Davis Love III & Scot Sherman on TPC Sawgrass, Harbour Town, & More

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. And when I find my ball in a fried Egg.

00:00:07
Speaker 2: Friday egg, the dreaded Frida Egg Friday, Frida Egg.

00:00:11
Speaker 1: Bride Egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the.

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Speaker 3: Welcome back to another edition of the Friday Golf Podcast. I am your host Andy Johnson Today. I am really excited about this one. I think people are going to enjoy this.

00:00:48
Speaker 4: Uh.

00:00:49
Speaker 3: I am joined by Scott Sherman and Davis Love, the third of Love Golf Design, to talk about their design firm.

00:00:57
Speaker 4: Uh.

00:00:57
Speaker 3: This this has been weeks in the making. Coordinating figuring out a time that work for the three of us was was not an easy task. They are so busy, definitely one of the firms on the rise. We're seeing them work at a number of high profile places. Ongoing projects that they have right now are Hazel Teen, TPC Sawgrass, and Harbortown, just to name a couple, big time courses that obviously host major major tournaments, big tournaments, Signature Event and Harbor Town Players and TPC Sawgrass and potential huge tournaments at hazel Teen in the future, so was really excited to chat with them. They have been kind of this firm on the rise and in talk architecture. So before we get to that, I'd love to talk a little bit about the PGA Tour product. I think it's an interesting time obviously with everything going on with the PGA Tour and the Saudi Rae in piff Fun negotiations. That's one piece of it. The other side of it is the golf that's happening on television. Sepstraca won the American Express last week. His final round took three one hundred and thirty nine minutes. That's five hours and thirty nine minutes to complete. Obviously, that was not on that group, it was on the entire tournament. The entire final round took that long. It was just a slow day at a very soft, windless PGA West Venue. This is one of the more benign courses on the PGA Tour conditions wise, it's usually soft, it's usually windless, and for it to take that long to play a round of golf, it was sad. And I mean almost two NFL playoff games occurred in that time period. So with that in mind, the is kind of in the crosshairs, and people will say like, why does it matter, Why, why does it matter that you know they played slow, It's just more golf for us to watch. Well, you're just watching the same amount of golf in more time. And that's not a recipe for any product. Stepstraca was leading by, you know, three four, five shots most of the day. So when you have that type of setup in a tournament, really what you're watching for is is Sepstraca going to hit a loose one? Is he going to hit a shot that gets them into trouble? And when you space that time out between shots longer and longer and longer, these tournaments that have large leads that are you know, hey, we should be talking about what an awesome tournament Sepstraca played. Instead we're talking about the amount of time that it took. Because there's so much time between shots, it makes for a really dull product. Just this morning, Tuesday morning, Justin Thomas, the athletic Gabby Herzig obtained a memo that Justin Thomas wrote to the players of the PGA Tour. He is on a subcommittee the Tournament Fans and Sponsors PAC subcommittee, and his memo to players centers around product and the television product. So he says, the more I think about it, the more I feel us giving more access and an insight can make a world capitalize of difference things such as pre round interviews, mid round interviews, wearing a mic, communication of any equipment, swing changes you're working on with broadcasters, et cetera. I know stepping outside of our comfort zones isn't always easy, Believe me. In the past, I've been the first to say no before things are even done being asked. I've had no interest when someone asks for an interview, mid round or just trying something new. But I also know how much fan fans love those moments, hearing our thought processes, conversations with our caddies, our reactions to the shots, and understanding the ups and downs of competing at the highest level. I've recently done mid round interviews at both the Hero and the Century and found them totally fine and easy. While we may, at least I know I do, think it's not important or interesting, our fans do. Our fan Forward research shows that on course personality is the highest ranking driver of interest for young fans eighteen to thirty four. Getting the younger age group interested in watching our sport could be a huge difference in our popularity. They love the ability opportunity to be able to have that connection to us as fans, and it humanizes us. The more I've watched documentaries and specials on streaming services on other sports, the more I've come to realize the main reason I love them so much is the access they provide and the insight the players are giving me a fan of them and their craft. I had no interest in rooting for certain players, teams, coaches before watching a handful of shows and games, but the way some of them show their cards and how they go about everything makes me an even bigger fan. You know, listen, jt Is. It's just such an interesting one to have this perspective. Justin Thomas, early in his career at the Century Tournament of Champions got in trouble by a hot mic. It cost him to lose sponsors because it's something he said. A derogatory term he used cost him sponsorships. This is a full circle moment here. I think one of the reasons he talked about being saying no before anything like. He's a perfect example of a player that said something that got in trouble, but here he's had this full circle moment. I think it's important to think about golf and the personalities. I spoke with a network exec years ago. He told me, listen, outside of Tiger, there's only two players that matter, that really drive ratings and drive people that otherwise weren't going to watch to watch. It's Rory McElroy and Jordan Speith. The PGA Tour needs to develop more of these players. Rory is in his mid thirties. Jordan Speith has played some of the worst golf of his career. We'll see what comes after his risk surgery. Maybe he'll be back, but he's entering his thirties. Who are the next players that are going to captivate general fans to watch if they are in the mix, and the only way they're going to achieve this is by showing personality. I think the main I would say the main detractors of the PGA Tour and the younger players is that they don't have a lot of personality. They are they're hard to relate to. They are young twenty somethings that play golf for a living, hit balls, and really have gone to the school of don't say anything, and the sponsors are still going to roll in. The Only thing that can happen when you talk is you get in trouble. This new this next wave of players, it is critical to find some stars. I think Scotti Scheffler has become a star, but that's mostly through the play on the course and a run in with the law. That run in with the Law has humanized him, it has made him more popular. But those are That's not something you can depend on.

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Speaker 4: You know.

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Speaker 3: If I would venture to say that if Scotty Scheffler didn't have that run in, the run in with the Law, we'd still be talking about is this the most boring superstar ever? So JT great points. I love this direction, this push from the players. Hopefully it takes hold. I think then it becomes on the broadcast. On the broadcast, partners and the media to ask the right questions and do some interesting things with increased access. So hats off to JT. Another thing that could improve the product, as the open suggested, let's get the pace of play faster. The less time between consequential shots, the better the product is going to be. And that goes to overall pace of play there's no reason that these guys should be out there for more than four and a half hours on a Sunday. All right, let's get to Davis Love the Third and Scott Sherman from Love Design. All right, I am happy to be joined by two parts of Love Golf Design here, Davis and Scott Sherman. I would love to hear about how this partnership kind of came to be and and Davis, how how you got into golf architecture, what what spurred you to get into golf architecture, and then how you you decided to partner up with your brother and Scott and create this new golf architecture firm.

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Speaker 4: Knew it originally.

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Speaker 2: My dad And when we talk, I'm going to say my dad did this, my dad did that. Michael Bamberger, my great friend that helped me write the book, or wrote the book every shot I take? He said, well, how often do you think about your dad since you lost him? I said, well, like every time I hit a golf ball, and he made a better sentence out of it every shot I take. But so my dad when we moved down here, he was a pro Atlantic country club, moved to Sea Island, Sea Island had bought the Island Club across the street to defunct golf course and they were going to fix it up. And my dad got a graph pad and was drawing some of the greens and he was trying to shrink the size of the greens and help them, you know, get this course back out of being defunct. And that that's where I got my start of drawing greens. I'm a terrible artist, but back then and then my dad introduced me to his great friend Bob Spence. They worked for Kimper Sports out of Chicago. Was doing some work, you know, managing some of the Kaiser courses and doing some course construction, and Bob Spence gave me a driver in nineteen eighty five that I used until nineteen ninety seven on the PGA Tour. So Bob not only got me started, and.

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Speaker 3: I almost asked this out off the top, that's the driver you used in the ninety six Las Vegas tournament.

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Speaker 1: Yes, So for Simmon, Yeah, it was.

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Speaker 2: It was a Cleveland Classic that Roger Cleveland made for Bob Spence that was too upright for him and he gave it to me and I went to Q School with that thing and put like three different shafts in it. And so back when another friend of ours from the island, Paul Cally, a landscape architect, was working at Frip Island. They came to him and said, could you build us a golf course. I don't know, I love to play golf, but Davis. I know Davis and he might know somebody. So I got Bob Spence and we started building golf courses and it all came together again because my dad was introducing me to the right people of my whole life, and Bob was a great construction guy. He was a great club manager. So it got us off to a really good start of being aware of who the owners are and who the people that are going to play them.

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Speaker 4: And then after, you know, we worked with.

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Speaker 2: Bob for a long time and we took Paul to Diamante and Cabo and he just stayed. So he's been down there for fifteen years working for Diamante and doing other things. And then then we started working with Scott and of course since then, you know, our business has really blossomed. Scott's been a great asset for us and we've learned a lot from him and we have obviously great success working together.

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Speaker 3: What would you guys say was the big first break for you guys as a firm, as a as a partnership. I you know, obviously I think like the plantation course at Sea Island would stand out just with the tour being there. I know Belmont was pretty early in your in your guys partnership, But what would you guys, what do you guys think was the kind of the big jumping off point had.

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Speaker 4: To be Seapines Atlantic Dunes. Yeah, that's the first time we really worked together. I mean, we knew those those folks separately, and then they brought us together as we were working on some other smaller things. So it would be Atlantic Dunes there at Seapine, yeah, yeah.

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Speaker 2: And there's then there's a relationship that I had with Seapine, Scott had with Sea Pines, and they helped bring us together. And then working with a great owner, you know, working with Matt Goodwin was was great and the collaboration of all of us. Mark and I've always been very cloud with when we do anything, whether it's our foundation running a golf tournament or him, him and I working on the golf course. To me as the player him as the caddy, and and then working with Scott and Seapines that one really and then again it was a renovation of a course that that needed to be fixed up and it was a success. And that one really gave us a lot of credibility. When somebody calls the Goodwin family and says, hey, how did it go with love Golf design, they go, oh, our members love it. You know, we're killing it. Fees her up, rounds are up. That got us a leg up on a lot of the renovations we've done since then.

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Speaker 4: And I think fast forward right now. I believe between us we're working on a seventh project for them. So they've been quite the blessing to us. So it was a great, great start.

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Speaker 3: It's a good a good sign when when customers keep coming back, right sis keep coming back, I you know, And with different design partnerships, it's always interesting to hear kind of how how everybody works together, you know, notoriously the core Crunchhaw partnership. You know, Ben is kind of an editor who comes in and you know, we'll look at a site and and tell him what they what he thinks. When when the when it's really in the in the ground. How do you guys as a firm work together?

00:15:09
Speaker 1: Is it?

00:15:10
Speaker 4: You know?

00:15:10
Speaker 3: There are some firms that divide and conquer, some that are very collaborative on every project. How does it work with love design? And and you know, if what do you what do you guys? I guess appreciate about each other's strength and weaknesses.

00:15:27
Speaker 4: Well, I'll take that one. Uh, We're pretty collaborative. We stick together as a group and make site visits together a lot, you know. And I would say one thing about the three of us, and and really the four of us Drew, uh, Davis's son, Davis loved the fourth Drew is coming along with us and he's started to work on in our business. But we sort of roam around in a little bit of a pack, honestly, because there's great perspective, certainly amongst the three of us over the last whatever it's been twelve or thirteen years. Everybody brings something a little bit different to the table.

00:16:07
Speaker 2: You know.

00:16:07
Speaker 4: I was the one that was thrown in the ditch by the Die family years ago, gosh, thirty three years ago, and so I sort of learned from the ground up. These guys are much better players and have played a lot of a lot of golf, a lot of great golf. I kind of called mark our green whisper. He seems to really focus on some details that maybe I don't, and so we really discuss and talk about from the very beginning, from a blank sheet of paper, what's happening and what goes on in the field. We spend a lot of time building in the field. That's how we all learned. As he said about Bob Spence, as I learned from the dies. I don't know how else to build a golf course. Now these days, we obviously have to get on a computer and we have to get plans done in permits, even for renovations and whatnot. So I have the grim task of dealing with the computer. But you know, both sides of our brain are working a lot technically and creatively, so we all bring something to the table and our collaborative we very much do not divide and conquer. It's it's together and there's a lot of strength in that.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, if we're dividing and conquering now, it's it's somebody needs to run over here, somebody needs to run over there. And we're trying to do a little bit more of that. That's why we have Big Drew Love. We send him to Minnesota a lot this summer and over to University of Alabama where he played, and he's a he's a celebrity over there, so we send him sometimes to check that golf course out. But for me, what I add to it is obviously a little bit in the sales and marketing, but in being the ambassador, like I can go into and talk to the green superintendents or talk to the club or the members and and get our point across a little bit easier than somebody that they've never heard of. And I was lucky coming up.

00:18:04
Speaker 4: Dying and.

00:18:06
Speaker 2: Fasio and Rhys Jones were all really good to me. Again because of my dad. I knew them as a little kid. I knew them as an early tour player, and then I knew them tagging along behind them watching them bill golf courses. So I got an early education some.

00:18:22
Speaker 4: Of the great ones.

00:18:23
Speaker 2: But Ben Crenshaw and I hung out a lot together on tour, and he took me to other clubs and showed me golf courses, explained master architects.

00:18:32
Speaker 4: You know.

00:18:32
Speaker 2: He would take me to Apple Lama, or he'd take me to Wingfoot. We would go to the other course at Wingfoot while we were playing a PGA championship and he would show me what the old masters did, and then he included me in his early designs. I remember looking at his three ring binder of his very first golf course, Sandhills, just looking at the holes before even built them. So I'm more on the out of what does this course, this land look like. What's the vision of the golf course and how can I talk to the members about explaining that vision? And then Scott again has to do the details. You know, we walk the routings together, but Scott's the one that knows how it comes out of the ground. And I'm the more to hand you the picture that I got off of Frida Egg and go I wanted to look like this right here. And then Mark again, Mark is details on the construction, and Drew's going to be more learning from our contractors how the courses are built from the ground up as kind of the We call him then intern, but he's kind of taken over.

00:19:41
Speaker 1: You know.

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Speaker 3: The Creuncha visits to other courses are are like infamous and maybe the stuff of legend for golf architecture nerds like me. You know the famous one where he where he left the tournament at Warwick Hills in Detroit. In the Detroit area, I drove up to Crystal Downs on like I think it was a Tuesday or Wednesday, came back and won the tournament. Was there is there a particular you mentioned wing Foot Nappa Wamas. Was there was there any like distant excursion that you made with Crench?

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Speaker 1: With Ben Crenshaw, Well, apple Wamas was one of the best ones.

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Speaker 2: We were playing Westchester and he said let's go. You know, we we both played too early on Saturday. He goes, let's go to apple Wamas and we'll go look around. Well, we get there in the parking lot is full, like what's going on? Walk around the corner there's a huge tent. There's a wedding and so Crenshaw has just won the Masters, and we walked sneak around, try to get on the golf course and people, you know, they noticed the hair.

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Speaker 4: You know, they're holy cow. There's been Crenshaw and Ben.

00:20:45
Speaker 1: Ben's rent right.

00:20:49
Speaker 4: That year. But so Ben's attracted a crowd.

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Speaker 2: He's like, oh, okay, we better get away and not disrupt this wedding. But that was my favorite story of going somewhere. But he I called him. I played eleven holes of his course he did for Johnny Morris out there.

00:21:11
Speaker 1: What is it a big theater?

00:21:14
Speaker 4: Yeah? Big seedar, big seedar.

00:21:15
Speaker 2: I it was our national and I was on the eleventh hole and I go, I texted him. I said, it's in my top ten already. And you know, to have a relationship with a guy that's he and Bill are just so successful and to come up, you know, watching him get started and Bill golf courses and his passion for it. He told me he took me around Colorado Golf Club and he showed me what they were doing. The next time I went out there, I was out there on my own looking around, and I was riding with a member and I said, oh, Ben told me you stick a flag in the sand of the green well and then he can see the green contours better. And the guy goes, oh, really yeah sure, And so we get up on this one hole there's a flag that's falling over in the sand.

00:21:59
Speaker 4: And you weren't making that up, were you? Go?

00:22:02
Speaker 2: No, that's how so Scott will tell you. I'll go get a piece of PVC pipe or a stick or something and stick it in the in the mix so I can see the contours of the green, because if there's not a flag there, it looks weird to me.

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Speaker 3: It's got to be something with scale y, right, Yeah, that the flag gives you, you know, because that's the way we see greens the most in our lives.

00:22:27
Speaker 2: Right And for me, that's you know, I'm looking at it like how do I get this ball to the hole?

00:22:32
Speaker 4: And that was just one little tip.

00:22:35
Speaker 2: We were working on the course for University of Virginia and we had to change a green and to the plan, and I walked off and I came coming back with a ten foot piece of PBC and the guy goes, hey, what is Davis doing it?

00:22:47
Speaker 4: Marcus, just let him go.

00:22:49
Speaker 2: He's gonna go stick that in the dirt somewhere so he can get a feel for it. And you know, Pete, I was more like, let me get on the bulldozer and start pushing it and then I'll get a feel for it.

00:23:00
Speaker 4: You know.

00:23:00
Speaker 2: Everybody has a different way of seeing what they want and and Ben certainly include me in early on that.

00:23:07
Speaker 3: You guys have worked at a lot of universities, And obviously I think the Alabama project kind of took things to a different level in terms of the the idea of a golf course, a golf facility to prepare players to be to to.

00:23:26
Speaker 1: Take their game to the next level.

00:23:28
Speaker 4: Yes, what.

00:23:31
Speaker 3: How do you how does approaching a college facility course and like the underlying idea of like people are coming here to hopefully become tour pros. How does don designing that differ from like a member's course.

00:23:47
Speaker 1: What are the types of things that you're.

00:23:49
Speaker 3: Doing at those facilities that you might not do at your you know, resort course or private club.

00:23:57
Speaker 2: Well, Scott had had the leg up, he had done firm and six others we've done.

00:24:03
Speaker 3: So then now you look at you look at it if there's so many university courses, but for me, for.

00:24:09
Speaker 2: Me at you know, University of North Carolina. So everyone's different, Like every club we go to is a different membership or a different need, or it's a resort, or it's private, or it's daily fee.

00:24:20
Speaker 4: But University of.

00:24:22
Speaker 2: North Carolina course is the university course that all of the university uses. University of Virginia Course has a resort there as well, and members and then Alabama is nobody's allowed in unless you play on the team or you donated to the facility, which it took me a while to catch on what Ja Sewell was doing, But think about portal nil transfer raising money. It's genius what he did because his his donors are allowed to be in the inner circle. And then he's going to have to recruit in a different way than he did when he was recruiting Drew Love or way back, you know, Bobby Wyatt. Now it's different. Now, it's completely different. So his facility is not only based on performance and training, it's also based on fundraising and attracting you know, players out of the portal. But we make them a little bit more difficult maybe than we would for an average membership, because those guys need to be challenged.

00:25:27
Speaker 4: You know.

00:25:27
Speaker 2: Jay's even telling me, coach Sewell that maybe the Greens are a little severe good when you go other places, you'll be ready for it. But we'll come and look and check it out. But it's a training facility. We've you know, gone with Darren May black Cat from from Michael Jordan's group has helped us at the University of North Carolina and at Alabama on the training side of it, the body of the range. But then the golf courses, you know, you need it big and long and challenging for the kids that are playing, and you know, then you have to balance the ladies team, you have to balance the teas for them. So it's it's a challenge. It's a different kind of challenge, but we like that. Just like at c Allen, I know the membership here and what they need. They don't need it to be as hard as the University of Alabama's course. They need to be fun and friendly and inviting and bring you back, but not overly difficult.

00:26:19
Speaker 3: The Alabama course in particular had to be such a fascinating project because of just how narrow the.

00:26:28
Speaker 1: Like, you know, I think like.

00:26:29
Speaker 3: One of the most challenging things is like with golf architecture, is you know, if you play with a beginner and then you play with a tour pro, like the range of skills and what is challenging, what's too much is so so vast, right, the idea of getting to do a golf course that is so so specialized, and I think like in a way, TPC Sawgrass another project that you guys are now working at the TBC Sawgrass when it was built was kind of this, like the whole, sole exclusive intention was to test the best players in the world, right, and like over the years the TPC model kind of like it became these member clubs, these public clubs that and like some of that changed, but there are so few there's such a few amount of golf courses where you get such a narrow focus and that had to be kind of different and maybe invigorating if I would think of it right, where you don't have to think about so much stuff.

00:27:46
Speaker 4: Well, you would think so. However, because there's such a limited audience playing the golf course, and because you have two sets of coaches and two sets of teams with very different bites, and within the teams and the men and the women, there was a lot to think about there, because they can set the golf course up any way they like. We actually built a number of tees, we built greens that were very much sort of segmented, and we really did have to think about, Okay, what majors are these folks going to play in the future or tour events, and we tried to not necessarily replicate shots, but get some difficulty there that they might see at a wing foot, like Davis said, or Augusta National. But also the coaches were keen on, hey, we might play from this tee over to that green, so let's think about clearing this a little bit differently than you might normally, or we sometimes might play this par five is unreachable and sometimes reachable, and then you throw the ladies in the mix as well. So there was actually quite a bit to think about now trying to make sure that missus Smith, who might be seventy five years old and only hits it one twenty, we really didn't have to worry too much about that. But there are donors that will be able to play that golf course. So there was some aspect of it. But it was sort of a different challenge, as you say, but it was thought provoking. And because it was only nine holes and the coaches wanted to be able, for example, go around one time and play to the white flag, let's say, and go around a second time and play to the crimson flag on another part of the green, we had to think about that as well. So there was a lot of I guess, interchangeable parts. There sometimes a hole might be a par five. Sometimes it might be a par four. Of the third hole if you go around the first time has two greens. They wanted a very short par three from that tee and a much longer one. So there was it was actually really interesting. And then you throw on top of it, it was a somewhat difficult site to be honest, with the soil and the topo and the weather. Uh So it was it was a good challenge for us, honestly.

00:30:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was talking to a high level coach and we were just talking and he and he they have a they have their own facility. But one thing he talked to me about was like, you know, we are always looking for places to play because what we find is like we have players that just played really well at our home course and we do qualifying at our home course. We need more courses to play qualifiers at because like and I'm sure Davis you saw this on tour, Like I mean there, we see it every week in week out. There are horses for courses and like there and that's where building a ton of variable Like if you're you know, you guys get the opportunity to build a course from scratch, building a ton of variability to make the course feel completely different day in day out. You almost have to do that for the for the good of the college program that's hosting these.

00:31:01
Speaker 4: You know.

00:31:01
Speaker 3: The way it works is you might have six guys playing for three spots to travel, you know, and if one of them just plays this golf course, better that you know where the pinch points are at different things, just like fits his. I like you could end up with the same guy getting out every time.

00:31:19
Speaker 2: Well, at Carolina, that was a big factor in that eighteen hole golf course that a lot of people are going to play. You don't want it to favor the long hitter the short hitter.

00:31:30
Speaker 4: You know. You wanted it to be a variety.

00:31:32
Speaker 2: And Scott's really good at managing me to make sure that we have a variety of holes. But the interesting thing about what coach Sewell and the University of Alabama wanted is they said, look, we have a lot of great places to play within an hour of us. We don't need an eighteen hole golf course. We don't want to host any tournaments at our home facility. We want this to be almost pure training. Yeah, sure, we'll qualify here. Some I said this is going to be training. If you make them walk the golf course and walk eighteen holes, they're going to be the best shape golf team in the country. But what he really wanted, and Darren May again from from black Cat, he did not only laid out the driving range, the practice facility practice. He also was influential in the golf course, like, if we do this fairway split, it'll be a driver to the lower tee or the lower fairway it'll be an iron to the upper te need to we need to work on layup t shots. We need to work on driving the green tea shots. We need to work on right to left, left to rights. So it was built more not for qualifying. Now they can do it. But my argument to day was let's go somewhere else where it's flatter and build eighteen holes. And you know, you don't understand what And again I'm slow. It took me a while to catch on to what he was doing. But he wanted it right on campus where we can train any way we want to. Their practice facility, they're ten or twelve acres of the driving range is just absolutely incredible. There's a snake, river or green that they can hit wedges to and every distance is the green gets.

00:33:12
Speaker 4: Narrower and narrow or wider. In a way, it's just I want to go.

00:33:15
Speaker 2: I'd said, I want to move here just to practice. You know, I don't care if I if I ever play anywhere around here. I just want to practice same thing down at the grove. Like if I lived in South Florida, I would be a member of the grove, just to go to the practice facility. And I've heard that Darren's range, it's the technology or the thought that goes into you know, it used to be it needs to be three hundred and fifty yards long and one hundred yards wide and a lot of grass to hit off of. It's completely different now. The practice and TPC sawgrass led that a long time ago, built an incredible facility for the pros, and now they're talking about expanding and making it even better. So it's not just a field to hit balls into anymore.

00:33:58
Speaker 4: And oh, by the way, these players are getting better and more attuned to every aspect of their body and their equipment and so forth. And when we redo the growth, Darren's and their range is great. He's already got new ideas, so he's changing with the times, even though he's up with the times. It's it's amazing.

00:34:20
Speaker 3: The explosion I would say, I would I think it's safe to call it an explosion of capital that's gone into college golf facilities. The last I would say five years is astounding. You know, they are opening it is a is an arms race, and it's it's a fascinating, it's a long, it's a it's a it's a big change from from when you guys were in college.

00:34:45
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, I think that parlay as well.

00:34:49
Speaker 3: You guys have talked a little bit about about the uh sawgrass and you're you're also plenty to do work at Harbortown following this year's championship. You've obviously done the plantation course, you're working, You're you built a short course at Hazeltine and I believe you guys have have plans and intentions of working on the big course there. How in Davis you talked a little bit about this with the North Carolina course.

00:35:19
Speaker 1: How do you guys approach.

00:35:22
Speaker 3: Testing the modern pro pro I think this is a big conversation in golf is you know, as as players have got improved, as technology has enabled some longer hitting it. You know, less and less golf courses seem to be standing up to the modern tour pro How do you guys approach creating a good test for the modern pro what.

00:35:48
Speaker 2: That's one of the first things the committee asked us that Hazeltein is what do you think is going to happen with the golf ball. I don't know, but we will adjust, and I think the answer, the simple answer to that is what we've learned. Scott says it about Alice Dye. I say it about our mom that was a very short hitter and a single digit handicap for you know, maybe fifty years of her life. She was an expert player, but she didn't hit it anywhere, couldn't carry it very far. We need to build a four thousand golf course all the way to an eight thousand yard golf course to cover everybody these days, as long as you realize that there's that big of a range now and it's really pretty simple, again learning from Darren may Or shot Link, it's pretty simple.

00:36:34
Speaker 4: Where all the balls go right.

00:36:36
Speaker 2: You just got to get tea boxes where everybody's ball goes in the same area where the short hitter can get to the fairway. You know, used to be the forward tees that I played as a kid. You couldn't get to the fairways. And now there's family tees. My granddaughters play from not the one fifties, They play from little tea boxes out there.

00:36:58
Speaker 4: They were built for them.

00:37:00
Speaker 3: Of course, I grew up catting at for for women and forward t players. Was like, uh, par seventy eight. It was like every other soul is.

00:37:11
Speaker 4: The par five, right, Yeah, So we're we're aware.

00:37:15
Speaker 2: And you know, if you I played, you know, almost eight hundred PGA Tour events. That's a lot of pro ams. And that's not counting the ones that are on Mondays and outings. And I've seen a lot of golf from Tiger Woods all the way down to beginners. And I know the challenge is golf is not getting any easier to take up to learn to get good at. So those people are the mass of who we're building for. You know, we're not just building for the University of Alabama expert players. We're building for beginners. We're building for people who are coming off of top golf, you know, and all of a sudden they're on grass. So you got to you got to build around all that.

00:37:58
Speaker 1: And I think.

00:38:01
Speaker 2: One because I grew up as a club pro son that was taking care of members. My dad's whole life was to take care of people that wanted to get better at golf. So I don't want to make it where people come and play our golf courses and they go, Wow, this is too hard or this is too easy, or it's not pretty. You know, I want I want them to have a great experience and to get better at golf. So if you make it hard, they'll go away. You make it I can't carry it to the fairway. I don't like this, So you got to have the flexibility. And that's just a lot of experience and a lot of learning from other architects and how to get that done and still have shot values and challenge the great players and make it fair for the for the average guy.

00:38:47
Speaker 4: And I would add it seems to us more and more, you know, as new players come on to the tour or high level amateur play. I just watched a sixteen year old who hits it very far, and you know, we'll get longer and longer, but really the best way to challenge the really good players, amateur or professional seems to be at the greens. And you know, it's really interesting is we build, especially as we redesign golf courses for existing members or existing clubs or existing resorts. You know, we might build a green let's just say that has hints of something at Wingfoot, and everybody's eyes get really big and they're like, oh my gosh, that's that's just too crazy, that's that's too hard or whatnot. But Davis always asks where are the places you all want to go play and just can't wait to play? You know, it's Oakmont and Wingfoot and National Golf Links and so on and so forth. And so it's sort of a dichotomy when you talk to members who are used to their golf course and they see something crazy that we build. But yet I believe, you know, we are gravitating more more to building golf courses that are certainly long enough. Maybe we reduce par seventy or seventy one. We're having this debate at Hazel Team right now. Maybe there'll be some flexibility there for the members versus a major, But the green is the place more than likely to challenge the professional, and these guys are really good at helping us all think through how big these whole locations need to be and how fair or how difficult do they need to be, because that's the place where the really good player can be challenged. And at the other end of the spectrum, as Davis said, we build greens where you can set it up as a more difficult hole location, but for everyday play, we've got lots of places where there's a less difficult whole location or multiple whole locations. Yeah.

00:40:49
Speaker 3: I think the interesting thing about American golf in particular is if you if I asked, pretty much like anybody who's a close observer of the of the pro game, to write down the best championship golf courses, you know probably starts with like Augusta National Pineer's number two, Wing Foot shinnakak Hills, Oakmont. You know, you start going down the list and like, all of these courses have something in common that they are ferocious at the green for real, they are.

00:41:26
Speaker 4: People don't realize it until they go there.

00:41:29
Speaker 2: We were doing we were doing a renovation of a golf course in Greensboro, and the tour came out to look at it and said, oh, you can't have any of this more than two percent slope, And I'm like, wait a minute, we've kept to cancel all the US opens. Then if you can't have anything more than two percent slope, the wingfoot doesn't have it hardly any two percent slope. So yeah, it's a balance of you know, do you make it challenge and interesting or do you make it severe? You know, Seminole at the Green speeds now is just there. There's no way to play some days, and I want to go that.

00:42:11
Speaker 3: You get it, get a down wind, put downhill.

00:42:15
Speaker 4: I want to go there and play, and it's one of my favorite places ever.

00:42:19
Speaker 2: But the average guy, you know, that's they would know what to do on those greens or wingfoot. I remember Jack Lumpkin and Butch Harmon both tell me at Wingfoot, I'll just hit it to the front of the green.

00:42:32
Speaker 4: Don't never hit a past whole high.

00:42:34
Speaker 2: You know. Well, there's a way to do it and to be successful at the same thing at Augusta National, you just you have to miss it in the right places and play to the right sections of the green because they're so severe. And yeah, that's that's our point, is you can that's you hit it. TVC sagas they lost some of that severeness in the greens.

00:42:57
Speaker 4: I show I showed.

00:42:58
Speaker 2: Leadership their pictures of old pictures I found in mecurate golf office and they go, what hold is that?

00:43:04
Speaker 4: I go, Yeah, that's the problem. You don't know.

00:43:06
Speaker 2: You don't know what hold it is because it's it's so different. And here's what happened at TPC Sawgrass is a bunch of US tour players got involved and let it get dumbed down, and Pete wasn't in charge, and and bureaucracy let things change over There is now green speeds and all that kind of stuff. But all all our job is at TBC Sawgrass or Harbortown is think about what Pete would do if he was here. How would we get it back to Harbortown is closer to original than TPC Sawgrass and TBC saw Grass has gone through, you know, all different kinds of different eras.

00:43:47
Speaker 4: Of what is our goal? Is it a resort?

00:43:51
Speaker 2: Is it? But they need they want to go back to what exactly what you said, a course built for tournaments that people can come play the rest of the year rather than the other way around.

00:44:03
Speaker 3: The Yeah, you know, I don't know the exact way it was worded, but you know there's I mean, one of the amazing things that you guys have as a resource for both those projects is Pete Didye's book Bury Me in a Pop Bunker. I mean, it's I always tell people it's one of the greatest intro to golf architecture books because of like the way the story, the like personal stories are weaved in. It doesn't feel like a heavy golf architecture book, but it has like a ton of color on the process of building a golf course. And if you you know the TPC sawgrass section, I mean the talk of the greens and how like how difficult they were to hit. And then if you you know, like I think, like one of the things I love the most about sawgrass is when you really look at the golf course, there is just it is is such a yo yo of like this is where I want to hit it, but I don't want to hit that shot, and this is where I can more easily hit it. But then from this spot on that I that is easier to get to, it is so much harder to hit the next shot. Like it is like this yo yo effect of like which what in the spectrum, Where in the spectrum do you want to play? And then the repercussions come based off of where in that spectrum you choose to play and if you execute, And it's just like a phenomenal aspect of that. And the way you heighten that is with contour and the greens, Like contour in the greens is the best way to reinforce, in my opinion, strategy off the tee with hazard placement.

00:45:53
Speaker 2: Right, and Alan Macuric made the point of the third hole down there. The greens gotten turned more towards the tee and it's taken out the fact that I remember hitting in the middle of the green and just run off to the right because the slope was at such a weird angle.

00:46:08
Speaker 4: And yeah, you have to do it.

00:46:10
Speaker 2: You have to challenge the really good players with the shots into the green. You have to hit the correct shot, landed in the correct place. I remember a few years ago Jim Furick on Sunday is in the hunt right and he hit it too close to the bullhead on eighteen, Like, oh no, it's going to go in the water. As soon as the ball stopped, I went, he's going to hit this one stiff. And whoever's watching me, why do you say that, I go that whole location from that angle, he's gonna stiff it. If he was way off to the right. Drew Love calls it the Davis Love corner over there to the right on eighteen because I would bail out all the time.

00:46:44
Speaker 4: But if you hit it close to the bullhead, that's very nice.

00:46:48
Speaker 2: He's not. He's not, but I told him I want it twice, so it must have worked out. But if you hit it close to the bullhead, the green's wide open.

00:46:59
Speaker 1: But you hit in the right, that smart to help you.

00:47:01
Speaker 4: It's almost like the right other stairway. You're gonna hit it. You're can hit in the lake, you know. And that's that's the beauty of Pete. And that's what we are.

00:47:08
Speaker 2: Challenges both there and Harbortown is Scott knows it better than me. Mccurrea golf building, both of the golf courses, they know it better than me. Steve Winslow from the tour hung around with Pete a whole lot.

00:47:21
Speaker 4: It's it's not.

00:47:22
Speaker 2: Rocket science, it's it's Pete strategy. And make sure we get it back. And and Jeff plots the green superintendents like, yeah, I need to get the water off the greens.

00:47:32
Speaker 4: Pete wanted the water going off three ways. Let's get the water moving and we'll get right back to it.

00:47:37
Speaker 2: And a tour player that's never played there before, only played there a few times, won't notice a whole lot of difference.

00:47:44
Speaker 4: Like a gusta.

00:47:44
Speaker 2: They sneak it in on you. You know, we want to sneak it in on them, like why is this playing a little bit harder than it did last year? We just slightly changed the contours, get the water off, get the old cool features back. It's a matter of how far they let us go or what year do we go back to. There's different eras of pictures of the golf course, but even Pete said, hey, maybe the sit and fair that we have all this tall behea grass and the average guy's losing a ball every hole, And so it did get.

00:48:19
Speaker 4: Nice and neat.

00:48:20
Speaker 2: It's a little too nice and neat around the t boxes is fine because we're moving a bunch of people around a big golf tournament. But as we get closer to the green, bringing the Pete die back into it, it's going to be a lot of fun.

00:48:32
Speaker 3: One of the things I find and I well, first, Scott, I'd actually love you guys touched on this before we get to that other question. When I think it was the first time I interviewed Bill corr I asked him a question about Pete Die and he said, the most amazing thing about Pete Dye is he's the only architect I believe ever to change the way people think about golf architecture twice, and he changed it at Harbortown, he said, and then at TPC Sawgrass. I would love for you to talk a little bit about how Harbortown, the architecture of Harbortown and TPC Sawgrass are different.

00:49:19
Speaker 4: Well, and you know, let me start by saying how they're similar. And if you look at the champions at these two places, he being multiple, Yeah, you have a range of champions who are great putters, maybe not long, maybe very long, or just a variety of champions and probably for different reasons. Needless to say, TPC Sawgrass is not as let's just say narrow as Harbortown, but they both have very definite strategies about how you play the golf course. Now, from an architects standpoint, I can surmise and have talked to Pete about that, the difference in strategies slightly, And of course in its day, Harbortown was like crazy, you know, it's crazy different. And you know, both of those golf courses are quite eclectic, especially when they open, and I have always said I think Pete's best golf courses are those that are the most eclectic. You think about Crooked Stick, Harbortown, TPC, Saltgrass, the golf Club. There's just a lot of different things going on there. But from a strategic standpoint, it's you know, Pete had five or six things, no matter when he was in his career that he sort of based his designs off of sort of standards. Part three's going in different directions, making sure that you work the ball in all directions in a balanced way. T shots left or right, right to left, greens left or right, green's right to left, and so the strategies you can see I call them s holes, or maybe he called them s holes. The strategies are similar in that way. But you know, Harbortown is just a much lower profile golf course, and it was, as he tells the story, and probably in the book, it was just completely the opposite of what was on the island. Whatever was being built on the island was big and wide and pretty standard classic, and he just intentionally tried to do something completely different, narrow, small, but yet still quite strategic. And you know, I don't know, I just don't know the history of knowing if they thought there would be a tournament there a year after year for all these years. Whereas TPC sawgrass, they knew there was going to be a tournament there a year after year for all these years. And I do know from a conversation with him that the greens were very definitely different than they are today. His initial concept was to have four whole locations Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and they were sloped in such a way that it was almost opposite directions. In other words, if the green sat right to left, there was a slope that wanted you to actually bring the shot in left to right so it would hold up the shot. And he melded that strategy with the strategy from the t shot and it got kind of complicated to think about, and I guess it initially was a little bit severe for everybody. So Harbortown's greens are much more simple. They're smaller, but yet still strategic. You really do want to challenge various hazards Harbortown. The hazards tend to be somewhat more on the outside of the dog leg that you want to challenge. TPC Sawgrass, somewhat more on the inside of the dog leg that you want to challenge. And very much thinking about the tour pro lots more water, honestly, and he always wanted you to think. And if there was water involved, he was very happy if you were shaking in your boots looking at a shot up to a green set on on the war.

00:53:03
Speaker 3: It's a it's a fascinating thing when you look at all you know, like I just think about like Kiowa, Phil Micholson winning a quia at uh, you know, in his fifties. You look at Harbor Town year in year out, such a vast variety of winners. TPC Sawgrass like, you know, I think the people that are in the picks world one of the hardest terms in the world to pick wide set of skills rewarded there. What do you guys think, Like, how did he achieve such a variety of winners, And I think like maybe the highest compliment from like a tour golf standpoint is his his his courses seem to allow almost anyone in a really high level field the chance to succeed.

00:53:56
Speaker 4: Well because again, and I'll just read rate, he made you test every part of your game. He didn't favor length or or necessarily a great putter, or necessarily any great ability throughout the back. He needed you to do it all. Now, Davis can weigh in on his abilities and his thoughts, but he really did challenge you to hit the ball in both directions high low. Be able to do you know, you had to have a good short game. So most of these winners do have a pretty good short game and a pretty good ability to put But it really just challenged the whole the whole game. So anybody really could come to those golf courses and and have a chance. Whereas a golf course that is heavily right to left, for example, some guys that only hit it one way might not do so well at that at that venue.

00:54:48
Speaker 2: I think, from my side as a player, I think both Harbor Town and TBC Sagress or any of Peace's courses they identify who's playing the best right now out?

00:55:01
Speaker 4: Because you have to do everything well.

00:55:03
Speaker 2: So people always ask me about Harbortown and TPC, like why do you play good on those golf courses? Well, because I was getting ready for the Masters in April, and my whole year was built around the first Major, and then I would not play well at Augusta, but I was ready, and then I'd win Harbortown. One year, I won Harbortown, Greensboro, TPC and the par three at Augusta, but I didn't win. I didn't win the big tournament because I was getting ready. So what Pete's doing with the strategy, and it's a lot of it's mental. He told me so many times.

00:55:39
Speaker 4: I go, why did you do this or that? Whistling straight? So what is all that go?

00:55:42
Speaker 2: It's just to distract you and make you nervous, he was. He was trying to not only challenge your game, but challenge your brain. Right. So, Lucas Glover doesn't like TPC Sawgrass the patience factor. I always say, if golf took three hours, Lucas Glover would be the number one player in the world because he could just play real fast and play really good again, you go down there and it's slow, and it's methodical, and it's challenging, and it's maybe not fair. That's that's why Tiger Woods or Greg Norman think about the guys that win there, Jack Nicholas, Harbor Town, think of the brains that win there.

00:56:21
Speaker 4: Mine. Mine was just like.

00:56:24
Speaker 2: I was quiet and stayed out of the way, but I was patient. I was a patient golfer, and I was working with Bob Rotella, and I was trying really hard to go through this process. So Pete sets you up for that, Like, if you hit it where I want you to hit it, if you're patient and you don't get frustrated, and when you come in, if you're playing well, I will reward you. But if you try to be John Daly and hit drivery hole, you're done. Yeah, And that's that's why I think I was successful, or Greg Norman or whoever was very successful on look at them again, like Scott said, look at the winners of Pete's core, and then their record in major championships is pretty good too.

00:57:03
Speaker 4: You know.

00:57:03
Speaker 3: I think there's like a great Rory quote a couple of years ago, He's talked about how early in his career. He really hated TPC Sawgrass, and he realized that he just wasn't like there was like he needed to become more patient and let the golf course come to him more. He spoke really eloquently of like exactly this, like what you said about like trying to be like trying to take it on with driver everywhere like John Daily the golf course, you know, and as he's played it more and more, he's you know, the and I think that's like probably that one of the things that you can is one of the most like I would say, highly coveted things he would probably want as an architect. Going out is somebody saying like the more I play this place, the more it reveals itself and how to play, Like, you know, I think we we probably in this space all you know it. There's nothing worse than when you play a hole once and you're like, I have figured that out. I know exactly how to play it. Like to me, I love when holes tricked me the first time, like where I hit a t shot and I'm like, oh, I think I got that right where I wanted and I get up and I'm like, oh, this is actually a bad spot.

00:58:14
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's straight at creating, you know, from scratch a site that may not be really good. And he, you know, as Bill Core said, he would say, if I get him thinking, then I got number one and number two. He was one of those that was not afraid to do things to make you think. And really he may have been the first and still the best at making you think and have that mental challenge rather than just a physical challenge.

00:58:50
Speaker 3: All right, let's take a quick break and talk about our partner, good Walk Coffee. Good Walk is fueling the team here at frieda Egg. It is part of my morning routine really starts the night before. I get up a little bit before the rest of my household, so I can't be rummaging around the kitchen or else I might wake up our young child, which would then draw the ire of my wife. So one of the things that I do is I have my coffee ready to go, my good Walk coffee ready to go. It has been awesome. One of the things I love is I do the subscription. I get the Fried Egg Golf Blend. It's one of our proprietary blends. With them, we have the Fried Egg Golf Blend and the Shotgun Start blend. The fried Egg blend is a medium to light roast. I really really enjoy this cup of coffee. And the Shotgun Start blend is a medium dark roast if you're more into the darker roast. So I set my coffee up, I get it ready to go. I just have to hit the on button in the morning. You know, Weekends I kind of go through a little bit more of a coffee ritual. But you know, one of the things that I love with the subscription is I always have coffee. It arrives for me at the beginning of the month, and I don't have to worry about running out. So if you're interested in purchasing some of our coffee or subscribing, go to good Walk Coffee. That's Goodwalkcoffee dot com. Forward slash fried egg to subscribe. That's Goodwalkcoffee dot com. Forward slash fried egg to subscribe. If you use the code fried egg at checkout, you get twenty percent off your entire order, and if you order a subscription, you'll save thirty percent off your first order and then ten percent off all future shipments. This is a great way to support us. We are in a partnership with them, so we make money when you guys order our coffee, so big thanks to good Walk and thank you to everybody that orders our coffee. All right, let's get back to Davis Love and Scott Sherman here. One thing I wanted to talk I was curious about is this conversation's gone is the slope and Greens and Davis, I think like your players of your generation are in such an in in you in particular you play, you have played on the PGA tour for such a long time that you've seen a couple massive changes. You've seen the change that you know, you've gone from wound balls and persimmon heads to you know what we have today four hundred and sixty ccs and and solid core balls. But also I think the other big thing that doesn't maybe get talked about as much is the the excellent in agronomy today the green speeds and what's that?

01:01:46
Speaker 1: What that's done?

01:01:48
Speaker 3: We talked about it briefly earlier in Slope and Greens. How how do you think putting on tour has changed since say early in your career to to today.

01:01:59
Speaker 1: Because that is a.

01:02:01
Speaker 2: Great analysis and a great question because when I came out on tour, you looked forward to going if you've gotten the Master's Great but Memorial Tournament, were the two best greens on tour, And if it wasn't too hot at Colonial, their bent grass greens were really good. But then you could name ten places that you were like, oh, no, I'm going to this course or that course and the greens are going to be terrible. Well, there's no such thing anymore. Every golf course has great greens or over the top great greens, and you can just flat out and make more putts on tour today than you could twenty years ago or thirty years ago or forty years ago. And if you go back and watch the old old Masters when they're whacking it and sticking their putter in the ground, because there were six and there were bermuda and grainy, right, there's no such thing like that. And Green Island that the Southern Open in Columbus, Georgia. It was the grainiest greens I've ever putt it on. Other than that stuff in Japan was it karab what did they call it? There's some granny or grass ever in Japan that we played on. But there's literally no such thing as a eight nine ten on the stimpmeter anymore. There's no such thing as these are so grainy, you know, Harbortown, you had to figure out the overseed because they were slower than it. Augusta, Well, it just doesn't happen anymore. It's they're also consistent. It's like putting on pool tables now. So these guys are training for a year round of golf. It used to be Andy Bean one in Florida, right, and mark themire one on the West coast because they putted those greens. Well, well, there's hardly any of that anymore. It's they're so consistent. So that's a great point. And the tour agronomy does a great job, the Green Superintendent's organization that they're all on board across the board for all golfers, but especially for tour players. The condition have just gotten. If they get a bad line a bunker, or a bad line the fairway, it's it's unusual. Now it's almost all perfect. So part of that is the part of the low scores is length, yes, but part of it is course conditioning for sure.

01:04:14
Speaker 4: No, there's very little variability now, and so the guys can predict what's going to happen. They can train for TBC.

01:04:22
Speaker 2: Sawgrass is closed for three weeks and if you go out there on Tuesday, there's not a divot anywhere.

01:04:27
Speaker 4: You know, it's a different world. You know, it's it's.

01:04:30
Speaker 2: Really feeled ready for the playoffs.

01:04:33
Speaker 4: You know, it's perfect.

01:04:35
Speaker 1: I'm curious if you think that the.

01:04:39
Speaker 3: The old variability and I guess would locality maybe is the right word, where like everything's different there. To me, it kind of feels like there's like a box that they right now and and I and I understand why, Like it's like you put on forty six events a year, you kind of need to have some regulations, but that box does it? Do you feel like it limits the test the ability to test when you don't have variety in in setup in a way.

01:05:20
Speaker 2: Well, again, as an old guy and a five time board member, we talk about it a lot with the with the rules and the agronomy people like we want great conditions everywhere, but we do need some variety. We need one one term it can have long rough and the next termam it can have short rough. It's we stress as players like we want the golf course set up the way the architect or the way the design is like, you don't you don't need six inch rough at Augusta and you don't need no rough at Pebble Beach.

01:05:51
Speaker 4: You know.

01:05:53
Speaker 2: The course or the design dictate and yes, you're right, you don't. You don't want Okay, the the rule on the PGA Tours every course has four inch rough eleven point five stent meter and this this brand of sand.

01:06:07
Speaker 4: No, you don't want. You want variety.

01:06:08
Speaker 2: I think where the consistency is in the low scoring is in the smoothness of the greens. But yeah, variety the spice of life. You know, some high scoring tournaments, some low scoring tournaments. Tommy Roy gave a great speech to the players one year at a our annual meeting, and he said, look, I want a variety on TV. I want some birdies and some eagles, and I want you to hit it in the water on some disasters. You know, that's what the fans want to see. Is what you're saying is some varieties every now. I'm watching the TGL and sure there's a little bit of variety, but we don't want it to be a controlled environment every week on the PGA Tour. We want Harbortown after Augusta you know, and then we want you know, Bay Hill with six inch.

01:06:58
Speaker 4: Rough every once in a while.

01:07:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was.

01:07:00
Speaker 3: It was darring when the at Capellou this year when they talked to somebody, I think it was maybe Ralphing was like, this is this is the hardest Uh. These are the bunkers or the hardest up and downs of any bunker on tour. And I was thinking about it. I'm like, well, it's the only it might be like the only different sand on tour because it's a little bit more course.

01:07:23
Speaker 1: And I'm like, well, that that's probably why it's it's different.

01:07:27
Speaker 3: So my it plays harder and to me, like that's a perfect example of a golf course where the tour kind of mentality of percent in greens, like you said, you can't have more than two percent. I remember growing I mean that was like a staple of my childhood was watching players like like you Davis play that golf course and just the big swooping putts because it's they're greens built.

01:07:52
Speaker 1: On mountains, right.

01:07:54
Speaker 2: Wow, if the wind doesn't blow there, yeah, I don't know how long that course is, like eighteen poles not what it says on the scorecard is longer than that.

01:08:03
Speaker 1: And I think it plays down like two hundred feet.

01:08:06
Speaker 4: Yeah, but.

01:08:09
Speaker 2: It's just incredible how hard that course can play some days and the wind and the rain, and then how easy it can play if it doesn't blow.

01:08:17
Speaker 4: And again, the greens have gotten better, they've redone them.

01:08:20
Speaker 2: The greens maybe have gotten a little bit flatter, but that's such a big, wide place with big long hitters. I know ralfins praying for wind every year there, and it's they haven't gotten it much lately.

01:08:35
Speaker 3: Now it's spent the last four years it's just been absent. How's your how's your opinion on distance changed or stayed the same as you've like kind of transitioned to more and more of a golf architect and less and less of a pro golfer.

01:08:56
Speaker 2: My position hasn't changed for a long time, and you can ask, you know, Mike Davis are board members. When we've argued, I was, I was in the involved in the whole deal with the square grooves, with the long putter, I was. I wasn't on the board at the wrong times on the tour. But my opinion is, and I'm not a rocket science guy, but I think if you took the jump face, the coefficient of restitution out of the driver and made it where if you got more club and speed, you'd hit it farther but not exponentially farther, and didn't mess with a golf ball. It would really help. I think you could go backwards with the driver. I think somewhere somebody messed up and let.

01:09:39
Speaker 4: The driver be too good.

01:09:42
Speaker 2: My old wooden driver, you know, a little teeny tiny head Scott or Plank would tell you that that I got screwed the most by by metal woods like Jack Nicholas first right, Jack was the only when that could hit it high. He had stop and drop technology before anybody thought of it, and I could hit it really high with low spin.

01:10:04
Speaker 1: You had one iron that Daniel could.

01:10:08
Speaker 2: There was very few people that could do it with the old ball and the old driver, but now everybody does it and they have a track man to maximize it, right, So it is rocket science. I think if you went backwards with the driver, it wouldn't affect me now because my clubbed speed is I'm trying to get to one ten club ed speed, but it just won't do it. But if you get to one fifteen and then you get to one twenty, you're not just getting five mile increment, You're getting a lot more pop. That's why Bryson went for the fence right because he knows the faster it goes, it's just going forever. And I think that would that might help fix it. And I haven't anybody say no, you're completely wrong, you know. I think the manufacturers don't want to mess with the ball, they'd rather mess with the driver.

01:10:55
Speaker 4: But their overall.

01:10:57
Speaker 2: Distance standard they came up with years ago, a little bit ever, go any farther than this, Well that didn't work. My new titlist ball goes a yard or two farther than my old one. It just keeps getting longer.

01:11:07
Speaker 4: I played.

01:11:08
Speaker 3: I played a round at a very famous course recently, and I I have some original prov ones and I played with a per simmon and blades, and it was astounding at the original prov one versus like the the current prov one because I ran out of balls on a very famous hole in the world and I couldn't I couldn't control the spin was what was getting like the ball just the wind was just smoking the ball, you know, more so than like. And I teed up a modern one. And it just it came off like a rocket like it was like jarring to watch back to back.

01:11:54
Speaker 2: That's that's what the biggest difference now is, it's it's just tweaking the dimples and in the cover to fight the wind. The ball just goes incredibly straight. Now you know the old Bobby Jones. I had VHS tapes, you know the old Bobby Jones videos, and the ball went.

01:12:14
Speaker 4: On the video. Yeah, well it doesn't do. That's not efficient.

01:12:18
Speaker 2: And they're making the dimples better and better the new the new pro V one, and I tested it during the RSM. It it was clearly different the way it flew.

01:12:29
Speaker 4: Now.

01:12:30
Speaker 2: I played the old left dot when I had some club ed speed, and the ball is gradually the prov one's gradually gotten to the left dot, which was a little bit less spin and not quite as high. But they, you know, they just keep figuring out how to launch that rocket more efficiently with the dimples and the cover, and they're gaining marginally distance despite what the commercials say, but they're gaining stability in the wind. And that's what's that old ball just used to wonder all over the place, and now it's now just it's It's incredible to watch a DECKI or Cam Young, to watch them hit iron shots. It is just it's just astounding how straight they go. You know, it's just one after another. Rory McElroy hitting drivers and not trying to crush it, just on the range I had to hit by him maybe a few years ago at a Major. I like, I need to just go home because this this that ball is going three twenty dead straight every single time, and it's it now.

01:13:42
Speaker 4: Everybody has it.

01:13:43
Speaker 2: It doesn't mean that Rory has something that other guys don't have, or that you can't buy off the shelf, but the superior athlete, Roy McElroy can get everything you can get out of out of those those pieces of equipment, and the ball just goes forever. Now I'm gonna to be Jay Monaghan argument. The pro game is great right now, let's don't screw it up. You know, I love watching it. I can't play it like I used to, but I don't want them to change. I like seeing those scores. I want to see home runs at a baseball game. I don't want to see a zero to zero hockey game. I want the guys to score goals. I want to see him make birdies. But for the good of land and golf courses, yeah, we have to either stay where we are or slightly take a step back, or it's incrementally going up. Now it's not leaps and bounds like professional ball, huge jumps. But I'm not on the Jack Nicholas. You know, we got to do something right away side, But I think we got we We have to all reasonably, all organizations reasonably talk about it and explore all the options.

01:14:55
Speaker 4: For the first time last year, the PGA Tour driving average is now three hundred yards, and that was for the first time. I just read it a couple days ago. So here we are.

01:15:05
Speaker 3: I remember as a kid seeing like Davis Love at two eighty nine and being just a bomber. You know, I would say, so where would I would disagree with the state of pro golf now? I would say that in general, as I've thought about I'm a huge sports fan. In general, as I've thought about sports, I think what the at the core of what makes sports extraordinarily captivating is the tension of defense and offense. A great pitcher against a great hitter, a great defense in football scheming to try and stop Tom Brady, like, these are the things that make it so compelling. And to me, I feel like right now, the equipment in golf has rendered the defense the golf courses largely outside of a small, small handful, you know, it's just we're running prevent and you've got a great quarterback all day.

01:16:10
Speaker 1: And and to me, that that is what is a little bit missing in the game.

01:16:18
Speaker 3: And I and I echo the driver thoughts because I, you know, like the driver shouldn't be the you know, as someone who grew up playing high school golf, getting off the bus from from high school in two thousand and just being terrified of the first t shot about where the ball might go.

01:16:36
Speaker 1: You know, I might have a snapper left, a high pop up right.

01:16:40
Speaker 3: Like, I don't know where it's going, and I'm terrified to like now I'm just like I cannot. I hope I get a hit driver on the first tee because if I haven't, if I haven't warmed up, the three wood could go anywhere, you know is And I think that's like the driver is the core of the issue, kind of as you said, a last question to get you guys each out here, Scott, I'd love to hear the hole that you've built in your career that you think about the most. And Davis, I'd love to hear about the shot that you've hit you hit in your career and it could be like whole, like deep, like the shot that you picture the most or think about the most.

01:17:27
Speaker 4: Okay, Okay, I'll go first. Well, you know that that is a current that is a current thought somehow you knew this. At TPC Sawgrass, we are thinking about one of the holes there and I won't mention it that has been somewhat controversial. I'll just say it's a short part four.

01:17:45
Speaker 2: Uh.

01:17:46
Speaker 4: And we built a short part four right outside this window at Plantation, which I just really love. Mister Ann Shoots, the owner wanted to make some changes. We built a putting course, some cottages and what and we had to change the tenth hole and it is now a drivable par four on the water. As I talked about Peach eclectic stuff. It's got some laid back walls and some it's got a principal's nose and it's drivable and it's a neat golf hole and it's and I've thought about it a lot recently, trying to think about what we might recommend for a hole at TPC saw Grass. So the tenth hole here is one of my favorites. For sure. We've all been very fortunate to have great pieces of land and build some pretty cool, pretty cool golf holes. But this is a great setting, this is a great client. Uh and and I just love reachable par fours myself. So the tenth hole at the Plantation Courses is one of my favorites.

01:18:52
Speaker 3: The short part four, I think is just such a fun design because of it gets people. It gets people into shots around the green that you don't otherwise see if it's you know, if they're hitting a nine iron into them. You know, like you get into some squirrely places. And I think that might be why they've become so popular, is you see such such interesting and fun recovery shots, but also the excitement of of eagles and birdies.

01:19:19
Speaker 4: Or I played one day with Mark Love who darn near made a one from the tee. I think it hit the flagstick and it was like maybe this far away, and I was like, dang, we needed to have that thing.

01:19:34
Speaker 1: Davis a shot that you you find yourself going back to the most.

01:19:40
Speaker 2: Unfortunately, the shot I go back to the most was a was a couple of bad ones.

01:19:45
Speaker 3: Uh see this is this is the problem with golfers. We always think about a positive one.

01:19:53
Speaker 2: I was. I was playing Jumbo Azaki in the President's Cup and and I don't I don't know the whole numbers that well. But there's par five coming in and there's a lake on the left, and I got him like two or three down, and there's been a lot of talk about big Jumbo and all this, and so my caddie, John Covey, burke the par five. You know, okay, let's just hit it, you know, like out in the middle of the green and see if we can two putt and you know, you got it.

01:20:23
Speaker 4: You got him where you want him, or something like that.

01:20:25
Speaker 2: I go, no, no, no, I'm going to hit it at the fly depends way back left. And I took a fore iron and hit it out over the lake and cut it in there. You got it, easy eagle putt, you know, and we're going to close the guy out. And from then on, Coupy goes, it's greatest fore iron in the history of golf. And I was really good at cutting it off the water back then. So that's my favorite because of Kubby telling the story that when I hit it into sixteen at TPC off the pine straw, people talk about that and that was a kind of a gutsy shot, but I was feeling it that day playing with my man Fred Couples. But the shot I go back to is I three putted the last hole of the US Open that Steve Jones won, and I had a down hiller and Fred called me back before there were cell phones that night and there's no way you left that putt short. Everybody who's hitting that putt pass all I know, But I left it short and then I missed the next one. It can be done, So I think about that little. You know, I could have made a putt to win the US Open and I three putted it and didn't get in the playoffs.

01:21:24
Speaker 4: So I've had some good ones and some bad ones.

01:21:26
Speaker 1: But well, that's that's golf.

01:21:29
Speaker 4: I that's golf.

01:21:30
Speaker 3: One of my best friends I qualified for a mid Am years ago, and you know, I burnied three of the last four holes to get in, and you know, my my buddy called me after and he goes, you know, this is this is the one percent moment you have to you have to cherish this because golf kicks, you kicks your ass ninety nine percent of the time. This is one of those one percent moments, and it's uh. I got to say that was an all name group with Jumbos and John Covey Burke.

01:22:03
Speaker 4: Yeah.

01:22:05
Speaker 1: Like I've time names, I've had some.

01:22:08
Speaker 2: I've had some great friends and great experiences in my life. But having caddies like Jeff Weber, who his brother Tom Weber works with us for me Curate Golf, and John Covey Burke and my brother, We've had a lot of fun over the years on tour with my friends and caddies, and his.

01:22:25
Speaker 4: Caddy is sort of how we got connected. Believe it or not, his caddy, his brother, as he said, Tom Weber builds golf courses with us to this day. He and I have worked together for over thirty years, and slowly but surely I got to know Jeff. And I don't know if Davis would remember this, but whenever I was out on tour here there and Yonder, I would go watch him talk to Jeff and say hi to Davis, and one thing led to another and here we are.

01:22:53
Speaker 3: Well, thank you guys for coming on. I feel like we could have talked for hours here. We'll have to do it, uh sometime soon and maybe dive a little bit deeper into into all of it, into specific projects. But I really appreciate the time, and UH look forward to seeing your guys as a lot of your work in the coming years.

01:23:15
Speaker 1: And UH look forward to seeing you out on the road in the near future.

01:23:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, come see us at a tour event or a golf course site. And I'm happy to do it again because I owe you for all the pictures I've stolen off off their website.

01:23:27
Speaker 4: We use them all the time.

01:23:28
Speaker 3: If you ever need them, we got we got a lot more than that are on the website. So if you ever if you're ever looking for something.

01:23:35
Speaker 2: Inspiration over the years, especially like the pattern holes.

01:23:39
Speaker 4: I use those all the time.

01:23:40
Speaker 1: So yeah, thank you, thanks for.

01:23:42
Speaker 4: Having us on to talk about it. We've been very blessed to do some great, great projects, some new ones, you know, new golf courses, thank goodness or back in in vogue again, and some great renovations. So thank you for having us on.

01:24:06
Speaker 3: Thank you for listening to another edition of the Friday Golf Podcast. We will be back next week.

01:24:12
Speaker 1: Big thanks.

01:24:12
Speaker 3: To PJ Clark for editing and producing this podcast, and thanks to Scott Sherman Davis Love for joining and being generous with their time. We'll look forward to getting them back on. That was a really fun conversation and we'll talk to you guys soon