Why a Golf Course’s Footprint Is So Important

00:00:00
Speaker 1: One of the most important discussions in golf architecture right now relates to the footprint of a golf course. That is, how much space a course takes up physically and environmentally. Why is this so important, Well, over time, golf course footprints have gotten bigger. One reason for this is that players hit the ball farther than they once did, so a major question that the golf world faces today is whether we need golf course footprints to start getting smaller, and the next major question, of course, is how to do that. To dig into all this, I'm bringing on someone who has studied the historical evolution of golf courses as closely as anyone in the world. That person is George Waters, the manager of USGA Green Section Education, and today George is going to help me understand how golf course footprints have changed over the past one hundred years and what that means for the future of the game. I'm Garret Morrison and this is designing golf, So George, A lot of our conversation here will revolve around the findings of a study that you and the USGA Green Section did a few years ago on how golf courses have evolved through history. This study was part of the USGA's Distance Insights Project, one result of which was the suggested golf ball roll back, which which will take effect later this decade. So what was the basic motive behind analyzing how golf courses have changed over time?

00:01:42
Speaker 2: Oh, Garrett, First of ball, thanks so much for having me on and big fan of the podcast, so congratulations on all that you've done on here. And in terms of the research project, it emerged from the Distance Insights Project that was sort of the impetus Burt for the project. But as we kind of got into it, Okay, so what are the what are the implications of how golf courses change over time in terms of footprint, in terms of their maintainability, in terms of cost to build, and so forth. As we got into it, Yes, we looked at those ways in which distance, looked for ways that which distance might affect how golf courses change. But since we work in the green section, we're very interested in how a lot of things influence the way golf courses change and just what are those trends and what are the changes. What are some ways that we can look at where maintenance and the implications of various types of footprint, not just the entire footprint of the property, but the footprint of different pieces of that property fairway, green acreage, bunker, square footage. How have those changed over time? Where can we draw those connections to golf course maintenance. What are the implications for the future if we look at the trends going forward? So what started as a let's look at how golf courses change and think about how distance might play a role in that grew into let's look at all the different ways that the golf course has changed and really try to think about that total that total package. And thankfully the USJA was happy to let us kind of run with the study a little bit and really see what we could learn. And it was fascinating and it was fun for me, as somebody who's spent a lot of time restoring golf courses, thinking about how golf courses have evolved over time, to really get into the nuts and bolts of it and see a wider range of courses. Also, I mean, we'll get into that, but I spent most of my time in golf course architecture working on higher end courses. Alistairs, Mackenzie designs, you know, these sort of famous really highly regarded projects. We made a very concerted effort through this study to get a handle on what's happening with the average golf course, like the truly average golf course that probably doesn't get necessarily talked about as much, but that's where the majority of golf in the United States and anywhere is really played.

00:04:00
Speaker 1: How did you go about conducting the study. It was a complex study, So there's a lot of detail here, but you know, a basic outline. What was your methodology here?

00:04:12
Speaker 2: Honestly, building the sample was probably the hardest part of the whole thing. So we wanted, like I said, to develop a really good picture of the average golf course. And so we came up with an eighty course random sample, random with an asterisk there that we wanted it to be random, but with certain criteria. So we wanted an even mix of publican private. We wanted an even mix of northeast, Southeast, Central, and west, kind of a regional mix, and we wanted an even distribution of date of opening from the nineteen twenties through the twenty tens. And so you end up with ten courses in each of those buckets, divided over the different regions divided over publican private, it gets and then you need aerial imagery was kind of was the foundation of the analysis, and so we set some criteria for ourselves that we had to have aerial images of the course from when it opened, you know, within fifteen twenty years of when it opened, and then at a fifteen to twenty year cadence throughout its life. And so you end up going through a lot of permutations to build that sample, because you get courses that work that don't have the photos, and you get courses with the photos that don't fit into the buckets. But that was the eighty course sample. We also included, because we had a feeling that there would be differences, We also included a fifteen course what we called it a championship course case study for championship for lack of a better term, but courses that have hosted men's professional golf events USGA championships. Those were not random, but we did our best that we could to kind of spread those out over a decade of opening. So we have some courses from the twenties and thirties all the way up ones that had opened as late as the twenty tens. We split that up by region a little bit. We also divided that up by architect to make sure that we didn't have sort of too much of a stylistic influence. Now that smaller case study fifteen courses is more vulnerable to some variation, a little bit tougher to get sort of statistical significance on things. But so the only trends that we really reported about from that were ones that we really felt confident were, hey, this is definitely happening. We also included a couple of international case studies just to kind of throw a little context in. Those were non random that was just kind of some courses that we were able to get our hands on a good run of aerial images in Japan and Australia. Those were both really interesting, sort of just kind of pieces that went along with it, but not really something that was a big part of the analysis.

00:06:53
Speaker 1: So you had this body of courses that you were looking at, this sample of golf courses mostly randomly generated.

00:07:02
Speaker 2: Yep.

00:07:02
Speaker 1: Now you're looking at at aerial photos of these courses and you know, sometimes Google Earth photos or before Google Earth, you know, whatever aerial photos are available, and you're comparing the golf courses these photos across time and seeing what changed as you're doing this. Certainly you need some sort of working definition for what a golf course footprint is so that you are comparing like to like. So what was the definition of a golf course footprint that you came up with and started working with.

00:07:40
Speaker 2: So we included everything of the physical space of the golf facility, and so that includes all the playing areas of the golf course itself. That includes the clubhouse, the parking lot, the entrance road, the maintenance facility, any paths that were you know, roads and paths and dump areas, things that were you know, clearly attributable to the operation of the golf course. Naturalized areas because anything that requires maintenance, right, so like even if there's big expanses between the holes and their naturalized, those areas are going to require some maintenance. And so that's included in the bucket. If a course had forest, like was sort of wrapped around forest, we included the perimeter of the woods, but not like way into the woods, so kind of like the logical maintained perimeter of it. Any large roads that went through we didn't count. Multi course. We kept everything to eighteen whole courses, so we avoided any sort of multi course complexes, but practice facilities, all of those things that are sort of like maintained elements of a golf facility. And I will give a shout out to the fact that we worked with a number of people who worked in golf course architecture were really the people who did a lot of the legwork, myself, Christine Fraser, Ryan Farrow, of folks that had a good backgrounding course design and studying golf course maps and measuring golf course maps. So there was judgment calls to be made obviously anytime that you're working with aerial photography, so it really helped to have people that had a lot of expertise in that field doing that analysis because it was definitely some pictures are easier to work with than others and shadows, and so we had some fun discussions kind of working through it all and hey, is this a ta is a spunker? It was really an enjoyable process, challenging but.

00:09:31
Speaker 1: Enjoyable, enjoyable for people who like doing this sort of thing. I would imagine, which I don't know, I do, you know, I kind of go through historical areas of golf courses for fun, and I would imagine there are some people out there listening to this who are the same way. So this project is kind of a playpen for that kind of interest.

00:09:52
Speaker 2: I tried not to hog all the really interesting courses for myself. I tried to make sure that if we had some good ones pop up on the random list there, that that we spread them around a little bit. And one thing that you know, we'll get to this as we get further into this conversation, I'm sure, but just to kind of highlight, you know, the footprint. So I've laid out kind of the definition of a spatial footprint that we talked about for this study, the golf course and it's integral components. We mapped all the fareaway areas, greens areas, bunker areas, tea areas within that kind of along with that bigger total footprint. Within the concept of footprint, there's the spatial but then there's also kind of like the input aspect of footprint, right like what is the intensity of maintenance, what are the inputs required to maintain that space? And you know, not all footprints are not all created equal, right, Like the same area with different expectations have two really different implications. And you know, sort of a fun example of that, I think is this wasn't from the study, but just from know life recently and a seminar I did recently. Pasa Temple recently did a you know, a very thorough restoration, and we had Justin Mandon join us at the GCSAA seminar last year for my seminar about golf course renovations, and I showed a side to side photo of the thirteenth pole and you know, they look you know perfect, you know, great replication, great restoration work. And I said, justin you know, it looked exactly the same. But do you think it costs the same to maintain those bunkers today as it did back in nineteen thirty And he obviously aggressively shook his head no, that it's a lot harder to maintain them to today's standards. So that's an example of how the same footprint in very different sets of expectations has very different implications for the sustainability of the game, the inputs, the cost that we pay as golfers, and so on. So there's sort of two types of footprint there. There's the spatial and then there's the input type of footprint.

00:11:58
Speaker 1: As well, right, And that's an important distinction because often when people talk about their carbon footprint, like their personal carbon footprint, it's not like a spatial concept. It's it's more of an abstract concept. How much energy are you using? How many inputs go into the living of your life? And that is sort of what you need to get into when you talk about golf courses ultimately, not just the space they take up.

00:12:24
Speaker 2: And that's where I mean, that's where this is all going, right, Like it's a spatial conversation to then talk about the resource part of it and the cost part of it and the input's part of it. So the two were connected but also sort of slightly different concepts.

00:12:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, space has something to do with the abstract footprint, but it does, it's not the whole of the definition. Okay, So what were the basic findings about golf courses in this study as it relates to the evolution of footprints over time. We'll eventually get to some of the other interesting in the study about the sizes of various golf course features, but let's talk about footprint changes over time.

00:13:07
Speaker 2: First of all, Yeah, I mean the first kind of big broad brush. One that I'd throw at you is newer golf courses are bigger than older golf courses, and that was something that we saw in the eighty core sample and in the Championship course case study. The average size, I've got it on my screen. Here a few numbers so I can remember them. Average acreage footprint in the eighty core sample was one hundred and seventy four acres. But so that's the average courses that open in the twenties, thirties, and forties. If you average those, it's one hundred and fifty two acres, so it's about twenty acres twenty five acres smaller for courses that open in those decades. When you go up to the nineteen nineties through the twenty tens, they're two hundred and sixteen acres on average, So you see big jump later on. It's almost, you know, fifty acres difference, more than fifty acres difference between the oldest ones and the newest ones. So that's a very clear trend. An interesting kind of corollary to that trend is that the primary playing areas, you know, what we would consider sort of tease greens, fairways, bunkers get smaller over that time, and so you've got fairway acreages that are consistently in the forty acre range on those older courses. Newer courses that are developed through the seventies, eighties, nineties, you're in kind of a mid mid twenties type range of a fairway acreage. You've got smaller greens, you've got less square footage devoted to bunkers, and so you're getting bigger footprints and you're getting kind of smaller playing primary playing surfaces through time. There which is an interesting offse that you also see within the courses once they're built. So that's when they're built, Okay, you get a parallel phenomenon or sort of concurrent phenomenon. Once a course is built, its footprint of those primary playing services also tends to shrink, and so courses that are built in the nineteen twenties, thirties and forties that had forty acres of fairway, they're constantly shrinking down their green size fairway acreage button bunker square footage. New courses being built are following that trend, except that they're being newly built, so there isn't as much time for that to happen over time. We saw a little bit of a turnaround on some of that in the absolute most recent ones built in the twenty tens were the last ones built in our study where we started to see fairway acreages creep back up again. But they had been declining up until that point, and then you start to see a little bit of an increase, which we can get to after that, So that's sort of that's kind of one of the key findings is that older courses smaller than newer courses in terms of footprint. Another key finding is that longer courses have a larger footprint, and so there's an interrelationship there between older courses tending to be shorter at the time of construction versus more modern courses that tend to be built longer initially in the first place and built with a larger footprint. So you get that phenomena. If I look at my chart here, courses that were in the seven thousand to seventy five hundred range for back te yardage had an average footprint of two hundred and ten acres sixty five hundred to seven thousand, one hundred and sixty seven one hundred and sixty eight acres of total footprint, so we're talking fifty acres difference on you know, a range of probably about five hundred yards of back te difference, and that goes all the way down courses that are six thousand to sixty five hundred or one hundred and thirty four acres of average footprint in our eighty course sample, so back to yardage and total footprint connected new courses bigger than older courses. Part of that. Another thing that we saw is a growth in practice facility acreage square footage. So that's the range, but that's also sort of related practice facilities. Right. You see short game areas crop up. You see you know a range tea on both ends of the range, and the range get expanded. You see basically a growing interest in practice materializes in these aerial photos over time, where a bunch of the sort of earlier courses some didn't have a practice facility at all or any kind of evident range. You see those get added. You see ones that were there get developed to become larger. Part of that has a distance component to it, obviously, part of it. It just reflects a growing interest in practice too, right, I mean we see that everywhere that there's just a more emphasis placed on it than I think there was in the past. And certainly when you go overseas and you look at any of those courses, any ranges that they have have been retro fit in, you know, two hundred years after the course opened, right, I mean, it just wasn't really a thing back in the day, and then it kind of became one, and golf courses have had to react. That has a footprint implication to it.

00:18:42
Speaker 1: To boil down some of the main historical trends here, what this study found was golf courses have gotten both bigger and smaller, a bigger in footprint and smaller in fair way and green size. How did you go about determining why it was that golf courses in general expanded their footprints? How did you think that issue through in terms of causes?

00:19:12
Speaker 2: You know, I mean number one, I don't believe that we can answer it definitively. You can look for you can look for connections, you can look for correlations, but it's it's something that we left sort of in the hands of the reader. I think a little bit is to say, hey, here's some reasons why, but it's hard to answer definitively. So a few factors to consider. You've got the distance factor is longer courses correlated to being larger courses, So that's that's a part of that overall footprint equation for sure. In addition, you've got something like the growing interest in practice, right, that's a that's a cultural change of how golf facilities are being used, how people what people expect from a golf facility. So that's but that's an element of footprint, right. I mean, we had a number of courses that didn't have practice facilities that added them. That was correlated actually with when we saw the biggest changes in courses. So not very many courses added a practice facility when they didn't have one, usually because they didn't have the space. They didn't have it, they weren't going to be able to find the space. But when we saw really big changes in footprint, it often connected with the addition of a practice facility, the addition of a driving range that wasn't there. So that's a cultural change in footprint. That sort of cultural change from what you expect from a facility, how a facility gets used, goes to parking lots, clubhouses, maintenance facilities growing. I mean, when you look at some of the old old maintenance facilities versus what's you know, kind of considered normal today, that's a big change. Access, access to the maintenance facilities, store bridge for materials, all these different things. Golf courses, golf facilities are used differently than they were in the past, and so that's certainly a driving factor to it. Another one that's an interesting one, and again it's you know, it's hard to place any of the weight on any one thing, and the factors kind of relate to one another. The more modern courses in general tend to be built farther out of town, and we've seen that, you know throughout these past however, many you know, decades of recent golf course development, and once you get farther out of town, there's probably a little less incentive to be that concerned about space, right, I mean, you're out at Sand Valley or wherever you're at, you're not going to be quite as concerned about what your footprint is when the land, you know, the land acreage, isn't it as the same premium When you don't have, you know, an entire neighborhood of dense populated New Jersey surrounding your property, you're kind of out farther out, You've got more room to you know, spread out a little bit more, and so that's definitely a driving factor. There's also probably sort of a fashion element to it as well. And I don't say fashion disparagingly, but I say, you know, there's been an emphasis on with in recent years, which I think is a great one, which I think is a super positive trend that has implications in terms of golf course footprint. For example, there's an emphasis on you know, vouting to really optimize the land. Right well, if you've got this big site and you've got all of these kind of this huge area at your disposal, that may lend itself to you know, fanning out a little bit more and going to look for the you know, what are the best nooks and crannies of that site. When you've got your sort of sand Hills constellation map in front of you and you're kind of thinking through that, if space isn't a super a super pinch point, then yeah, you've got some more room to spread out and go find the best ground that's out there. So I think those are probably some of the key trends that have led to a little bit of a growing footprint overtime.

00:23:25
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00:25:28
Speaker 2: Maintainability, uh is going to be you know, I think number one, and changing maintenance technology. So we look back at old photos of these places and we see kind of the you know, the gang mode ultra wide fairways that were probably mode with a you know, pulled behind wide tractor unit. The evolution of lighter weight fairway mowing equipment that could mow lower starts to be you know, but is it quite as wide and isn't doing quite the same swath. That's a factor. The introduction of irrigation systems, and irrigation systems that start to cost a bunch of money. The more square footage, you know, and that are also limited in wanting head to head coverage, right, Like, there's a spatial component to that of how much they can cover efficiently. So if you add two rows, those only cover so much before you're kind of outside of that irrigated envelope. And so your fairway wants to kind of come in, Your greens kind of want to come in. Expectations going up. So these are all the maintenance factors, right, changing equipment, changing the irrigation systems, higher expectations. I mean, going back to that Pasa Tampo example, those nineteen thirties pictures of Pasa Tampo looks sweet. Would they pass muster today if the golf course was suddenly maintained like that, Like, probably not. There's a much higher standard, a much higher expectation for how those bunkers are going to be presented, how often they're going to be raked, how tidy those edges are going to be kept. All of those things are completely different than they were in that time. So all of those elements kind of put a shrinking pressure on all those features. Bunkers themselves. We didn't tend to see the number of bunkers necessarily decrease that much, but the sand square footage, for sure wanted to decrease over time. That again is a maintainability concern for sure, and that's something that I spent a lot of time sort of undoing. That trend working in golf course restorations was recapturing bunker square footage that had been lost, putting bunkers back in that had been taken out, restoring the complexity the bunkers that had been taken out. I mean they didn't and I mean sometimes that's just kind of wear and tear over time. A lot of it is, you know, we don't you know, you come to a certain point in time where the economics are tough, or hiring's tough, or whatever it is, you just don't want to maintain all these fancy nooks and crannies anymore. And you can understand why somebody's like, hey, I'm just trying to keep this golf course open right now. We got to simplify this a little bit, and that, you know, that's kind of a driving factor behind a bunch of those kind of changes.

00:28:29
Speaker 1: It's interesting how a lot of this stuff happens gradually and without necessarily anybody making a decision about it. You know, golf course installs a new irrigation system sometime in the middle of the twentieth century, and maybe it's even a single row irrigation system. There's going down the center line of each hole. Those irrigation heads only throw out so much water, and all of a sudden, the extent of the irrigation starts to define the width of the corridor. And that's what golfer see. And then you know what's the next common sense move, Well, start to plant some trees where there's not green grass anymore, and and that becomes the new corridor. Similar things happen with bunkers, where you know, they just kind of where over time, and you know, maintenance workers start thinking, I just want to maintain this much of the bunker, and eventually everything just kind of grows in and shrinks. So that's something certainly that the golf course restoration specialists see see all the time and explain some of that evolution that you're talking about.

00:29:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the tree growth one is a good one to point out that gets to be a little bit I mean the example you gave as a good sort of chicken or the egg type situation. I mean, sometimes the trees go in to adapt, you know, kind of frame the new corridor. Sometimes the trees just get planted and they create the new corridor. Because you you planted the trees, but didn't necessarily know you had your open farm field that you went and build this golf course on planted some trees out there at what seemed like a reasonable spacing when it was empty. Well, they grow, they get bigger, and all of a sudden like things have to shrink to fit where the trees got put. And so yeah, trees are a great example of how just sort of these very slow changes can happen, Like you said, a lot of times people may not even necessarily notice, but when you look at it in twenty year increments on an aerial photo, you see how those changes kind of how that time lapse really changes the golf course.

00:30:37
Speaker 1: Well, this discussion here of why the dimensions of golf features like fairways and bunkers and greens shrink, why that happens partly explains what the impact of a larger golf course footprint might be in terms of environment, in terms of cost. Right, so as you expand the area you're maintaining. If that is bigger, then the cost of maintaining that is bigger. So what are some of the some of the biggest effects of having a larger golf course footprint.

00:31:13
Speaker 2: First one I would point to is just the higher cost of building and maintaining the golf course, which and I'm sure golfers won't be happy to hear this, it eventually translates to you paying more to play that golf course. And I will say that it does seem like sometimes that golfers don't necessarily realize that the things that they're asking for. I don't think it necessarily the dots always connect that like, at some point everything that happens on a golf course is going to be paid for by the golfer or is going to lead to the you know, financial misfortunes of the facility, because like, somebody's going to pay for all of these things eventually, and I feel like people don't necessarily realize it when they're asking for it. But yeah, those higher expectations, that bigger footprint, that higher construction costs, I mean that all really needs to be recouped at some point in order for the place to make sense, and so those costs are going to get passed on to golfers, and that's going to be a higher cost to play the game, right. I mean, that's just sort of a factor of it. I Mean. Another one that I'd add there is as golf courses spread out, and this is not necessarily the case, but it certainly there are examples of it. As they spread out, as they tend to kind of occupy more square footage, they get harder to walk, they get harder to get around. It can be slower to play. I mean, there's a reason why links courses, there's a reason why Marion and Kingston Heath in these places. I mean, there's a reason why they built them with the green here and the next tea right over here. Is because it was a walking game. You envisioned that people were going to be walking to play. You envisioned the pace of play probably not to be five and a half hours or whatever. You know, you didn't envision these these the way the modern game. You didn't envision golf carts in these things. So they were built compact because they were meant to be walkable. When you become sort of untethered from that, you end up with some Yeah, I mean it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy, right of like we're gonna spread out because everybody takes carts, and it's like, well, we just spread out, and now everybody's got to take carts, and so that, you know, becomes a potential implication of it. It's not always the case like their courses like sand hills that I mentioned that are eminently walkable. There's plenty of courses that occupy a large footprint that are very walkable, but the door is open to more walkability challenges. I think the bigger that a facility gets, uh and pace of play implications associated with it. I think that they you know, you get the inevitable, so cost more to maintain, cost more to play, cost more build. There's also that sort of you know, the input element of that is that they cost more to maintain. They require more resources. So the cost and the resources to maintain are linked. But yeah, they require more resources, and that's not like necessarily a negative thing. I mean, I don't I don't think that it's you know, I don't I don't necessarily view that as like environmental impact, right, because like there's a lot of environmental positives that come with golf courses, certainly in comparison to other forms of development. So it's not like an environmental impact statement, but to me, it becomes harder to you know, it just it requires more inputs to deliver. You know, at the end of the day, what is the same core function, which is a round of golf. To go and play a round of golf, it now requires more inputs than it would have at the same standards on a small footprint. And so to me, ideally you want to be you know, requiring, as you know, you don't want to use more resources than necessary to deliver the expected experience, and footprint plays a role in that regardless of what your standards are, So you know, totally recognize and respect the fact that different facilities have different standards for how they want their golf courses maintained, regardless of where you're at on that spectrum. The footprint, you know, a larger footprint is going to mean more. It's going to mean more inputs, it's going to be more fuel, it's going to mean more water. All these different things are going to have to be more and then that becomes that translates into more cost that eventually goes on to higher green fees, higher membership dues, whatever it might be. So, I mean those are kind of the the big implications I would say of that foot print getting larger. I'd also say another one, actually, is that issue that I raised of being farther out of town. If footprints are you know, if the core golf course, if the modern golf course requires a larger and larger footprint, that inevitably means that the new golf development has to happen farther away from where most people live. That's not necessarily a negative, right, I mean, like a lot of awesome golf has happened because it was built farther away from where people live, on these incredible properties that just don't exist near town. However, there is an accessibility component to that, and I mean just you know, by accessibility there I mean just the ability of more people to access newer and more golf options. That decreases as as footprints get larger and larger.

00:37:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it has it has further footprint implications in terms of the the cost and and the perhaps environmental impact even of getting golfers there. Right, If you if you can just walk out in your neighborhood and go to a golf course that's right there. That is a very low impact way of going to play golf, whereas driving out to wherever the suburbs or or farther out would would involve more. So this this all gets at what I think is a really interesting paradox in this study, or or uh, maybe not paradox so much as two different, two different imperatives that that seem to be maybe working against each other. And and that is this that you and I and most golf architects least want golf courses to be restored to their original dimensions in terms of fairway with and green size and bunker size, and regain those dimensions that were so great to begin with. At the same time, we do want golf course footprints to shrink. And it would seem that those two, those two movements would be opposed to each other. You want the fairways to be wider, you want the greens to be bigger, but you also want the golf course footprint to be smaller. How do you think through that contradiction? Is there a potential hypocrisy there?

00:38:46
Speaker 2: Even I don't think that there is necessarily a contradiction in that, And I would say, if golf courses out there don't feel like they've got an issue with maintaining the footprint that they have, you know, then I think that that's sort of their prerogative. So I mean that's sort of like step one is dow facilities. You know, are they interested in where their footprint is heading? I would say that the you know, whatever a particular course might say, I would say that when you look at that average course sample, you see the pressure of maintenance cost over time and the implications that they are changing the course based on that, And so I think that's a reality, right. My preference is to see I think there's sort of two ways to go about it. You can look at shrinking footprint physical space. How do you reaaloicate that space? Is it a smaller space? Is it how you break up the space within it? Is it more naturalized areas, more fair away, less rough? For example? Is this a calculation where you could try to take some resources away from one thing move it to another apart from adjusting the the size of the space or the composition of the space. Is the intensity like I talked about, is the intensity and the expectations for what that space, how that space is going to be maintained, And to me, I think it's really sad to think that we're going to shrink bunker square footage, we're going to eliminate bunkers rather than you know, if maintenance costs is the driving force maintenance and construction costs is the driving force behind that, I'd love to see that the expectation on the maintenance come down and the bunker square footage stay the same, right, Like I mean, if if back in you know, whatever time period and you're looking at a set of Mackenzie bunkers and you're trying to decide what to do because they're expensive, I'd sure rather see them presented like they were in Positiampo photos in nineteen thirty than gotten rid of. So I think there's a couple different ways to get at it. So yeah, I don't think that there's a contradiction there. I think it's it's about efficient use of space. And that's another thing is that we should look at golf courses. I think always with an open mind towards is there a better use of this space than what it's currently at. And that's not I would not necessarily be you know, people will jump to you know, be judgmental about original designs and past architecture, and you know, certainly we hear plenty of those conversations. It's you know, I think that you take what it is, okay. There's a lot of factors that go into why a golf course is the way that it is, from an owner, from a you know, development priorities, all these factors. Right, Like, I think it's unfair to always go and blame the you know, an architect for every element of something. And it's like, look, there's constraints on these things, and these people get jobs to deliver a certain result. And also, you know, fashions do change over time. And certainly I believe that there are some things that are that are timeless, that are you know, that are just good always in golf course architecture, room to play, playability for lots of different groups, all those things. But there are fashions that come and go in the game that change how courses are laid out, how the space is allocated. So I don't think we should be shy about, you know, taking a look at golf courses and trying to see, hey is there a better use of this space. Now. That can be a really big change, like totally re routing a golf course, or it can be sort of smaller changes along the lines of even within this layout, does this need to be fair way? Does this need to be irrigated terf? Has nobody gone in this bunker forever and it doesn't really serve any esthetic purpose? Do we need it? So we've got a lot of tools now that can help us analyze those things, that can help us kind of look into those spaces and figure out the best use for them. I mean a neat one that I just heard about. Actually we're working on an article for the Green Section Record, and I know that you're sort of familiar with this work is Ja Blozi's renovations at Poppy Hills there, And like I had to look at the email Ja to get confirmation on some of the things in the media guide there because they had sort of significantly reduced the irrigated turf. They reduced the irrigated turf acreage by like twenty acres, but also expanded the fairway acreage by twenty acres and expanded the fairway with and the one that really kind of like knocked me over was that they did managed to reroute the golf course so that from the sixty five hundred yard tees it was two thousand yards shorter of a walk now than it was at the time. Now it is originally built, it planned for carts. I mean, all the you know, pressure for water in California totally differently. It's just a different situation. But times change, and certainly going back and looking at a course, yeah, you can make some really meaningful changes to footprint within the same you know, sort of footprint if you will.

00:44:15
Speaker 1: And so in that example, you're talking about Poppy Ridge, right, not not Poppy Hills. And no, it's okay, there there are two. They're they're both actually n C g A facilities and so yeah, sorry, their names are quite similar. But well, just to put a finer point on it, if somebody's calling for wider fairways and bigger greens at the same time that they're calling for lower costs and lower environmental impact.

00:44:48
Speaker 2: Is that is that?

00:44:49
Speaker 1: Is that a reasonable ask? And I think what you're describing right now is that there are architectural moves that can be made and maintenance moves that can be made that bring about both of those results.

00:45:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we saw it in I mean, this is where something like the Australian course case study that we did as part of this project was an interesting contrast. I mean, the footprint of those courses was substantially smaller. I mean there were about one hundred and thirty acres on average, and that included that sample Kingston Heath included Victoria. It was a bunch of courses sort of in the state of Victoria and mostly in and around Melbourne, substantially smaller footprints. And I've been to Kingston Heath and certainly, while it's a compact property, it has that seem kind of feel like a Marian has and actually kind of a similar sort of footprint really of yeah, it's compact, but it never feels cramped at all. And so with the right site and with the right sort of you know, thoughts about efficiency, I believe that you can have you know, ample playing corridors, fair ways that are plenty wide enough, greens that offer plenty of interest, and you know, room to move flag around and all these things. I do think that it's possible to do both. I will say that a bunch of what we've seen recently doesn't lead me to believe that there's necessarily a desire to shrink footprint in some of the more modern developments. I mean, you know, the width is desired, and the properties are grand and kind of weave through these, you know, great big expanses, and it's wonderful. I mean, I absolutely love that kind of golf. It doesn't feel like that type of a development has gone out with the goal of keeping footprint under control.

00:46:55
Speaker 1: Or keeping costs under control under control necessarily that that kind of that kind of golf is maybe inevitably going to be expensive for the golfer to experience.

00:47:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's that's another thing to think about also, you know, from this study, but just sort of in general, is that in the grand scheme of things, new course development is a relatively small subset of the total stock of golf courses, right. I mean, like, we we're in a time right now by the most new course development that I've seen since I worked in the golf course industry. But it's still not like a crazy amount of new courses, Like it feels crazy compared to what it was twenty years ago. But the vast majority of golf courses are are.

00:47:42
Speaker 3: In the space that they occupy, and that's kind of where they're going to be, And so it gets to the question really becomes, how do those courses optimize where they're.

00:47:56
Speaker 2: At to kind of meet their goals? And that becomes less of a these kind of big picture changes. I mean, we've seen a ton of renovation lately, but total redesign is not necessarily something that's the vast majority of courses are ever going to get a chance to do, or they might get to do it once in a generation. What are some of the ways that we can help them optimize their footprint relatively affordably within the space that they have and within the maintenance resources that they've got to devote to it.

00:48:32
Speaker 1: So, in relation to the historical evolution of golf course footprints and features, these questions that we've been talking about so far, what are some things that you're you're curious about and that you want to research further? Basically, where is this all going next for you? In terms of your kind of intellectual exploration of the evolution of golf courses.

00:49:00
Speaker 2: I mean, I've become it's been golf course footprint has been something that I've thought a lot about I guess kind of more informally through my design career, and then have been kind of forced to think about more in greater detail and more objectively after coming to the USJ and that started with distance insights and having the opportunity to work on this project through distance insights, and then we've started a water initiative of how to help courses save water. Those things get into like the okay, like really get into the nuts and bolts and the numbers and the details of golf course footprints. Like my next curiosities really are what type of like golf courses as they exist today, how can they optimize that space? And one of my actually one of my biggest frustrations I I would say, is when you look at golf courses and you think, oh, you know, one of the first things I would do to reduce the amount of kind of input footprint is converting irrigated turf maintained turf to naturalized areas. Right, Like, let's just let's shut the water off, let's quit moe in these areas, let's stop putting fertilizer out there. One of my tremendous frustrations is that those areas end up in many cases taking more attention than mon Rough does because the expectations for a naturalized area are in some ways harder to meet than that of Moan Rough. And so that's one area that I'm just I'm fascinated to try to look for, you know that I'd love to see the golf world look for better answers in is hey on the education side of things, like can we get these back into perspective? Because to me, I feel like a naturalized area should be like the lowest input option possible, Like if we're that's what it's meant to be, barring like the you know, the Shinnecock Hills situation, where this is like an integral part of the environment in which the course is in and Okay, we're maintaining this ecosystem out here. That's not most courses, and so most courses are looking for Hey, these are out of play. We don't really need this space to be maintained at the intensity that we have been. What can we do, whether that's trying to save water, whether that's trying to reduce staff time, whatever it might be. And then you hear just kind of constantly that like from Superintendent's like that this is worse, like, this is a this is harder for me to deal with. This takes more staff time to deal with than what I was used to. So I mean, I think a big part of that is starting to look into alternative plant compositions for these areas and what do they really need to be and probably getting away from the sort of fine fescue wispy I mean, that's just not natural to every area, and trying to go that route everywhere has this esthetic in people's minds that just doesn't it's really hard to achieve, that's difficult to maintain, that wants to kind of fall apart and get all weedy in a mess, like are there other plants? Are there? Other options? Are there are different ways to present these kind of out of play areas that are as inexpensive as possible and as playable as possible. So that and obviously it's going to be site specific, right, so that's going to vary everywhere. But can we get into that a little bit better so that that's not a stumbling block to a more efficient golf course footprint. I mean, I can remember I worked with a course in sort of the Los Angeles area that went through a big restoration, and later on sort of took advantage of some turf reduction programs that they had incentivized out in California. There reduced huge areas of maintained turf, saving tons of water and so on. The labor is really expensive in California too, and so superintendent at the time told me he's like, yeah, he's like, these areas have really been a nightmare. The members were asking him to sweep up dry leaves in between the small plants, and these like what were meant to be like air kind of sparse vegetation, desert type areas, and there were raking leaves in between the little bushes, and it's like that kind of thing. I think we really need to get a better handle on the expectations management side, but also on what are the options, what are some ways to really do this effectively, because that is an obstacle to golf courses being more efficient with how they use their space. Another one I think, and this is I'm probably pretty big on expectations management, and I almost feel bad, you know, it almost feels un American to be like, you know, maybe things just don't really need to get better in every single spot like maybe some of these areas could be less well cared forman's you know, if you're having a a true there's these courses that that have essentially an unlimited maintenance budget, or at least a very high maintenance budget, and they've got a standard that they want kept. This is how they want to spend their money. I think that that's great. I think that that's every course's prerogative to do. I think it's wonderful when courses want to invest in their property and their maintenance and all these different things. I think it's great. I think where it really kind of stumbling blocked for me, and I think this is way more places than are well, I don't think it's way more places than are in the category of unlimited resources. And that's why we do these things are the ones that are one in, two and three steps down that don't have those unlimited budgets. But still how these kind of like sky high expectations. And I look back at sort of our experience through that whole COVID pandemic, where at least where I was living at the time in New Jersey, they weren't raking bunkers. All these kind of things had been kind of shut off or scaled way back. They were raking them once in a while. There were no more rakes and bunkers, whatever it might be. Golf was still fun. People played more and Okay, yeah it was a I mean there's a unique set of circumstances, but people kept playing more. And I don't believe that golf was inherently way less fun because maintenance had been scaled back a little bit or kind of refocused and like, okay, hey we're doing greens, teas and fairways right now, and the bunkers are just going to be a little rougher than they were. I think that was fine, and I really think that most people seem to be enjoying it, and so I think that there's room for expectations to change. And I don't think that that's something that the golf world should steer away from and think that hey, it's just always got to be more and better, and I just, yeah, progress is important, but I do also think that there are opportunities to reset expectations. You know, I let we work across the street from a really great example of that, Piner's Number two, I mean the usja's Piner's office were on base literally across the road from it. I was fortunate to work on that restoration project where you saw the irrigated acreage dropped by forty acres and you saw winter overseating that was considered obligatory, like, well, we've got overset every winter. That's the only way we've moved away from that there now because the business demands changed, because people wanted better conditions throughout the years, all these different reasons. They didn't just do it for the sake of saving resources. But it just goes to show that there are opportunities to fundamentally change expectations in ways that make sense from a business standpoint, from a maintenance standpoint, from player demand standpoint, and kind of this whole footprint inputs standpoint as well. Sorry, that was a long answer to that question.

00:57:24
Speaker 1: No, well, it's a complex question, and that is the big nut to crack is golfer expectations because going back to those old photos that you're looking at for these studies, what's the single biggest difference, aside from width and feature sizes and all of that kind of thing, It is the condition of the fairways, the condition of the greens, the condition of the bunkers, and just the extent to which the huge amount of inputs that we're used to now we're simply not necessary to meet golfer expectations back then, and so trying to trying to reset golfer expectations. I mean, I'll leave that up to smarter people than than me, because it's a it's a massive project, but that is the big factor here. If we want to reduce golf course footprints, we've got to reset expectations.

00:58:19
Speaker 2: The challenge is that, you know, none of these none of these things are bad, right, Like it's not like, yeah, big practice facilities awesome, Like it's it's a great thing to have. A short game areas is outstanding to have, and better like all of these things are not negative, Like they're not making anything worse. They're they're you know, in many ways there are improvements. But that kind of tension between better and necessary, I think is one that that I'm kind of continually fascinated by. UH And it's hard to it's hard to come to a good spot with it sometimes, But I do think that there there are opportunities to I don't think that people should underestimate golfer's ability to adapt their expectations and to and to be open to new things. And you know, I realized that there's a lot of people that are going to roll their eyes at that and be like, well, tell that to the golfers at my course. But you know, but we've seen some pretty big changes in golf just you know, in the in the time that I've been working in this industry in terms of you know, these remote courses people going to like the would have been ridiculous to and I people would have thought that that was crazy before it started, and then you look back on it and they're like, yeah, oh yeah, well we'll go play links golf in the middle of nowhere, like absolutely, yeah, so yeah, Pinder's Number two will have a fraction of the of the turf acridge that it once had, and yeah, we'll play the US Open there. I mean, it's there's a lot of change that has happened, and meaningful change is possible. I think you have to believe that. And I don't think that we should ever get stuck in the idea that hey, it's just going to be more expensive and it's just going to take more resources and that's just going to go on forever. Number one, I think that that's, you know, by definition unsustainable. Number two, I think certainly in parts of the country that's going to come to a forcible end, you know, by way of resource availability, by restrictions. That's not everywhere, but certainly some places are going to deal with really acute challenges are going to have to make some changes. But I just think that there's a lot of positives to using less and not using more than you need to, and so I hope that we can take on those difficult questions and I hope that we can make a persuasive case for why it can be smaller footprint and can still be awesome.

01:01:04
Speaker 1: All right, George, thank you for coming on the podcast. Always fun to talk to you, and good luck with the future studies done by the USGA Green Section. There's a lot of good stuff happening there.

01:01:15
Speaker 2: Thanks so much, Garrett.

01:01:24
Speaker 1: This episode of Designing Golf was produced by Will Balsam. Thank you Will. If you enjoyed this discussion with George Waters, this kind of exploration of the history and evolution of golf courses and golf course footprints, I can just about guarantee that you would really like what we're doing. In Fridagg Golf Club, So go to the Fridagg dot com slash membership to see what it's all about. We're building a great community in there. In addition to the exclusive content that you get a lot of which is about golf architecture, course profiles and weekly update it's on golf architecture news and things of that nature, you also get better access to Frida Egg events as well as exclusive access to Friday Egg Golf Club specific events. So a lot of cool stuff going on in FEGC. Check it out. Thank you for listening, and we'll actually be back next week with an episode. We skipped a week for the Open Championship and so we're going to be catching up next week with a cool new episode of Designing Golf. See you then,