exciting. Last one for you, lucas you you've worked a lot with Mike Clayton and Mike Divrees at Seven Mile Beach in Tasmania. This would be another idea for Melbourne. If somebody goes a little more, has more time, more ability, to travel. It's not that hard to get to Tasmania from Melbourne. It's a lot easier to get there than it is to get there from any anywhere else. And there are some amazing golf courses on Tasmania. Now you have Barn Google Dunes out on the island. On nearby island, there's Cape Wickham and a lot of really cool golf options. Seven Mile Beach is a place that you've been working at quite a bit and it's just opening now, kind of right nearby the Hobart International Airport. How's that project looking and what's the what does the future look like there?

01:36:40
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I think they're looking at opening to public December fourth, So there is there's tea times you can book now basically tea times.

01:36:49
Speaker 1: Yeah.

01:36:50
Speaker 3: I was there on Thursday Friday last week and we actually were the first. It was a Society of Golf Course Australian Golf Course Architects meeting and we're the first people play the full eighteen holes, which is pretty cool, I think. I think Madden, you know a few of the ownership group have played a full eighteen but we were the sort of first I guess non ownership group to play it, and yeah, it's looking really good. They've had constant water challenges throughout the build. That's been the real struggles. So you know, the condition in spots is still not quite right. They're actually closing it down for about three weeks of November to get everything prepped for the opening. So but yeah, I mean the greens are superb. It's just you know, little little little bits of the fairways, you know, maybe aren't fully grown in. But they've got a really secure water source coming online hopefully in December. So yeah, by you know, late summer, it should be really really really good. I think, you know, it's I found it. It was quite fun playing with you know, some golfers of different abilities, and I found it quite a challenge. But the course only had maybe thirty five bunkers, so there's not a lot of challenge, well not a lot of penalty from a bunker's perspective. But I would say keep it out of the maram grass. I think that's that's gonna be the that's right.

01:38:14
Speaker 1: You don't need bunkers. Yeah, when you're yeah.

01:38:16
Speaker 3: So I think, you know, looking at it, there was a few things I was like, okay, we probably need to if we can just get the maram off right off the edge of the fairways as much as possible. So I think there'll be some Like any golf course when it opens, you know, there's bits and pieces that you do, so you know, if you're coming in the first few months of opening, I would say, you know, remember it's a brand new golf course. But I think it's going to blow people away. It's absolutely spectacular what Mike's done with well, what both Mike's but particularly Mike Devrees has done with the greens. I mean, there's some of the most some of the best green complexes I've seen anywhere. It's just unbelievable.

01:38:52
Speaker 1: It's been fun to see him work. He's one of the best green chambers.

01:38:55
Speaker 3: And he is, Yeah, he's he's great and yeah, I mean I spent about eight months down there with him and I didn't I barely got to touch a grain because that was just Mike space. You just leave him, Alind, let him do that thing. So I was watching from fob. It was it was a really cool experience.

01:39:16
Speaker 1: All right, Lucas, that's all the questions I have for you. Thank you so much for your time.

01:39:20
Speaker 3: Thanks Jaron, appreciate it.

01:39:26
Speaker 1: This episode of Designing Golf was produced by Will Balsam. Thank you, Will. Are you enjoying Designing Golf? If so, I can just about guarantee that you would love what we're doing in Friday Egg Golf Club. Now, the latest from Frida Egg Golf Club is that we now have a community discussion forum. So if that's something that you're interested in, check out the Frida Egg dot com slash membership and see everything that comes with a Friday Egg Golf Club subscription slash membership. Lots of fun stuff happening in there. We're building a great community of avid golfers and we would love for you to be a part of it, So check that out. Thank you for listening, and I'll be back again soon with another episode.