Two Championship Golf Courses in California (and a Lovely Muni)

00:00:00
Speaker 1: I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset. When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.

00:00:05
Speaker 2: And when I find my ball in a fried Egg Friday Egg, the dreaded Frida Egg Friday, Frida Egg, bri Egg, Frida Egg Bride Egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off.

00:00:13
Speaker 1: Of the hump.

00:00:35
Speaker 2: All right, Hello and welcome to the Friday Egg Podcast. Today. I am joined by Andy Johnson.

00:00:42
Speaker 1: How you doing, Andy, I'm doing great. Just wonderful to be here on this podcast. You know, such an honor.

00:00:50
Speaker 2: I'm sure it is. You know, this is what you've been dreaming of. So we are here. I'm Garrett Morrison, and we are here to review a trip that we just took to California.

00:01:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, first fried Egg trip in a while for us, as the staff will came along too, and it was wonderful. It was great to be back out and have some semblance of normalcy to the world, and awesome to meet a bunch of people that read and listen at our event and then also see see some golf courses that are going to be on TV and the US Women's Open and the US Open in a couple couple weeks.

00:01:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, so, as you're indicating, the reason we all went out to California was first to host our event, the Boomerang, at Seoul Park Golf Course in Ohio, California, and then we just did kind of a whirlwind media day tour. We went to Olympic Club for the US Women's Open Media Day, except I didn't go to that. You and Will Knights went to that. I went to cover a US Women's Open qualifier at half Moon Bay, which is just down the coast from San Francisco. And then we all flew to San Diego to go to Tory Pines to play the South Course and to have our kind of preview day for the US Open, which is going to take place of course, at the South Course at Tory Pines. And and so we we saw a lot of interesting stuff. We thought there was plenty of substance for discussion there. And I guess, you know, the way we should start is just at the beginning with the Boomerang with soul Park Golf Course. We haven't talked about Soul Park on the podcast yet. I don't think right.

00:02:32
Speaker 1: It's such a wonderful place. I yeah, I had like all this anxiety, you know, you see a place one time, and you've been there so many times, you grew up playing there. But you see a place and I had the same feeling about Losnia, you know, before we hosted the Steam Shovels, Like you get this anxiety. It's like, well, I really love the place, but like, is everybody else really going to love the place? You know you're when you hosted an event and you get I got back there immediately, like, ah, yeah, this place is so good. It is such a fun place. It's just unbelievable setting there in Ohai, California and the mountains. I don't want to tell too many people about Ohi because you know, I want to be a future resident of Ohi, so I don't need everybody driving up real estate prices there.

00:03:19
Speaker 2: But I'm pretty sure the real estate prices have already gotten out of control there.

00:03:24
Speaker 1: But Seul Park is so cool. You have much more experience with it the v you grew up in the general area. You've played the golf course before Gilhan's renovated it in the early two thousands. Tell us a little bit about the transformation.

00:03:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, sure, So Soul Park was built in nineteen sixty two by William F. Bell. Right, so you know Southern California golf course architecture one oh one is distinguishing between the two Bells.

00:03:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, what F stand for? Do you know what the F stand?

00:03:55
Speaker 2: I don't actually even know. Maybe Francis, probably Francis. I really have no idea. Maybe Frederick. But William F. Bell is the son of William P. Bell. William P. Bell is often referred to as Billy Bell Senior, and Billy Bell Senior worked with George Thomas on a number of really well known Southern California golf courses. In fact, the George Thomas Southern California golf courses that you've heard of, Riviera, lacc North, Billy Bell William P. Bell worked on those as well and was kind of the master bunker shaper.

00:04:29
Speaker 1: I also believe that Billy Bell William P. Bell was an integral in aw tilling Hause design of San Francisco Golf Club. So another place with that is lauded for their bunkers.

00:04:43
Speaker 2: And if you have experience at Billy Bell designs in Southern California, you go to San Francisco and you're like, hey man, these don't look like tilling House bunkers. These look like, you know, sort of classic California Billy Bell bunkers. In any case, you know, Billy Bell's a really well regarded regional architec. William F. Bell is his son, And you know, to be honest, you know, I've played a lot of William F. Bell courses. They're all over southern California. Not all of them are super remarkable. I think he was a good router of golf courses, but I'm not going to make any great claims about his abilities as a strategic architect. But in any case, he designed soul Park Golf Course as a municipal course for Vintura County in Ohi, California in nineteen sixty two, and that was the first version of the course that I played. I played it for the first time in the nineties. My dad and I played it a bunch. Even then. I thought this was a pretty special place, just because of its location, a beautiful valley in Ohi, and in the mornings and evenings there's just really an indescribable kind of peaceful loveliness to being in that valley. Well, in any case, soul Park got ravaged by a flood in two thousand and five. Like much of the Central Coast, it really got nailed by this flood. Significant parts of the golf course were destroyed. It was in limbo for a little bit. There was some doubt as to whether the course would survive. But the right kind of manager of a renovation came along and Craig Price, who had been.

00:06:18
Speaker 1: Also Rustic Canyon.

00:06:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you know, he decided to sort of take over the lease for a time and he headed up the renovation. And who did he call but Gil Hanson Jim Wagner who had designed Rustic Canyon alongside Jeff Shackelford a few years before. And Gil Hanson Jim Wagner were well known as good architects at the time, but they didn't have nearly the stature that they have now. Right this is pre Olympic Course, pre.

00:06:46
Speaker 1: A lot of the big name restoration work that you know now they're known for as much, if not more than their original designs, which they have a number of outstanding riginal designs.

00:06:57
Speaker 2: Yeah. So they came in and they did a renovation of soul Park really more or less kept the same routing, but in every other sense transformed the course and they did their work for about three point two million dollars.

00:07:12
Speaker 1: So that's an important number to keep in mind for discussion later in this podcast about.

00:07:19
Speaker 2: We're going to quote some higher numbers for Tory Pines. But you know, even after that renovation, it struggled for a while. You know, it had a series of managers who maybe didn't prioritize the golf course. But in twenty seventeen, Keith Brown came in took over the lease of the golf course and really ever since then, soul Park has been ascending and visiting the course now during our event and seeing the club, the members of the club, many of whom were at our event, how much they love the place, how good of a time they have their The culture of that course is so lively now and it's just wonderful to see.

00:08:01
Speaker 1: I think it starts with the staff too, And I think that's one of the things, is like it's such a welcoming open place where you know, they have all types of golfers, you can bring your dog out there, they're dog friendly, and really it's such a diversion from what I guess you could kind of put this in the municipal golf buckets but it's a lease. Keith Brown manages it on a lease from the city, from the county, from the county, so it's you know, quasi municipal golf. But like it's such a diversion from what you see at so many other municipal facilities that are very unwelcoming, like you try and bring your dog out there, or you try, and you know, they just look for ways to turn golfers away almost and you know that's really most of the municipal golf around me is that way. It's just unbelievable how hard some places make it for you to go out and enjoy the day and enjoy the golf course. And I think that's the thing that they've done so well, is they make it so easy for people to enjoy their time there.

00:09:03
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, And that's something that's been very intentional on the part of Keith Brown. When he came in there, the vibe of the course was more like, here are a set of rules. Make sure you follow these rules. There are signs up everywhere that said, you know you got to address a certain way, don't go here, don't go there. And Keith was really, you know, he knew what he was doing in stripping a lot of that away. And he says like, I don't care if you come out and play in flip flops. I don't care.

00:09:32
Speaker 1: Well, the biggest, the biggest evidence is how the people that play the golf course has changed and how Yeah, they have a large contingent of people that drive an hour and a half from Los Angeles up there to play golf. Like A it's a younger.

00:09:45
Speaker 2: Crowd too, yeah, right that For decades that course has been dominated by the Senior Men's Club and you know, no shade on the Senior Men's Club, but that has been shaken up recently and there is a younger crowd out there right now.

00:09:58
Speaker 1: And I think this is it's just beyond just the golf course, like and we haven't even talked about the design of the course and what that's done. This is just strictly a culture thing and a attitude towards providing a welcoming atmosphere that's done so much of the leg work on this and that's where you know, so many facilities need to look at themselves in the mirror and say is golf the issue or are we the issue? And I think this is a facility that proves like there's plenty of golfers, and you know they're drawing from an hour and a half away. You know there's plenty of golfers within your most cases metro area that you can make this work if you provide a great place to hang out. That's really what it is. Is like, if I'm going to spend five hours somewhere, there aren't many places public or private that I'd rather spend five hours at than Seoul Park with those mountains and just the general attitude at the golf course of being so laid back and welcoming.

00:10:56
Speaker 2: And the food and the drink and the way the manner in which it provided. You know, you mentioned the staff earlier. Keith has really hired some great people and they contribute to the culture of the place as well. But there is a reason that people are driving an hour and a half to come up to this golf course. And it's not just because there's a cool social vibe there. It is because this is a fantastic golf course. What were the things that kind of struck you on this second visit to the course that maybe you didn't notice the first time through.

00:11:29
Speaker 1: The thing The greens are just so fantastic the property in general, Like what's amazing about is the setting around the mountains. I don't think there's too much you know, movement. There's no wild movement like you might see it, say, Lawsonia's got some great movement and great greens, but this place just has some really creative greens. And just how how dynamic the holes are in the in the case of when you change the pin, how much the ideal place is to be shift. You know, you're able to put it over a bunker with a hard slope away and you know, I myself hit it into a place where you know I'm looking at It was the second hole we had the pin kind of upfront left. It's over a bunker with a very severe slope on the back side of the bunker and everything in the green running way. Of course, I hit it just into the left rough off the tee, and I remembered I was sitting there with a wedge, thinking to myself, God, I don't know if I can get this close. I hit a great, great shot and I ended up like eighteen feet away. Yeah, And I was like that that's about as probably close as I could get. But if I had taken on the bunkers gone up the right, I would have had a chance to hit it really close because everything would have been working for me. And I think that's the probably the most memorable aspect of Seoul Park is just how the greens allow it to be so dynamic day to day.

00:12:51
Speaker 2: You almost can't believe how wild some of these greens are. Oh yeah, you just almost can't believe that these existed a municipal course. And just the fact that they've survived since two thousand and five, when there have been members of that course who have objected to certain elements of Hans and Wagner's renovation. You know, I'm just really grateful that those greens are still there.

00:13:15
Speaker 1: You can set that golf course up so tough because of the greens, and then you can also because of the greens, you can set it up so easy. There's great repelling pins and gathering pins on almost every green exactly.

00:13:29
Speaker 2: So yeah, that's that's Soule Park. I would say that, like the Soul Park story is not over yet. You know, I would like to see not too many changes to that golf course. I'd like to see some of the elements that were there in two thousand and five when Hanson Wagner redid the course to be brought back, and you know, there are just a few subtleties that have been lost since then, nothing major, and I'd really like to see not too many more trees added. We did see some new tree plantings out there, and I have to just say that my opinion is that it's fine in terms of trees as it is. There are some beautiful specimen trees out there, some beautiful, you know, distinctive Southern California species. The holes don't need to be framed anymore than they currently are. There doesn't need to be much tree removal, but by the same token, I don't think there needs to be any more tree addition. You know, there's much better views across the golf course now than there were in the nineteen nineties, and that's one of the great things about the current version of the courses that you can really see across several holes at a time, and that's part of what makes being in that valley so inspiring. More trees would limit that visibility across the whole corridors, and I really hope that we don't see too many more trees at it there.

00:14:55
Speaker 1: The mountains are the start. You want to do everything to showcase the tope of mountain. It's such an unbelievable setting for a golf course.

00:15:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, So we had a great event there. It was really fun.

00:15:07
Speaker 1: Talking about next year already there'll be a second boomerang. So yes, it was awesome, thanks to everybody that came out and it was such a fun time.

00:15:17
Speaker 2: So the morning after the boomerang, we drove up to San Francisco and the next morning you and Will Knights went out to Olympic Club and I went down to Half Moon Bay to cover a qualifier. But why don't we talk about Olympic Club. This is going to be the venue of the US Women's.

00:15:36
Speaker 1: Open, obviously an iconic championship venue. They've had, I think ten USGA championships. Never had a women's US Open, which is obviously the big draw. And you know some of the most famous US Opens that Jack Fleck US Open obviously happened there. Billy Casper beating Arnold Palmer happened there. The Birdman and webson since uh, congratulatory ceremony obvious.

00:16:03
Speaker 2: Enjoy the jail was that the one?

00:16:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's obviously a jungle bird. Jungle bird, but uh, lots of moments. I think going in, I I had been and played the Cliffs Course at a little par three course that's right on the ocean, the cliffs of the Ocean. I hadn't had that much desire to play the big course, you know, just from things I had seen and read, I wasn't that excited, But I was, actually I was pleasantly surprised. Obviously, they've they've hired Gil Hants and Jim Wagner to do a restoration, renovation of the ocean course, restoration of the lake course, which the lake course is the one that hosts the US Women's Open and all the US Opens, and so the golf course is going to get changed in the next I think seven years that I think there are the plans to do the Ocean course first. So having said like I was, isn't that excited to see it, after seeing it was I was actually really excited for the US Women's Open, just because you know, there's a reason that it hosts a lot of US Opens. It makes you hit a lot of different golf shots. That's the thing that I took away from it is that it's not a golf course where you can go there and be able to play one type of shot and really thrive. I think it's going to fit the person that knows how to play a lot of different shots, because I think when you surmise what we love to see in tournament golf, we love to see a golf course that's got a lot of natural features, so that the ground moves a lot of different ways and players are faced with a lot of different lies, and coupled with that, they have to deal with elevation changes up and down, and it becomes a little bit less of your kind of stock driving range shot. It's not a simulation. It's not a track man type course in that manner like you have to go out there and you have to be able to hit a lot of different types of golf shots. Ball below your feet, uphill, ball above your feet downhill. With that, obviously, it's known a ton for it's candid fairways. You're gonna hear reverse camber a lot, which means the fairway slopes away from the way it goes. So say you have a dog like left, the faraway slopes to the right. Say you have a dog like right, the faraway slopes to the left. And what that does, the fairways are very narrow out there, like extremely narrow. It's hard to hit the faraways out there. But what it does is it makes those fairways even narrower because like functionally, if that fairway sloping left to right, if you landed on the right half, then you're off the faraway. There's no way you're gonna stay on it unless you hit something that draws into that hill or in that case, or fades into the hill in the other case. So I think what I came away with you have to hit a lot of different shots. And then with it being the Women's Open, you know, the best women in the world are so much more accurate than the best men in the world. I think the leader in driving accuracy on the LPGA Tour regularly clocks in at about like eighty five percent, which is absolutely mind boggling. But I think the narrowness I almost wish that the US Men's Open setup, like with twenty yard fairways, was always like that actually fits the women's game much better than it does the men's game, because these women are so precise and so accurate that they can feasibly go out and hit twelve twenty five yard twenty yard fairways in a round of golf, because they're so damn good, and I think that's going to be what's so fun to watch is that these women battling these different side hills and seeing them who's really on and hitting the left side of a fairway that keeps the ball in the fairway on the seventeenth hole out there, for one example. But that's why I came away with like and then the greens are The greens are like your old school greens, which work really well with you know, they just kind of like modestly slope for the most part in different directions. But that works really well when you've got really wild ground because it becomes harder and harder to hit it into those right positions to get yourself easy two putts.

00:20:25
Speaker 2: Now, So to elaborate on reverse camber, which you talked about earlier, the fairway sloping in the opposite direction that the dog leg turns. One thing that that does is it offers a double penalty for not kind of keeping close to the corner of the dog leg or being able to shape your shot into the slope, because if you leave it on the low side of the fairway, then not only will you have a longer shot into the green, but it will be way more uphill. Yes, you know, so the advance to staying up on the high side of the reverse camber and the inside of the dog leg at Olympic Club is doubly important. A shot from the bottom of one of those hills up to the green versus a shot from the high side of the slope and the inside of the dog leg, those are two really really different golf shots.

00:21:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, drastically different.

00:21:24
Speaker 2: So that's one way that driving accuracy can be very much prioritized. And I think there's a reason that Web Simpson won there in twenty twelve. This is one of the Olympic Club is an example of one of the few ways that truly driving accuracy can be prioritized by a golf course. Now, is it the most exciting architectural concept in the world, reverse camber over and over and over for eighteen holes. Maybe not, but it certainly, you know, serves its purpose for championship golf.

00:21:54
Speaker 1: Yeah. The one other thing that we didn't talk about was the wind, Like it can get windy other I mean, it's really close to the ocean and it can get windy and it's a cold wind. It plays so long.

00:22:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, so long, heavy air in San Francisco.

00:22:10
Speaker 1: Going from OHI to there and hitting t shots like they were going like forty fifty yards shorter, it just was nuts. That's something that'll be really interesting to watch is how they set the golf course up, the distance they set it up, because it just functionally plays so long and it's a it's a really big walk because it's on like a side of the hill. Walking that golf course for four rounds, it's not easy, Like you need to be in good shape to play a major championship at that golf course because you know, whether you feel it or not, if your legs go in the golf swing, it really impacts how you hit the ball. The one thing I think, just in general speaking about Olympic Club, what it does is it makes you really uncomfortable, just as a player like you just I found myself really like not feeling good on approach shots because the targets are really small and you're hitting from uncomfortable lies.

00:23:10
Speaker 2: See.

00:23:10
Speaker 1: It forces you into this state of discomfort. But the only way to really succeed in playing it is to swing really freely, and that's the test above anything else, is getting yourself to swing in that level of comfort where you let everything go. When you're constantly in a state of discomfort because of what the course is doing, you don't see the type of movement in the type of shots out there every day.

00:23:40
Speaker 2: Now. One of the knocks on Olympic Club is that the holes aren't super different from each other. That you have some kind of similar looks on that golf course and after you play it, they kind of blend together in your memory. But having played it, are there holes that stick out to you right now as like, oh, that's kind of a cool hole. I'm looking for to seeing how the best women in the world are going to play that one.

00:24:04
Speaker 1: The first hole is an outstanding golf hole. You know, you just tee off. It's kind of like a blind t shot, a semi blind t shot up a ridge and then you're just treated to this unbelievable reveal. You can see the Golden gate bridge, the ocean, the mountains and the backdrop as and then plays downhill and US opens. They played as a par four. I'm not sure what they're going to do for the Women's Open. But you know it takes two great shots to get it on that green and two and everything around the green kind of sneaks up on you. You've got it plays along the road, the Skyway Boulevard that's like a very busy road in San Francisco, so like if you hit it left, like you're out of bountains, and then the green's really subtle. It kind of runs away a little bit. You come up over the ridge and then everything's downhill, so like the green, it's hard to read because the whole land's running away, but it's got that kind of optical illusion going where you can't hell if it's uphill downhill, and it's got some nice little small contours in it. The other one that I really liked was the seventeenth, and I know it's polarizing. It's a par five for members. I'm not sure if it'll be a par four or par five for the Women's Open. Doesn't really matter if it's a par four or par five. It plays up this hill and it's got maybe the most aggressive slope fairway on the golf course. It slopes from left to right and then it plays up this seemingly feels like a mountain to a tiny, tiny green that's heavily protected, and it's just to hit that green into it requires two perfect shots. And then when you get on the green, it's just a simple, very sloped back to front green, the quintessential old school back to front green with a lot of left to right tilt. Just like the ground. It's just a very natural golf hole outside of the bunkers, which we can talk about the bunkers later.

00:26:00
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, why don't we get into what might change about the Olympic Club. You mentioned that Gil Hans is going to come in. He was hired to do a master plan. I'm not exactly sure when the work is going to be done, but it seems like the club is open to a pretty ambitious transformation of its golf facilities. But you know, I don't know if we have any information right now about what the hands firm has in its sights for the Olympic Club. But just going around there yourself, if you were tasked with a master plan, what would you focus on?

00:26:36
Speaker 1: First and foremost, The bunkers all have to go and get redone. Yeah, I know that they did a renovation of them in twenty sixteen, and it's arguably some of the worst work I've ever seen in my life. They're extraordinarily on natural. They're dangerous too. There's no good entry points into them, And I think about that, how does somebody that's a little bit old or walk into these bunkers? Sometimes I was like, God, I don't don't even know where to go into this thing.

00:27:01
Speaker 2: Well, describe them a little, yeah, pick, let me picture them.

00:27:04
Speaker 1: They're built where they have these like extreme vertical faces, like they're deep. They'll be ten feet deep, but the ten foot rise comes with a base of two feet. It rises over so like it just goes straight up in the air. It is crazy. I've never seen anything like it.

00:27:23
Speaker 2: It's all sand too, right, Yeah, it's not like revetting. This is sand. That's vertical wall of sand.

00:27:30
Speaker 1: They're kind of built up on the sides too, so like you can't come into the side, so all the balls kind of go down to the same spot. It's gonna be I mean, you go in those bunkers, it's gonna be hard. It also is a blinding white sand that like it's hard to even open your eyes if you're not wearing sunglasses. But I mean they're extremely penal bunkers, which I think is what the vision was for them. We want to have really deep bunkers. The problem is the execution, the aesthetics and how they play isn't good. That's the first thing that has to go. But in general, I'd like to see it with more width. Shocking, I know. I say this about everywhere. It does get a tad bit redundant, and I think some of the redundancy comes from just some of the natural features in the ground being buried and rough. Yeah, Like by just widening it out to what the original corridors would be and then also taking to task some of the tree planting that occurred, you'd get a much more varied golf course.

00:28:30
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, I mean a few points about with at the Olympic Club, for one thing, the corridors themselves, Like there's been some tree removal at Olympic Club in recent years. Yes, the corridors themselves are not super narrow anymore. There's a lot of trees out there, there's trees between every hole. But what makes it narrow is that there's a ton of maintained lush rough out there, just an absolute ton of it, and so I'd have to think that Hans is at least going to want to put more short grass out there.

00:29:02
Speaker 1: Whether they get there or not.

00:29:04
Speaker 2: Who knows, we'll see. Yeah, I mean, the membership is probably going to heavily prioritize championship difficulty.

00:29:11
Speaker 1: I mean they got a ton of like they have PGAs and Women's PGAs and Ryder Cups coming up. So like if the course we're going to see a ton on national television, this is just gonna be the first event that we see it. And who knows what, you know, how many iterations of the golf course there'll be before everything's done.

00:29:31
Speaker 2: Well, we'll definitely get to track its progress. But you know two arguments that I'd make for more short grass at the Olympic Club. One, if you go back to the thirties aerials, and there's a great i think nineteen thirty eight geographic survey that includes all of San Francisco including the Olympic Club, and what you see is a very wide golf course, a golf course with a lot of apparently newly planted trees. You see that in the aerial, but the short grass on that course was extensive. Two, the challenge at the Olympic Club is what we talked about. It's the cant of the fairways as it relates to the shape of the holes and the smallness of the greens. If you put more short grass out there, all that's gonna do is it's gonna make misses worse.

00:30:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, they just go further away.

00:30:16
Speaker 2: They're gonna have more room to roll. And you know, thinking about the slope out there on some of those fairways, if that's all short grass and you miss on the low side, you're way out of position. And so I think the argument has to be that more short grass is going to mean that bad shots are worse.

00:30:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's their identity.

00:30:38
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:30:39
Speaker 1: If you put eight inch rough on the backs of severely sloped greens, all it does is it stops balls from going further away and go When the ball goes further away, it becomes a harder and harder shot, like if everything stops in the same place, like you're what you're doing is you're limiting the variability of shots, like you're saving bad shots from get worse. In concert with that, you're muting the good shots because the bad shots, all of a sudden aren't as far away as they should be. If you have a slope green, your standard back to front slope green, that rough behind it shouldn't be seven inches long stopping the ball like it should be cut shorter. It doesn't have to be fair away, but cut it two inches so the ball bounds away, because a pro with a twenty yard chip is going to do a lot worse than a pro with a five yard chip from a really tough lie because when there's the fear of the ball going further away. We saw this with Shennakock. I mean, Shennakok was in player's heads so badly when they saw some balls rolling back down or going over. What ends up happening is that pressure is pushed to the second shot, and then the pressure of the second shot is pushed back to the tee. And that's what happens is everything becomes more magnified when there becomes fear because if I miss long here, I'm dead sudden, then they can't aim at that back left flag. You know, distance control all of a sudden is like a good distance control. Players like well need to be five yards short, whether consciously or subconsciously, and they started coming up five yards short. It just bumps up proximity to the whole, Like your targets become different when you have fear of missus left, right and short and you know there's nothing catching it.

00:32:26
Speaker 2: So, you know, Olympic Club, you know there's some potential there. But part part of my takeaway from what you're saying is that there's a lot of cool stuff out there, you know. I think Olympic Club often often is used as exhibit A and kind of a boring championship golf course, but there is some potential there.

00:32:44
Speaker 1: Oh. Now that's I came away way more excited about the tournament than I was going in. I expected to not really care for Olympic Club. But there's a lot of stuff I really love out there. And the other thing is like, in this is going to be something that we talk about, I'm sure with Tory is like you can't buy history. History is a great thing. With championship golf courses is sometimes a great thing. I think in the Olympics case, like history is really cool there. There's a lot of great championships, you know, in Tori's case, one of the greatest championships that might end up being like a curse for the golf course.

00:33:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, let's get to tory.

00:33:24
Speaker 1: I mean, we got to hear about half the veins.

00:33:29
Speaker 2: There's not much to say about.

00:33:30
Speaker 1: How you're gonna have a You're gonna have a future podcast on covering that.

00:33:34
Speaker 2: I'm going to tell the story of what happened in this qualifier in a Friday Stories episode, and I'll do my best to portray how exciting the qualifier was. The three top finishers get births in the US Women's Open at Olympic Club at the beginning of the day. The group I was following was Julie Inkster, who is sixty years old and was trying to qualify for the Women's Open. Two times, two time winner, right, you know, seven time major champion. Julie Inkster shows up and is paired with a couple of teenagers. You know, I mean, just you know, what is a better representation of what's great about golf than a sixty year old legend being paired with two kids who weren't even alive the last time she won a US Women's Open. You know, they hadn't been born yet. But that was that was a really cool event, and I was just thrilled to get to see some of those players. Another player that I followed was Lucy Lee, who was a well known junior. In fact qualified for the US Women's Open years ago as a twelve year old out of Half Moon Bay. She's now eighteen and her iron shots make that sound, you know that sound when you hear it, And if she starts making putts then she can go really low. So yeah, cool event. And then from there, from the San Francisco area, we went down to Tory Pines to San Diego for the US Open Media Day. The US Open this year is held at the South Course at Tory Pines, the annual host of the Farmers Insurance Open. People are really familiar with this golf course.

00:35:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, one of the most one of the most popular golf courses in America, does tons of rounds, a municipal facility. Everything about Tory Pines I love from, you know, the atmosphere, the culture around municipal golf, the local culture of municipal golf. The setting is one of the most spectacular settings for golf course in America. Yeah, you know, it's in the top of the top of in terms of setting, in terms of some of the architectural work, it just falls short. I think you go there. They obviously had one of the most iconic US Opens in recent history and history with Tiger winning on a broken leg in that eighteen hole playoff over Rocko Media, which you will hear about quite a bit.

00:35:58
Speaker 2: You'll hear the catchphrase is and all that from the telecast, which are immediately recognizable. Obviously an iconic US Open, and that US Open was so great that we're going to see some more majors at Tory Pines.

00:36:11
Speaker 1: And at the golf course is very hard. It's hard, but at the end of the day, like it's a cool place. It's an unbelievable place. Tory Pines is such a neat place to visit, but the golf course is so underwhelming from an architectural standpoint, because it could be so great. It's just an important distinction. It's hard. The setting is unbelievable, like anytime you play golf where you stare at the ocean all day. The floor of the experience is very high. But I think we're where sometimes people get frustrated with our but it's just it's underwhelming. It's it's like going on a on a hike in a national park. If they if the National Park hired somebody to build a trail, and the trail missed like all the cool stuff in the National Park, like it just kind of circled the parking lot. Yeah, saw the mountains and waterfall from a distance, but the trail didn't get you up there to really see it and feel it. And I think that's the thing with Tory Pines. It's going to be a hard execution test, like gonna There's gonna be thick rough, it's gonna be firm because it doesn't rain there, and it's gonna be narrow fairways, and it's gonna be the propped up greens with bunker right, bunker left, over and over and over again, which makes it an execution test. It's the same question every hole hit it here, and generally whoever hits the shots the most is going to win. So we're gonna have a great tournament there. We have the best players in the world playing on a very hard golf course. We're gonna have a great tournament there. Where the frustration comes in is how spectacular this site could be, How this could be a golf course that rivals Pebble Beach in terms of magnificence, in terms of you know, this is one of the best sites for golf in America, and you know a lot of the work done, in my opinion by Rhys Jones, is really our architectural malpractice.

00:38:01
Speaker 2: You know.

00:38:02
Speaker 1: The thing about that golf course where where I get most frustrated is that it doesn't have the connection to its natural features. Like it's got these cliffs, it's got the ocean, and it's got this canyon that runs through it. In almost like every hole outside of the first couple, and you know, a couple on the back nine that play on the very top of the property. They all are near a canyon or play along a canyon, but not near the canyon. I've wondered for years if it was an environmental thing, like can we just not get to the canyon? And then the seventeenth hole, finally the fairway gets over to the canyon, and it makes you realize, oh, this is not this isn't an environmental thing. You could put holes on a canyon. And then once you realize that, you're like, God, this is just unbelievable that the canyon, more cases than not, is ignored. Yeah, the whole asked you to play away from one of the greatest natural features on any golf course in America.

00:39:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, okay, so let's put some foundation under this real quick. This is a William F. Bell design nineteen fifty seven. From the aerials I've seen, the holes have always kept their distance from this canyon. It's two canyons really that run up through the golf course. I'll describe the side in a second, just so people know what we mean when we say canyon. The course has been renovated a number of times, but most recently in this century. Rhys Jones has done the work in preparation for professional golf tournaments and for the US Open two thousand and one he did a major renovation of the course, and then in twenty nineteen he did a fourteen million dollar renovation that focused on irrigation, on shifting some bunkers around for strategic changes on certain holes, crush regrassing the callers and approaches, leveling te's bunker, drainage and reshaping. You know, that sounds like a long list of stuff, but they're all fairly minor changes. And when you consider that Gil Hanson Jim Wagner completely transformed Soul Park for a three point two million. Then it starts to become a little bit suspect, and you wonder where that money is going and why it's going where it's going. But in any case, the site spectacular, huge high cliffs, and these canyons that you're talking about are features of the cliff. There's this sheer cliff side above the beach, and then there are these kind of canyons running up through the cliffs, and those with all their vegetation and everything, run up through the golf course and those are really the primary hazard that the holes could use. You know, it's not ocean side cliff that the holes are often running alongside, though there are a couple of holes on the South course that do that, you know, the third hole, the fourth hole. But for the most part, the main natural hazard on this golf course is are these canyons. And they are beautiful and they're also a useful reference point for what the natural landscape looks like. Those canyons show what the vegetation is and what the natural contours of the ground are, and if you compare that to the shaping on the golf course and the colors on the golf course, you start to see why the way the golf course appears right now. It just doesn't have anything to do with that natural landscape you see in the canyons. And then on top of that, there's the factor that you're talking about, where there are these holes that kind of run near the canyon, and you see that they have the potential to use that as a hazard in an interesting way.

00:41:50
Speaker 1: But there's twenty five yards.

00:41:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, there's like twenty five yards of rough between them and sometimes trees, and you're just like, just push that hole up against the and almost instantaneously you have a really good golf hole.

00:42:04
Speaker 1: I compared it to Buddy. He was asking, what do you mean about Tory Pines. I go, yeah, you've played pebble, I said, Imagine if six the par five up the hill along the ocean, and eight the par four that comes back along the ocean on the edge of a cliff. Imagine if you just shifted those fairways thirty yards inland in both cases and that was your golf hole. Like they wouldn't be famous holes. And that's what Tory does on the majority of his holes. There's thirty yards between the canyon and the fairway. And in the architects asking you to play away from the canyon, and they ask you to play towards these bunkers that are in many cases fifty yards away from the natural canyon. When you could, you know, reduce your maintenance costs by having no bunkers and just orienting the hole. So if you play towards the canyon, you get the big reward, and if you play away, you know, it gets harder and harder.

00:43:00
Speaker 2: One thing to get to be more specific about, you know what you're saying about angles, How the holes encourage you to play away from the natural hazards. What kind of determines what the preferred side of a fairway is? Is the orientation of the green?

00:43:12
Speaker 1: Right, So if you drew you if you figured out a good way to look at this is like if you want to look on Google or Earth or look at an aerial photo, look at the green and say, okay, if I was going to approach this green from the perfect angle and draw a line back from that green like where you want to and that's your line that you want to play from.

00:43:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, And on most of the holes, most of the long holes at Tory Pines, the angles right up the middle because the greens have a bunker on the front right side and the front left side and a little opening in the middle, and you're like, Okay, you know, my best chance to kind of get to all parts of this green is to be right in the middle. And so, you know, it's so rare at Tory Pines to see a green that's kind of set on an angle that asks you to approach it from a side of the fairway. The problem I have here and I love the place Tory Pines.

00:44:08
Speaker 1: I mean, the jets and helicopters flying over you all day, the military. It's like, it's just an unbelievable place to spend a day.

00:44:18
Speaker 2: It's amazing. And I enjoyed being out there in perfect weather playing golf, Like I don't discount the joys of that. And I understand if people are listening to this and being like I enjoyed my experience at Tory Pines. What are you guys talking about? I get it. I loved being out there. But the problem is that you know they could have something so much better. Just look at what the natural landscape is and then look at the golf course. They're two totally different things. The golf course is cog Hill slapped on top of an incredible piece of SoCal coast.

00:44:52
Speaker 1: You know, It's like when you walk through an old, historic neighborhood and then you see that one ultra modern house the stick out like a sore thumb, and you think, who the fuck built that? Yeah, the one thing that made me think of when you were talking about how the ideal line is so often the dead center of the fairway right there. It made me think of a conversation I had with Jeff Ogilvie where we talked about tennis, and he said, how fun would it be to watch Andrea Agassi and Pete Sampras play tennis match where they were only allowed to hit it right down the middle? He said, the interest in the game of tennis comes when you take on the risk to play to the line, and that's the way golf should be too. And when you think about Tory Pines, when you take on the risk to play along a canyon, it doesn't get much more thrilling. I firmly believe that there is a potential if they ever chose to redesign the golf course and hire a architect that respected the site and understood strategic golf architecture, that you could build one of the ten to fifteen best golf courses maybe in the country if you use the canyons the proper way and use the ocean cliff the right way.

00:46:07
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now here's the portion of this conversation where I give some credit to what Torrey Pines is doing and how it's been managed. It makes a ton of money, Yes, for a municipal golf course. It turns a profit. I've seen a number of six million dollars per year, and that money goes into a local fund for municipal courses. So the municipal courses of San Diego are funded kind of jointly. And the other municipal golf courses in the city of San Diego are Mission Bay, which is it's a golf course that has lights, haven't I haven't been to this golf course before, but it's in a cool neighborhood. And then there's Balboa Park golf Course, which is the gem. I love this golf course. You know. It's Billy Bell Billy Bell Senior, nineteen twenty one. Such a cool piece of land. That golf course could be wonderful. And if they want to keep Tory Pines the way it is, and just if they're you know, if they think that the current version of the course is what's allowing them to host championships and be popular with tourists and make them money. Okay, great, you know, keep it the way it is. If you can just funnel some of that windfall from the popularity of Tory Pines to Balboa Park and make that the golf course it should be, then then great, it's all justified. The problem is, I haven't we haven't seen that yet.

00:47:26
Speaker 1: Well, the money went back into the court, back into the court.

00:47:29
Speaker 2: Back in They keep spending money on, you know, questionable renovations for Tory Pines that don't seem to make that much of a difference, and they keep and they built a clubhouse at Balboa Park. I think there are plans to build a clubhouse at Mission Bay. Why are we building club Why are we building big clubhouses? The courses are the great asset here, especially when it comes to Balboa Park. Maybe it's eventually going to happen. But the discussion right now in San Diego, though, is more towards closing down golf courses. Mission Bay is particularly part of a debate right now, and there are people who are trying to defend the golf course, but there are a lot of people who want to shut it down Balbo Park. Both of these courses use quite a bit of water, and water is scarce and expensive in San Diego. And so the momentum right now doesn't seem to be towards let's use some of these Tory Pines profits to make these courses better. It seems to be more towards how much can we cut off of these golf courses? What else can we turn these golf courses into? And so you know, if Tory Pines is going to really serve its true highest purpose in San Diego municipal golf to help prop up these other lovely golf facilities that the city has, we haven't seen it yet.

00:48:44
Speaker 1: There's a place, in an opportunity at Tory Pines where it's both where it's an aspirational place that people want to go visit and then they play the golf course and they can't wait to play it over and over and over and over and over again. Like that's where I think, Like everybody says always Tory hates toy It's like no, it's just you know, this could could be really really unbelievably spectacular and it just frankly falls short.

00:49:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm glad. I'm glad that the US Open is going back there. It is a municipal course. It's not like a fake municipal course. This is a real municipal golf course.

00:49:19
Speaker 1: I mean they do ninety they do ninety two thousand rounds a year.

00:49:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, incredible business. Definitely deserves a lot of credit for its culture and for all all of that stuff that is just great about being there.

00:49:34
Speaker 1: The costs are sixty three dollars during the week and seventy eight on the weekend for residents.

00:49:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, see, you know what, that's great.

00:49:41
Speaker 1: The North course is forty four and fifty eight.

00:49:44
Speaker 2: The architectural criticisms are just one part of the story here, but obviously it's it's kind of what we do, so so that's why we focused on it.

00:49:52
Speaker 1: All right, That's that. Then we flew home very tired.

00:49:56
Speaker 2: Yeah. Have you recovered at this point?

00:49:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've getten there you.

00:50:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've had like two nights in a row of like twelve hours of sleep. Yeah, and I think I'm there. But yeah, it was it was a busy trip that obviously a really informative and good one, and I'm looking forward to more.

00:50:12
Speaker 1: I'm pumped. This is gonna be a great year. I'm excited for everything, all the major golf ahead.

00:50:28
Speaker 2: Could you just say a little bit about the events that we have coming up and things that people might be able to sign up for.

00:50:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, we have a ton on the docket. We only have a couple of spots left in a few of them. We've got one at Meadowbrook, which is a great Andy Staples redesign in Detroit. We've got one at Rolling Green, a awesome William Flynn Golden Age course in Philadelphia. I think that that is one of the most slept on, most underrated golf courses in the country. Those two are in June. We've got a Blue Mound Golf country Club in Milwaukee, a Seth Rayner design. That one is just about full. And then we have Davenport Country Club, which is a really nice Charles Alson design just across the Iowa border. It's only about two and a half hours from Chicago. We got a bunch of them. What we want to do, you know, we talk about these golf courses, is we want to provide opportunities for people to go play them and experience them for themselves. And one of the ways that you know, these clubs have been great at providing spots and us a day to have people come see them and experience them and have a full day of fun with other guys, other people that love golf, architecture and golf in general.

00:51:44
Speaker 2: Yeah. All right, well, we're really looking forward to those events, and so the Friday dot Com go to the pro Shop and you can find some information on the events and check them out. Next trip Andy that I'm going on is in June. I'm going to get out to Meadowbrook and so all already already looking forward to that. It should be cool.

00:52:02
Speaker 1: Just start training, I've got I've got to just walk more each day.

00:52:07
Speaker 2: My favorite works.

00:52:09
Speaker 1: Yeah h