The Original Augusta National (feat. Brian Schneider and Josh Pettit)

00:00:00
Speaker 1: The original Augusta National. The Augusta National that Alistair McKenzie and Bobby Jones built in nineteen thirty two was, in my opinion, one of the strangest and most interesting courses ever designed. So let's talk all about it. I'm Garrett Morrison, and this is designing golf, all right. Today's big question, what's with all the template holes at Augusta National. I'm not sure if this is common knowledge, but a lot of holes at Augusta were based in part on some of the most famous holes in golf. And we know this because Alistair McKenzie wrote about it in an article called Plans for the Ideal Golf Course published in nineteen thirty two. He described all eighteen holes at Augusta, and many of them, it turns out, were inspired by some of his and his co designer Bobby Jones's favorite holes, including several holes from the old course at Saint Andrew's, which both he and Jones revered. In fact, their intention at Augusta was to create a kind of inland American version of the old course. Now a lot of these influences are still detectable at Augusta, but it does take a bit of effort because the course has changed a great deal over time. The original iteration of the course was much wider and less tried. It had only twenty two bunkers, many of which were very large and intricate. The greens had these chaotic shapes with strange little tongues kind of jutting out in different directions. There was more artificial mounding throughout the course. The seventh, tenth, and sixteenth greens were completely different, located completely differently, and the sixteenth hole in particular was just a different hole altogether. And overall the course was just more rugged in appearance and eccentric in its design ethos. Which is not to say that Augusta National was better originally than it is now. It was just different and probably more in tune with the principles that Alistair Mackenzie outlined in that nineteen thirty two article that I mentioned. So to understand the original architecture at Augusta National, I think you have to know a little about those so called template holes, and to help with that, I'm going to bring on Josh Pettitt. Josh is a golf architect, but more important for our purposes, the founder of the Alistair Mackenzie Institute. And the first thing Josh told me about the template hole issue is that mackenzie and Jones really weren't trying to do template holes in the way that we normally think of them.

00:03:00
Speaker 2: They both revered the old Course as the paramount example of the greatest golf course, and they were trying to take inspiration from many of these holes. They specifically were not trying to copy them. And McKenzie goes out of his way to write about that a lot. You know, some people were sort of claiming they were building a golf course that was just a copy, you know, a bunch of holes that were copies of great holes, and you know, he didn't like that characterization. So, you know, it's important to understand that he was really trying to take the ideas, the concepts, the strategic concepts of those holes and then apply them on a different landscape and create like a new version of them, so much so that he hoped, you know, he thought when they were done, they'd done such a great job that that collection of holes would then go on to inspire future architects to do a similar kind of process.

00:03:50
Speaker 1: So the first of these kind of remixed templates that I want to talk about is the fourth hole.

00:03:56
Speaker 3: The fourth hole that that part three.

00:03:58
Speaker 2: You know, it's like a mid length Part three, and it's modeled after the eleventh at St. Andrews, the Eden and I think many in that era would consider the.

00:04:09
Speaker 3: Eden is the greatest short hole in the world.

00:04:11
Speaker 2: So, yeah, you know that that green, it's it's flanked by those two bunkers in the front, you know, similar to the eleventh at Shane Andrews that has you know, the hill bunker on the left and the strath on the right, and you know, you just don't want to miss long. If you're gonna miss, you're gonna miss short in the middle sort of in that bowl there.

00:04:30
Speaker 4: But you do not want to go long.

00:04:32
Speaker 1: If you go long on the fourth hole, you might not be able to stop your chip or putt before it runs off the front of the green. And that is definitely a feature of the Eden hole at St. Andrews. It's kind of a strategic game of distance control. You have these threatening bunkers toward the front of the green, but if you're too scared of them and you go long, you'll find yourself in an even worse position. Obviously, one thing that the fourth hole at Augusta National doesn't have is the eden estuary framing the green. There was a road pretty close behind the fourth Green, originally Berkman's Road, but it was rerouted when the club lengthened the par for fifth hole in the late twenty tens. Now, speaking of the fifth hole, it was actually inspired by an even more famous hole at St. Andrews, the Road Hole.

00:05:28
Speaker 2: So going back to this idea that they were trying to not copy these holes, one of the reasons why sites, you know, it's sort of a fool's errand to try to copy these holes, is because the visuals, the surrounding landscape is going to be completely different. And so yeah, the example of St. Andrews, you have the eaton estuary, but I guess Nationally you don't. So that's why you don't want to like directly copy these holes verbatim. But in the case of the fifth hole, the road hole, it's again it's just taking the strategy and then in this case it's mirroring, it's sort of reversing it off the tee. So you know, the road hole you play out to the left and the dog leagus to the right, and you're trying to carry over the old course hotel as close as you can to set up your angle of approaching the green.

00:06:15
Speaker 3: The fifth that Augusta is the exact opposite.

00:06:19
Speaker 2: It's a slight dog leg left, it's not as severe, and the corner of the dog leg is made up by what was just one big bunker. Now there's two bunkers there and you know, some trees and so in that case you want to play to the right to carry that as much as you can to then open up your approach into the green there.

00:06:39
Speaker 1: Now the green itself there's no road bunker. Are there any similarities between the fifth green at Augusta National and the and the road green?

00:06:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think at first site, at first glance, you would say not really.

00:06:54
Speaker 3: But it is kind of on a plateau. That's sort of what he says.

00:06:58
Speaker 2: It's sort of, you know, sort of raises up to the sort of plateau green similar to that green, but the green itself is very very different green, yet it doesn't have the road hole bunker there. So this is I think another another example of where he was just trying to take some of these ideas and apply them onto a very different landscape, and then the result would be like a very new end product that was like not you know, you would see some resemblance, but also had a lot of unique characteristic extended of itself. So he was trying to take certain ideas and not copying everything. So sometimes it was more like the t shot. Other times it was more the way the green played, but he wasn't trying to copy the whole from tea to green and replicate that in any way.

00:07:44
Speaker 1: Finally, to round out this kind of three hole stretch of very well known templates or semi templates, the par three sixth hole at Augusta National was, according to Mackenzie, inspired by the Redan at North Barrackle Club in Scotland.

00:08:01
Speaker 2: The green is set up in a way where it allows you to feed a ball from the front right of the green to the back left of the green if there's a pin there, because there's a bunker in the front left that's sort of guarding that. So there's this kind of massive mounds sort of a buried elephant sort of in the back right of the green, and that mound if you kind of hit right into it with your you know, probably like a mid iron in those days, maybe a long iron for some people, and you know, the ground was firm. It was sort of feed the ball back left to a pin right there, and that in a way, you know, that functions similarly to how the Redan functions. He does say he kind of like brags a little bit, and he says like, they didn't necessarily build a better version of the Red Dan, but they built a more beautiful, more attractive version just because of the surroundings and the visuals and the esthetic of the bunker.

00:08:54
Speaker 3: And he really liked visually the way that hole looked.

00:08:57
Speaker 1: So Augusta National originally had these re interpreted versions of the Eden, the Road and the Radan four, five, and six, but the references to old links courses at Augusta just kept going from there. The original seventh hole had a swale in front of its green that was inspired by the Valley of sin On the eighteenth hole at Saint Andrew's, and then the eighth green with those big mounds surrounding it was influenced by the punch Bowl seventeenth Green. Mierfield, I won't go through every illusion that Augusta National makes to other courses, but suffice it to say that there are a lot of them, and if you're interested, I'd recommend reading Mackenzie's article Plans for the Ideal Golf Course. It's really interesting and informative, and you can find a great reprinting of it on Josh's website, which is alistairmackenzie dot org. But before we wrap up, there is a broader question for me here about Alistair McKenzie and what he was up to when he was helping Bobby Jones design Augusta National in the early thirties. Why do you think he was interested in incorporating influences in this way at this point in his architectural career.

00:10:18
Speaker 3: There's a couple of reasons. I think.

00:10:20
Speaker 2: First of all, it was so much to do with the fact that he was starting to get sites that weren't very good sites. Now, not to say that the site of Augusta wasn't a good site, but it was a severe site to build on.

00:10:32
Speaker 3: It wasn't links Land, let's say.

00:10:36
Speaker 2: And coming out of his time in South America, where he spent a good amount of time in nineteen thirty in Argentina and in Uruguay, a lot of those courses that he designed, some of which didn't get built.

00:10:51
Speaker 3: He was using this idea of all these templates.

00:10:53
Speaker 2: He was referencing these all basically his favorite holes, his inspiration because he was working on sites where he had in some cases zero features to work with and.

00:11:04
Speaker 3: He would have to manufacture everything from nothing.

00:11:07
Speaker 2: And then when he got to Augusta, he had been toiling, you know, he'd been toying with those ideas for a couple of years. And then he and Bobby Jones, because of their shared reverence of the old course that was essentially what they were trying to create. They were trying to create what they called the world's ideal inland course. They were trying to create like an inland version of Saint Andrews.

00:11:31
Speaker 3: And so I think that gave.

00:11:33
Speaker 2: Him a creative license to pull from, you know, to use those holes as inspiration.

00:11:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's such an interesting evolution for him because Mackenzie had spent so much of his career to that point theorizing camouflage, theorizing ways to make courses look as though they had not been constructed, that they had just been sitting there all along, and not only theorizing that, but practicing it and coming up with techniques to execute courses that looked completely natural, and Cypress Point might be the height of that. For him, that might be the best that he had ever done in that regard. And it's almost like after Cypress Point, or maybe after Pasa Tiempo in nineteen twenty nine, he started thinking, Okay, well, what else.

00:12:29
Speaker 2: Is there as a great artist, which I think he was, and he considered himself that he had that mentality of, you know, like Bob Dylan would say, a great artist has to be careful never to arrive.

00:12:41
Speaker 3: They're always in a constant state of evolving.

00:12:44
Speaker 1: And that gets to the heart of why I admire Alistair Mackenzie's career so much. To the very end, he was pushing and experimenting and trying to find new ways forward. Unfortunately, he died in January nineteen thirty four, just a couple of months before the first Augusta National Invitation tournament later renamed the Masters, And I've always wondered what he would have done next, because for him, Augusta National was the beginning of something. It was the beginning of a new design approach. And part of why I'd like looking back at that first iteration of the golf course is that it offers a glimpse of how creative and idiosyncratic Mackenzie's late nineteen thirties designs might have been if he had gotten to build them now. Fortunately, we do have plenty of historical information about the original Augusta National, so today's golf architects can continue to learn from that version of the course and maybe build some of the stuff that Mackenzie didn't get to. One current architect who has been inspired by the early Augusta is Brian Schneider. Brian is a longtime Tom dok associate and the co designer of the Great Old Barnwell in South Carolina. Brian has a lot of interesting projects coming up, including a solo design at the Michael Kaiser Resort Old Shores in the Florida Panhandle, and this new course, according to Kaiser himself, is going to draw some inspiration from the Augusta National of the nineteen thirties. So who better to elaborate on this topic than Brian Schneider. But real quick before we jump to him. The Friday Golf Pro Shop is ready for major season. Specifically, our Mackenzie Bunker illustration drawn by our own Cameron Hurtis, is back, and you'll find it on b drafty favorites like the Andy Hoodie and the Dewey Pocket T shirts, as well as on various headcovers, hats, and much more. Plus, Cameron has a new T shirt that shows this Mackenzie Bunker illustration in a new light, so make sure to check that out. You can see all of this at pro shop dotthfrid Egg dot com. All right, let's go to Brian Schneider. All right, Brian Schneider, welcome back to the pod. Thank you for being here.

00:15:18
Speaker 4: My pleasure, thank you for having me.

00:15:20
Speaker 1: So I want to start with what I think is a really interesting part of your backstory, which is that you worked maintenance at a bunch of great golf courses, including Augusta National, earlier in your career. So could you give me the background for that, Like what made you decide to do that?

00:15:41
Speaker 5: You know, it was relatively late in college for me. I graduated in nineteen ninety seven from the University of Wisconsin, and for most of my time in college I had ideas about going to medical school and you know, kind of getting into sports medicine or something along those lines. And it was relatively late in my college career that I decided to switch gears and get into golf some way. I had an inkling that architecture interested me a bit, but I wasn't entirely aware that architecture was really a thing that you could do for a living.

00:16:17
Speaker 4: You know.

00:16:18
Speaker 5: I was aware of certain architects at the time, and Pete Die had recently designed the original version of Black Wolf Run in Wisconsin, which made a big splash, so his was a name I was aware of, and I traveled around a little bit, but you know, you know, the entirety of the golf i'd played to that point in my life was in the state of Wisconsin and not too far away from where I lived, so I hadn't been exposed.

00:16:41
Speaker 4: To a lot of architecture.

00:16:42
Speaker 5: But when I decided that maybe doing something in golf sounded cool, Black Wolf Runt.

00:16:47
Speaker 4: Was the first place I reached out to.

00:16:50
Speaker 5: I'd played the golf course once or twice and thought it was really cool and thought it'd be a neat place to work. So I just sent a letter hate Black Wolf Run, I'm looking for a job.

00:17:00
Speaker 4: Can you hire me to do anything?

00:17:02
Speaker 5: And I don't know if they sent it around to various department heads. But the person I heard back from was a fellow named Steve Kurda, who was the superintendent of the river course in nineteen ninety seven, and he basically said, you know, that was spring of ninety seven. You know, he said, y as we're opening up, we'll certainly need some labor through the summer. If you want to come over, we've got an intern house I could put you in. So I started working there before I finished school. I graduated in May or early June or whatever it was, and I had been an athlete. I was a wrestler in college and had always anticipated graduating in four years. I broke my ankle my third year in school, red shirted, which attacked another year of eligibility on to the end of college. So I stuck around for another year, and in order to remain eligible, I kind of had to preserve a class that I needed to complete to graduate, and for me, that was I think Biology on one.

00:18:00
Speaker 4: So I was a.

00:18:01
Speaker 5: Biochemistry and molecular biology major, and as you know, my final semester of school, Biology one to one was the class I had to complete. At that point, I was pretty comfortable living in Sheboygen most of the time and just going back to Madison for exams. So I started working there. That was a long story. Started working at Blackwolf run as fall was coming along in the end of the season was creeping up. I decided that I was going to send out resumes to another golf course or several other golf coursesn't find somewhere to spend the rest of the fall, and thought, well, this is really cool, you know, like being on a golf course every day is really neat. Well, I worked at Black Wulf from the Straights course at Whistling Straits was under construction. I got to spend a fair bit of time out there seeing that happen, and it was that it's like, Okay, building golf courses is neat.

00:18:51
Speaker 4: I want to do this.

00:18:53
Speaker 5: By that point, I reached out to a handful of architects. I talked to Tom Doak, I talked to Bill Corr.

00:18:58
Speaker 4: I believe.

00:19:00
Speaker 5: I'd met a few other architects that had come through Black Wolf while I was there, and for the most part, especially Tom and Bill. You know, I asked for advice and they they said, A, see as many golf courses as you can, and b learn how to run equipment, and I wasn't, you know, financially, I wasn't in a place where I could just travel around and play golf. I never had access to private clubs, so I thought, you know, one of the things I learned quickly at black Wolf Run was that superintendents are really generous about sharing their golf courses with people in that business and people have an interest. So through that, I realized, I can see golf courses this way. If I work for superintendents and work at cool places, that will open some doors for me to study other golf courses. So the three letters I sent out went to Pine Valley, Crystal Downs, and the sand Hills, and the first superintendent to get back to me was Corey Crandall at the sand Hills and said, you know, we're getting late in the summer.

00:19:54
Speaker 4: We shut down in October.

00:19:55
Speaker 5: If you want to come out for a few months and help us get ready for winter, that'd be great.

00:19:58
Speaker 4: We could use the help. So I went on there for.

00:20:00
Speaker 5: Two months until they shut down, and just something clicked at that point, like Okay, I'm going to keep doing this. And while I was at the sand Hills, I went to Prairie Dunes and saw some of the other golf courses out that way, which is not easy to do from the sand hills. And that was before a lot of the golf courses in Nebraska existed that people rave about today. But that was my way of seeing a lot of golf courses. So from there I went to Scottsdale for the winter, and then on to Riviera, where I worked for a legendary golf course superintendent named Paul Latshaw who had worked at Augusta National, and Oakamont and Congressional and a bunch of other places along the way and hosted a bunch of US opens and the handful of masters. And his son was the superintendent of Marion at the time, So one side worked for mister Latchaw Riviera.

00:20:49
Speaker 4: That opened a lot of doors.

00:20:50
Speaker 5: Starting first with his working for his son Paul at Marion, and then from Marion I went on to.

00:20:59
Speaker 4: Shinnecock.

00:21:01
Speaker 5: From Shinnacok, I went to Augusta, and I would later work at Pine Valley and the Old Course for a bit. But the Augusta stint was, you know, obviously unique one. They were all great opportunities, but Augusta, obviously it was a really exciting. You know, that was the first one they actually had me fly down for an interview and they kind of pee in a cup and give them my criminal history and whatever else. It was an interview unlike anything else. You know, just coming down to make seven bucks an hour? Do I really have to do? I really have to buy a two hundred and fifty dollars flight? Yeah, because you know I wasn't you know, I think I made a minimum wage or just above that for most of that time, and I literally lived out of my you know, my meercury cougar for most of that time, which was great. I could play a bunch of free golf at some really cool place. Doesn't get access to study as many golf courses as I could see. But my idea was, you know, I'm just going to travel around. I'll get a job somewhere for three to six months, be able to study that golf course and then also see all the golf.

00:22:00
Speaker 4: In the area that I wanted to see.

00:22:01
Speaker 5: And once I felt like I'd covered that all the bases locally, I would send out more resumes and bounce around and you know, got to walk and study five or six or seven hundred golf courses that way, and yeah, in addition to work in some really cool places and being able to mow grains and rake bunkers that some of the best golf courses in the world. There's a lot to be learned through that experience about architecture and building golf that's both interesting and great and also sustainable. Understanding what it takes to maintain a golf course is a really important part of understanding what you can build.

00:22:37
Speaker 1: Absolutely, and I love this story. I knew a little bit about it, but I hadn't hadn't got that gotten that level of detail from you about it before. And I love that because whenever occasionally I get young people emailing me and asking me how they can get into golf architecture, and the first thing I tell them is that you shouldn't be asking me, you know, ask somebody like Brian Schneider, like that's it's not really my uh, that's not what my career is. But uh. The second thing I tell them is that you can go work on these maintenance crews, and that is a hell of a good way to go see a bunch of great golf courses. Because the superintendent community is so generous and Also they're looking for labor. I mean, there are these are these are jobs that you can go get and they're good jobs, and you get to see some amazing places and learn a ton not only about maintenance if that's what you end up wanting to go into, which it might be, but also if you're if you have this inkling that you want to pursue architecture, it's a great first step to do. So you spend some time at Augusta National obviously walking the course. Did you spend a fair amount of time like walk mowing the greens and just kind of going over the surfaces daily.

00:23:50
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was fortunate too.

00:23:53
Speaker 5: Yeah, they let Mimo greens there, which is cool, amazing fact that's pretty good at it. You know, they're always casual kind of tests between the guys in the maintenance grew who could mow the straightest lines. There was a local guy, Chris Anderson. I don't know what Chris is up to these days. I suspect he's not working there anymore, but you know, he was kind of the incumbent champ. So there was always a competition with Chris Tosy who could try and knock him off. But the mowing greens at Augusta was in honor and a real treat.

00:24:21
Speaker 1: What did that What did that experience teach you about the about the designs of those greens?

00:24:29
Speaker 5: You know that you know, Augusta along with a lot of the other places that i'd worked, you know, to create something great. You know, there's a certain level of severity involved, and that varies. You know, the greens at Shinnakok, I'm not sure anyone would describe it severe necessarily, though they can be at us open speeds. But the original concept of Augusta was just different and based on strategic co answert to the golf course that Mackenzie and mister Jones to instill there centered around bold green complexes, and the boldness of the green complexes enabled them to really limit how many hazards they chose to build. I think there were twenty two bunkers something like that too, right, And you know they didn't need many buckers to make the holes interesting because the land itself supplied a lot of the interest, and the greens augmented what the topography had already supplied. So there were bold, wild greens and that was the primary defense of the golf course.

00:25:38
Speaker 1: Is there a feature on one of the greens there that you think is underappreciated, something that stuck out to you when you were walking over it.

00:25:49
Speaker 5: You know, things have changed so much, but at the time the fourteenth and the fifth or two greens that really stood out to me as having you know, and I hadn't been to St. Andrew's that point, but when you study the old course as well, you know there's something severe at the front of the green and then a relatively either the green either runs away a little bit from there or it's very shallow.

00:26:12
Speaker 4: Once you get up top. So you've got to find in.

00:26:15
Speaker 5: A way to negotiate that steep slope at the front, and you don't have a whole lot of room up top to fly the ball over that thing and try and stop it, especially for the average player, And that used to be more true at Augusta. I mean a the golf course plays shorter now than it ever has, I would say, and just the style of golf in twenty twenty six versus the style of golf when I was there in two thousand and certainly going back to the seventies and eighties has changed so dramatically that players can now just routinely flight over that contour and stop the ball pretty quickly, and negotiating those severe fronting slopes is less problematical these days than it used to be, but it's still a brilliant feature for ninety nine point nine percent of golfers out there, is you know, getting a ball somehow on that top shelf and stopping before you roll off the back.

00:27:08
Speaker 1: There's almost a genre of Augusta National Green that the fifth and the fourteenth embody. I think the first is also similar in this regard where you have what you're talking about, that false front or some kind of channel in front of it, like you find on the sixth hole at St. Andrews or obviously the Valley of Sin or even the seventeenth the Road Green with that kind of swoop up at the beginning, and then in Augusta you get this, you know, it levels out into a middle section where you find maybe some of the easier pins, at least this is the case on the first hole, and then you get those back shelves, which can be very difficult, or if they have more feeding contours like the fourteenth Green, then you can have some funnel pins up there. But the fifth, the fourteenth, and the first all kind of strike me as sort of similar, like where they they're not the same, but they are variations on a theme in a way, with that false front and the back shelves. Is that something that I mean, something that stuck out to me when I saw the course for the first time. I wonder if that resonated with.

00:28:18
Speaker 5: You absolutely, and then seeing the old course after that, Yeah, certainly, all of a sudden it's you know, the light bulb goes off and you understand that that you know, there's so many of those brilliant greens on the old course where you know, there's just something at the front of the green to negotiate and oftentimes tends to favor or running shot of some sort that just kind of climbs up and then settles on the back side. And once you see that over and over it the old course, you understand the way that feature was built into those remaining greens at Augusta, and the original version of Augusta had more of those, you know, the seventh was a variation on that theme.

00:28:58
Speaker 4: I think the seventeenth was also along those lines.

00:29:01
Speaker 5: You know, there there were more greens in Augusta that asked you to play shouts that way at a time in golf history when more golf was played on the ground than through the air.

00:29:11
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, And it's you know, this is really the what the Bart's template is supposed to be. It's this opportunity to run the ball up and over a slope and show your precision in that way. That's kind of what those old course holes have. And it's what you know when people played Augusta National more along the ground. I guess, I guess that's what those holes had. I mean, is there a way to bring this back to modern golf architecture? Do you have any hope for for that type of shot that lands short of a green and runs up or through or over whatever some kind of interesting slope and gets there, Like, how do you recreate that?

00:29:49
Speaker 4: I wish, you know, I wish.

00:29:51
Speaker 5: I think it's it's a technology issue as much as anything. I mean, the fact that people hit the ball further now, but it's we're talking high level golf. I mean, the average golf still runs a ball around and you know that the average player can't just loft the ball way up in the air and get to stop after two bounces. So a lot of golf is still played that way. I wish more was. You know, I love watching the old shells wonderful world of golf matches and you see some of the best players in the world running for woods onto greens. Nobody does that anymore, but that was just the way the game is played back then, you know it. Yeah, I don't know how to get that back, and I wish we could. I mean, wind and firm greens are really the two things that force that to work. I mean, if you're playing into the six at Saint Andrews with a pretty severe tail wind and the green is firm, you know, even the best players in the world might have to think about approaching front hole locations a little differently than they might on other days. But that's you know, the Open Championship is really the one time of year we get to see that, you know, the best players forced to play golf in a different way on some days the gusts to really they don't play those holes the same way anymore, which which is unfortunate. I mean it's when I play golf, I'm rarely trying to score as well as possible. I just like hitting the kind of shots that I think are fun and to me, that's running.

00:31:21
Speaker 4: The ball on the ground and.

00:31:24
Speaker 5: Rolling around cool contours and at the front of greens or in greens, and Saint Andrews is the sort of place that in North Berwick is another one. You know a handful of golf courses in the UK that do that better than anywhere, and it's just they're a riot to play because that's the kind of golf I enjoy. I don't know if all golf I don't think all golfers enjoy the same things I enjoy, but I do think that's a fun style of golf. And if you can find ways to force good players to hit shots like that, I think there are ways to doers. But it certainly involves a little bit of wind in firm greens.

00:32:01
Speaker 1: When you read what Alistair mackenzie wrote about Augusta National early in the course's life, when you when you consider what Bobby Jones thought about the course, you see how much they were devoted to this idea that you're talking about running the ball up onto the green. So many of the holes were designed for that kind of shot. The entire design of the hole kind of revolved around this type of approach, and it is just interesting that that doesn't exist in the Masters more or less anymore, unless unless you get some kind of exceptional set of conditions between firmness and wind in a particular april, which is kind of rare. But I wonder if you know, when you look at augusta nastional, do you think it ever really lived up to Mackenzie and Jones's hopes for firmness, Because it's kind of an interesting site for you know, the old course of the America's right, because it's not a link sland site by any stretch of the imagination. It's basically the opposite of that. Do you think it was ever like firm enough? Do you think it ever played like Mackenzie and Jones wanted it to play.

00:33:15
Speaker 4: I'd be surprised.

00:33:16
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think I've got to think plays today it has the capacity to play more firm than never has, just because there's so much infrastructure underground that enables that. But the the soils don't generally lean themselves or lend themselves towards fast and firm if the weather isn't cooperating, you know, you certainly with Georgia clay, it can get baked out in rock hard, so at certain times of the year, I suspect that, yeah, that might have been a thing there, as you can play in the South today and find you know, firm and bouncy bermuda courses on southern.

00:33:53
Speaker 4: Clay that can exist.

00:33:56
Speaker 5: But it's entirely depend on the whether if it did or not. And I think that, you know, the seventh hole at Augusta has changed so much, but the original was very much built for a run up shot.

00:34:09
Speaker 4: It was based.

00:34:09
Speaker 5: You know, there was a valley of sin on the front left part of the green and a very shallow shelf beyond that, and I think as much as any of the holes there, it was a relatively short hole in design to play for that sort of shot. But I think in the early days, I don't know if it was Byron Nelson or Sam Stein or someone actually drove the green on that hole and what maybe drove over the green, but.

00:34:29
Speaker 4: I don't know that never played quite the way they'd hoped. But I think.

00:34:32
Speaker 5: Certainly the many written references to the old course and and the kind of the ambition for the style of the golf course, you know, the old course played into that so.

00:34:43
Speaker 4: Much, and in addition to a bunch of other places.

00:34:45
Speaker 5: I mean, I'd written an article a few years ago now, I think for the met Golfer about how you know Augusta is the most famous Tembla course in the world, and you know so many of the holes in Augusta were based on famous holes from the UK.

00:34:59
Speaker 4: And many of those from Saint Andrew's.

00:35:09
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00:38:03
Speaker 5: Yeah, the context around Michael Kaiser and his project in Florida is based on conversations we'd had just about how fascinating and unique the original version of Augusta National was. You know that it was relatively hazard free and you know, insanely wide fairways on really hilly ground, relatively few trees at the time, and they certainly weren't much of a factor on the way the holes were played, and it was based again largely on the topography. And you know, the way with the entire place essentially mote is fairway, The way that balls could get away from the ideal position and make shots into those bold and wild greens more complicated. Yeah, the coordination of the contouring in and around the greens in conjunction with what was happening through the fairways made it a really compelling golf course without a whole lot of bunkering necessary. And obviously the water hazards have been a part of the golf course since the beginning, though they've all evolved and changed pretty substantially over the years. But I think it's the hilliness of the ground and the vast areas of short grass.

00:39:19
Speaker 4: Allowing your ball to roll and roll and roll.

00:39:21
Speaker 5: Out of position in conjunction with boldly contry green complexes that made that something really unique and not something you see replicated very often these days. I mean, GUS is such an influential place, The Masters is such an influential event, but the original version of Augusta National really isn't something that I don't think people have sought to latch onto his inspiration and design golf in that way very often these days.

00:39:52
Speaker 1: Do you think that the relatively minimal bunkering is something that makes that original course stand out a lot and maybe is part of the inspiration that you can take from it.

00:40:06
Speaker 4: Absolutely? Absolutely.

00:40:08
Speaker 5: I'm not alone in thinking that bunkering is probably overused as a hazard, and there are reasons why there are probably more bunkers on golf courses today than there were twenty years ago. That have nothing to do with how goalf holes play. But yeah, I think latching onto using bunkers or artificial hazards sparingly is a very interesting one and obvious the more interesting the piece of land is you're working with, and the freedom through your client to build greens with substantial slope or contour allows you to minimize how much bunkering you need to add to make wholes interesting.

00:40:53
Speaker 1: Why do you think that so many current architects use a lot of bunkers. You said earlier that it doesn't have much to do with how things play. Does that implying that it has more to do with how they look?

00:41:06
Speaker 5: Yes, yes, yeah, I'm not the first one to say that, but yeah, Instagram and drone photography, and there are a lot of marketing reasons for things to look cool, and bunkers are an easy way to add visual interest.

00:41:23
Speaker 4: But they're also a crutch.

00:41:25
Speaker 5: You know, It's very easy to add more sand here and more sand there, But I think that's been pretty overdone, and the idea of simplifying things and pairing it back is an interesting concept to pursue.

00:41:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's why that original version of Augusta National might seem so strange or radical now because of that that lack of color contrast. You know, we've kind of trained our eyes to look for the framing of white sand and green grass to help us understand what a golf hole looks like or what it's trying to convey, and the original Augusta Nashville, by comparison, is is pretty bare.

00:42:10
Speaker 4: Now.

00:42:11
Speaker 1: Another strange thing about it is those green shapes, the wild kind of random tongues sticking out between bunkers and doing all that sort of stuff. So is that something that you can see yourself adapting.

00:42:29
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's an interesting point. It's not just the contouring of the greens and the boldness that the shapes were bizarre. Yeah, the fourth had that long, skinny tongue that couldn't have been more than five or six steps wide, extending between the front right bunker and the left bunker, the boomerang shape of the original ninth de other were very eclectic shapes that featured a lot of little lobes and tongues. You know, it's easy to see why things like that may not survive, because you know, there's certain they puts on those greens where you couldn't get anywhere near the golf you know, where the hole was cut in Certa, certain situations you've missed in the wrong place, and golfers tend to not like that too much, and superintendents don't like that if you're pulling a wedge off the green instead of trying to hunt around something. But you know, one of the funny things about Augusta is that it's one of the places. You know, they certainly have more bunkers now than they did in nineteen thirty four, but the bunkers are not something that people connect with Augusta visually. You know, it's not the bunkers that make it pretty. In fact, a lot of the bunkers are very plain looking and slightly awkward in places. You know, it's the rolling contouring and the greens and the surrounds and the beautiful flowers and the trees, and you know, there's so much else going on about that place that makes it beautiful that an abundance of bunkers wouldn't really add to that picture. And even though they've added some, the bunkers aren't what make that pretty. So I think, you know, leaning into that style if you've got a site that that has ample natural beauty, because a great example of how restraint in building for adding features or particularly bunkers isn't necessary. Just you know, it goes back to the idea of minimalism. Just let the site be the star of the show and try not to do too much and get in its way.

00:44:26
Speaker 1: Something else that's really interesting about the nineteen thirties version of Augusta National, and that might be a little bit foreign to people who are familiar with the course right now, is that it had all this interesting mounding. Some of this remains, like if you think of the eighth green, the mounding around the eighth green is still there. There are still some greens like like six and a couple of others that have mounding on the exterior of the greens that is kind of representative of what the original style was. But a lot more holes on the original course had kind of this alpinization or not chocolate drops that are bigger than that, but mounding that was intended to be a meaningful hazard on the course. What do you make of that aspect of the initial design at Augusta National. Do you find that interesting?

00:45:21
Speaker 5: The eleventh hole is a great example of that. You know, there are there, I think two really prominent mounds on the front right edge of the green that dictated strategy back to the tee. You know, they very much influenced where you wanted to leave your t shot depending on where the hole was, and they were hazards that you had to negotiate if you were out of position, but you could also use them to help you steer a ball around to those back left pins if you were in the right place in the fairway and hit the right right type of shot coming.

00:45:49
Speaker 4: Into the green.

00:45:52
Speaker 5: You know, the eleventh was a very complex hole back in the day. That's certainly gotten much longer and much narrower than it once was, and the options for how to play that hole have been limited. But those mounds near the green were a really important feature of that hole that you know they've been I think they still kind of exist, but in a decreased form, and because the hole has been narrowed so much, they just don't play. They don't affect strategy the way they used to. And I think the seventeenth, if our call correctly, the seventeenth was originally based on the fourteenth green, the old course and had a really prominent mount in the front left corner with some pins stuck behind it. That's another one where they would have come into play, you know, every day, for every day play. The fourteenth featured a moundered a big mounded two in the approach on the right. Yeah, there were quite a few of those hazards out there that, for whatever reason, have been wiped out over the years.

00:46:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, just reshaped or massaged in certain ways that you know, have made them less impactful. I guess on the ball, the ones on eleven, specifically short right of the green. I think the idea initially was that if you got to the left side of that fairway, which was used to be the outside of the dog lay, because the leven was initially a big dog leg to the right, if you got to the left side of the fairway, then you could kind of hit your ball into those mounds and it would start to arc toward the green and you could kind of avoid the water hazard on the left in that way. But now I think what happens is if you play your ball into those it filters more straight toward the water, so it doesn't quite do what those mounds originally were meant to do. But you know, since we so rarely see players feeding it into the green in that way, the difference maybe doesn't register that much. But you know, you were talking earlier about all the interesting stuff that Augusta National has in front of its greens. Those mounds used to be certainly one of those one of those things that kind of, you know, interacted with the ball when it would land before the green and start running on.

00:48:08
Speaker 5: And to the rest of my knowledge, they were all mode at fairway height. You know, there were things that you could depending on where you were, you could use them to your advantage and run balls over and off of them, But if you're on the wrong spot, you'd most likely have to carry them and try and stop a ball on the backside, which is a fascinating hazard near a green.

00:48:26
Speaker 1: I want to go back to something you were saying earlier about the combination of Augusta National's with its hilliness and the severity of the green complexes. There's something there that really kind of supercharges strategy, right, because if your ball gets moving on the wrong direction on one of those really hilly sections of the property, on one of those big slopes, then there's the chance that your angle into the green on the next shot could really worsen by magnitudes, right, whereas most courses you don't get that extreme of a difference between different positions in the fair way. So you were starting to discuss that a little bit. But I want to I want to hear more about that. What are kind of your thoughts about the nature of the property paired with the with paired with the green complexes. Why is that so important?

00:49:22
Speaker 5: At Augusta there are a number of holes there where you know they're built in the side slopes. Obviously, the golf courses benched into the side of a big steep hill, and quite a few of the holes run across the side slopes, and to a lesser extent these days it was still to a certain degree the ability to shape you're shot off the tee on some of those holes, to flay a draw into a ferry that's left right, for instance, or a fade into a fairy that slops the other way. It can help you keep a ball in a certain part of the fairway. And when they were very wide, you know that that matter more. Adding trees and adding rough has kind of narrowed the fairways to the point where the ideal position from which to approach the green lives somewhere in that thirty.

00:50:17
Speaker 4: Five yard forty range.

00:50:19
Speaker 5: You know, the width that's provided to you now, Somewhere in there generally is the place you want to be coming in from. And when the fairways were eighty yards wide as opposed to thirty five, allowing a ball to roll another thirty yards down the hill to the left, meant you were that much further away from the ideal position. When you add trees and add rough your ball can only roll so far away from the ideal position. And I think you know that mister Jones had this most brilliant kind of summary of strategic design when you talked about the various ways, and it's reasonably the long quote which I don't fully remember, but he talked about the various ways in which you can penalize misplayed shots.

00:51:01
Speaker 4: You know, one of.

00:51:02
Speaker 5: Which is to immediately put you in a hazard at a bunker. You know, the penalties immediate. You know, another option is to let you get yourself into the wrong position. And it's only until you've gotten to that bad position you realize that you've been had and your second shot is a lot more difficult.

00:51:18
Speaker 4: You know, the penalty is not immediate.

00:51:20
Speaker 5: It's in making the succession of the following shots more difficult than they would have been if you put yourself in the right position. And the original version with Gusta was that, I mean, he gave you all the room in the world to hang yourself and let you know, let a tea. You know, left it up to the golfer to determine their own preferred path from tee to the whole orreas. Now, the golf course, like many American championship golf courses, is much more prescriptive. I mean, it tells you how the hole should be played. It doesn't allow you nearly as much freedom to sort out your own roof based on your own game. So it's a less complex test now, I would say, certainly for the average golfer. You know, the focus the Masters has always been an important event in Augusta, but I think it's the the vast disparity between the way the average golfer plays golf now versus the professional golfer has really forced Augusta to take their golf course in a direction that challenges the better players. You know, that gap was far narrower fifty years ago, seventy years ago. But I think in order to challenge the best players in the world, maybe the golf course is less compelling, less interesting, less you know, provides less freedom than the original version did.

00:52:40
Speaker 1: A great example of what you're talking about is the fourteenth hole, yes, which I still love, but the original version of that hole was pretty much wide open. You could play anywhere within a very wide hole corridor. But if you let your ball run down to the right it kind of sits on a side slope, then your next shot was going to be blind. So if you weren't in control of your ball as you played out to the right, then then too bad. You couldn't see the green on your next shot. But also if you avoided the bunker that used to be in front of the tee and that took up the right side of the fairway, if you played well away from that bunker, there was a big mound in front of the green that would block your view of it, and so you kind of had to thread the needle there. You had to hit a particular spot in the fairway, taking on the bunker and also controlling your ball so that it stayed in a certain place in the fairway in order to have that good view of the green, and that was how the strategy of the hole worked. Now there are trees on either side, you don't have that bunker anymore. The hole is bunkerless. But the challenge is threading your ball kind of between the trees and holding it up against the slope, keeping it from going into either tree line. Very challenging shot, and it's a very good test for pros, right, it's a great test of a drive for the pros. It really shows whether they have control of their ball and then playing into the green they also have to have similar control off off of a pretty steep lie. But I think that's a good example of how things have shifted, where whereas before it was the land that was the hazard and the topography and the blindness and what your ball might do when it hits the ground, and now trees have a lot to do with it.

00:54:32
Speaker 5: I guess, right, yeah, And it's even more complex than that. I mean, you spelled out the challenges of playing into that green from the right, the blindness, and you're playing that much further uphill at the same time, and you're probably you know, adding a couple of clubs to your approach shots. If as opposed, if you were staying up the left, you could shorten the hole. But you know there's additional complexity and that the green tilted and still does pretty.

00:55:00
Speaker 4: Hard from left to right.

00:55:01
Speaker 5: Right with the lot of people you're playing, you know, if you're out the right, you're playing into the green from an advantageous angle. You're playing more into the slope. So you've got that advantage at the expense of probably a longer shot into the green and also the blindness you mentioned.

00:55:19
Speaker 4: So you've got your choice.

00:55:20
Speaker 5: Are you comfortable with that in exchange for a preferred angle into the slope of the green, or do you want to cut off some distance and play up the left and you might get a better view of the hole, But the green tends to slide away from me a little bit, and on some days, depending where the pin is, you've seen many golfers kind of play a little cut into the back of the left corner of the green that just takes the two or three tiers and settles within three feet of the pin. When it's cut, we are on the right, which is one of the most fascinating shots to watch on the golf course. So there are days, depending on where the pin is cut, where you might prefer to be up the left. There are other days when you might prefer to be up the right, and it offered that additional level of complexity and the way the golf, the green itself, the green complex was designed that it gave you the freedom to choose how you want to play the hole. And of course not everyone hits the shot they want to hit, so you misplay your t shot and then you're stuck with what.

00:56:11
Speaker 4: You're stuck with.

00:56:12
Speaker 5: But it gave you so much freedom to choose how you wanted to play the hole. And narrowing fairways, adding rough adding trees limits those options and remove some of the complexity.

00:56:24
Speaker 4: But again to your point, still preserves the challenge of.

00:56:26
Speaker 5: The golf course for the best players in the world, but it's a more prescriptive, less.

00:56:33
Speaker 4: Complex challenge.

00:56:34
Speaker 1: I would say, so for you, when you're designing a course that is primarily going to be four average golfers, do you think a lot about the ground in the way that we've just been talking about it with the fourteenth hole? Is that something that for you is still relevant for the average golfer.

00:56:54
Speaker 5: Absolutely, and you know, I admittedly I haven't had many opportunities does e gulf of my own. You know, so much of what I've done over my career has been working for Tom and learn so much through him. But I'll bring up Old Barn Well because it's one of the few opportunities I've had, along with Blake Conan, to design something from scratch, you know, one of the things so I worked.

00:57:17
Speaker 4: I worked the two.

00:57:18
Speaker 5: Thousand Masters, and it wasn't until two years ago that I'd gotten back to Augusta and I was shocked with how much the golf course has changed. But one of the things that I really loved and watching play, I went back last year as well, so I went two years in a row. One of the things I loved seeing at Augusta, which is something that every great golf course in America should take note of. The fairways are really steep there, and balls stop in the fairways because you know, they're overseed with rye grass.

00:57:47
Speaker 4: Which is a little sticky.

00:57:49
Speaker 5: But they're also not mowing the fairways as tight as they can because if they did, all the balls row to the flat low sides of the fairway. So the balls stay on slopes in the fairways a go to national in places, and on side slopes or down slopes where balls don't stop on a lot of golf courses in America now, our best golf courses are more in their fairways, far tighter than they need to be, and balls don't stick on side slopes anymore. That's that's a really important part of the challenge at Augustin National. And they get that, and they could mow the fairways twice as short, and they choose not to because they recognize the value of having difficult lies in the fairways and trying to play a cut into a green when the ball's eight inches above your feet is a tough shot. And that still remains at Augustin National at an age where they could maintain the golf course however they want, they choose to leave their fairways a little longer and a little stickier than most places do these days because they recognize that challenge. So, getting back to my own work old Barningwell, there are a number of holes there where you know, if you're content to hit a two hundred and forty yard te shot, you're in a relatively flat spot and you can probably see where you're going to go, and holes like the fifth, the eighteenth, the twelfth more than any If you want to hit them all three hundred yards off the tee, you're going to run out of level space and you're probably going to slide down a side slope and maybe be blind from there. You might have a better angle, but you're not going to see where you're going, and you're going to have a shorter shot in because you've chosen to hit it to a place. You've chosen to take driver to a place where it'll shorten your approach shot. But we're not going to you a great look at the green. So we've designed those holes in a way where you can choose your poison, you know, and I think most golf instructor's advisor to tell you get just hit driver, hit as far as you can, and we understand that most people will do that, but we didn't want there to be the advantage of length plus another.

00:59:53
Speaker 4: Advantage, you know.

00:59:54
Speaker 5: We want to counteract that a bit with it's going to be blind for you, or you might have a tougher angle into the green from that spot that the land is going to push you into a place where your angle is going to be a little tougher. So we tried to incorporate that into that idea into a number of the holes that Old Barnwell, utilizing the topography through the routing and the golf course in a way that we could challenge longer hitters will still give in the shorter player, the player who chooses to lay up other options. And the agronomy played into that too. You know, when we were expecting the grasses for the golf course, we had the conversation with our superintendents that we let's choose a grass that doesn't have to be mown super tight where balls will stop on these side slopes. And I think for the most part that's worked out really well. You know, they maintain the golf the fairways in a way where balls will stay on those side slopes, and I think that's a really important part of the challenge there.

01:00:46
Speaker 1: It's something that works really well at Old Barnwell because partly because the fairways often have these broad slopes, and so there is that dimension to the game that you're talking about where if you're in a certain position, you might be playing off of an uncomfortable lie ball below your feet, ball above your feet, et cetera. And then you add that to the kind of potential for blindness from certain angles and what the ball is doing as it enters the green complex and you have a lot of complexity at all Barnwell that I think you don't see at many other courses.

01:01:19
Speaker 4: For sure, the.

01:01:21
Speaker 5: Great sixth Hold, it's seminal, is one of the best examples of that, you know, and it stares you in the face. But you know, the fairway starts out relatively level. It's a mid length Par four. Green sits up on top of the hill, but you know, the closer you get to the green, the more the fairway slopes from left to right.

01:01:41
Speaker 4: And the green sets up at an angle where you know.

01:01:43
Speaker 5: It kind of runs from seven o'clock to one o'clock or eight o'clock to two o'clock, and it's pretty narrow right to left. So the further right you go, the shell over the green gets. And you know, the further you drive your ball, the more the fairway is going to shove you to the right and of that tough angle, and you're going to be that much further below the green. If you're content to lay back a little bit, you can find the left side of the fairway, which is, you know, significantly higher than the right side and also affords you a better angle.

01:02:09
Speaker 4: It's a brilliant example of how.

01:02:11
Speaker 5: To use topography to allow the golfer to make the choice of which approach shot they prefer and hit their t shot accordingly.

01:02:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, getting back to the old version of Augusta National real quick for a last couple of wrap up questions. Here, is there one hole that you wish would be restored to its initial version.

01:02:38
Speaker 5: I don't know if I'd go that far, but I would love to see the original version of the tenth, which was a wildly different hole than the current iteration, which I think is a great hole in a very challenging hole. But you know, that massive squiggly fairway bunker that really doesn't come into play for anyone these days, you know, is the kind of one remaining example of the original bunkering style out there, and that was a green side bunker originally, you know, the green sat the original green sat in a hollow to the right of that, and it was plagued by maintenance issues and I think one of the first masters there were a few inches of water in it on one of the days and they had to play around a big puddle in the green. So it got moved pretty quickly after, I think by nineteen thirty seven to thirty eight, and then pushed back to where it is today and it's a brilliant green by Perry Maxwell. But the original version of that hole I think was drivable, or very nearly drivable, and you had to keep your ball out to the right and if you pulled to the left you were kind of blind into that shallow green and over the big sprawling bunker. And it wasn't a hard hole, I don't think, but it was a pretty unique hole and a fun clever hole.

01:03:50
Speaker 4: And there aren't many.

01:03:51
Speaker 5: Just fun, clever, easy holes in Augusta, Nashville anymore. So I don't think it would make for a very compelling hole for the pros, but I think it was a unique hole and just a fun short part three that Mackenzie exceled at.

01:04:06
Speaker 1: I'd like to see somebody try that hole on another course, because it is really cool. I mean it just to give people an idea of how the strategy changed when they move the green. Everybody knows about the speed slot. Now, right, you hook your ball around the trees to get to that speed slot, that big hollow that's in the left half of the fairway, and if you get down into that, then that's the best place to be. You get the distance advantage, you get an angle advantage going into a green that slopes from right to left. That's what you want to get to and you have to hit a very hard shot to get there. So it makes sense. But what people always forget is that on the right half of the fairway and the tenth fairway, there's this kind of plateau and that's where you used to want to be in order to approach the old tenth Green, which was tucked, as you said, into that little saddle to the right of the big Mackenzie bunker. And so the challenge was staying up on the place and not letting your ball run down the speed slot, because if your ball round down the speed slot, then you have this crazy shot over the big bunker to a green that you couldn't see from down below. And it's so the original hole made total sense as strategically as a short part four, and it's such a clever hole. But the way they reversed the strategy when they moved the green back was also really smart, you know, like it's still a pretty good strategic hole, even though they changed the part of the fairway that you want to be in.

01:05:35
Speaker 4: Yeah.

01:05:36
Speaker 1: I always thought that was really interesting.

01:05:38
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's a fascinating evolution and both very clever to your point, in both using the ground contour in ways that make the whole really interesting.

01:05:46
Speaker 1: Yeah. Is there a hole that you think became better over time at Augusta National where you look at the original and you say, Okay, I can see why they did what they did.

01:05:59
Speaker 4: I mentioned it earlier.

01:06:00
Speaker 5: The original fourth Green had that long tongue in the front, which seemed like a very odd, odd thing to include.

01:06:07
Speaker 2: Yeah.

01:06:07
Speaker 1: I don't know when you would ever use it, because you can't really use it to run your ball up. Nobody's like aiming for that.

01:06:12
Speaker 5: No, I don't know if it's better or worse, but you know, it's certainly less original than it used to be, but probably more.

01:06:19
Speaker 4: Sensible than it once was.

01:06:24
Speaker 5: A lot of length has been added to the golf course, certainly, and nowadays that's necessary. You know, there are a handful of holes that still really well reflect the original intent. The thirteenth, you know, I hate in general the idea of needing to add lengths to golf courses, but it does feel like that's getting closer to presenting a really scary second shot and a hole that had gotten easy. He's not the right word, but players are here hitting very short clubs into that hole not too long ago, and it's fun to see that second shop. You're really scared one again.

01:07:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, the hole has some tension back, you know, yes, if you imagine that, Like the original thirteenth hole is four hundred and sixty something arts, which now for the Masters field is a short for so what are you gonna do? Got to move?

01:07:17
Speaker 4: The tell sixteenth is one I would like to see. I mean, that's interesting.

01:07:20
Speaker 5: The sixteenth is a very compelling hole during the tournament. The lower hole locations are really fun to watch, and it's it's always amusing when somebody gets stuck up top when the pins down below. But it's a really it's a fun hole to watch, and it's you know, it's one of those holes where you're you're engaged for the you're engaged with what the ball is doing for a really long time. You know, it takes a while for a ball to come to rest on that green, and I think that's one of the things that makes golf interesting to watch and certainly interesting to play, is you know, the amount of time your ball is rolling on the ground, and sixteen presents that pretty well. But the original version, I think was also so it would have been a really fun hole for them to watch. It was a wild green to the left side of the creek that's now the pond on the left side of the current sixteenth green.

01:08:10
Speaker 4: It looked like a pretty neat, shorter.

01:08:13
Speaker 5: Maybe easier hole, but also a very cool green in a really neat.

01:08:18
Speaker 1: Setting, very neat idea for a part three again, something that you know, maybe maybe somebody should try at another course. But yeah, the green kind of almost had a reverse radan characteristic to it, I guess where there's a big kicker slope on the left where it looked like if you're playing the ball along the ground, which you might not be because short par three, but if you did, then that would kind of funnel your ball over to the right side of the green. But yeah, interesting hole. Today's current hole. I mean, people don't talk about it enough. That is a Robert Trent Jones golf hole. You know, entirely pretty much fully Yeah, not pretty much fully fully.

01:08:53
Speaker 5: Yeah, almost changed more than any because it's an entirely new hole.

01:08:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, Well, Brian, it's been very fun talking to you about the original Augusta National. I'm looking forward to seeing your your projects coming up in the next couple of years. I know you've got a lot of interesting stuff on the horizon. What are you working on right now, anything you want to let people know about.

01:09:14
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm very fortunate to have some cool opportunities, and the one I'm actively involved in right now is the second golf course, So the second big golf course at Old Barnwell and Aiken, and a very different piece of land, routed very differently than the first one. So trying to create something complimentary but also on a really beautiful piece of sandy land for a club that's become a really lovely place to spend time.

01:09:40
Speaker 4: So we're well into that.

01:09:41
Speaker 5: We've got most of the green shaped at this point, there's a little bit of grass going down. I've got another project, a strange coincidence. I'm also building another golf course in Aiken called New Haven New Holland Golf Club, New Holland, New Holland Golf Club for my old friend Jeff Warren, which is maybe twenty five minutes from Old Barnwell, and that's a place where, you know, all the things we've been saying about the restraint involved in kind of the simplicity the original golf course at Augusta National. It's a beautiful piece of land and that lends itself really well to golf, and I think we're taking a very restraint approach to how we're gonna build and design it.

01:10:24
Speaker 4: So that's a fun one as.

01:10:25
Speaker 1: Well, very cool looking forward to it. Yeah, the Achin area, obviously, as everybody knows, is exploding, and you've been a big part of that. So when people go to the Masters these days, they have a lot of options in the ac and area. Many of these clubs open their doors during Master's Week, sometimes even the week before Master's Week, and so you know, during during that time in April you can go play Old Barnwell, which is one of the best modern courses that you can play anywhere. And then you know, obviously, Brian, you have a couple of projects coming up there that are going to add to this scene. So pretty cool place. Thanks for coming on the pod. Fun to talk to.

01:11:01
Speaker 4: You appreciate that yet my pleasure.

01:11:10
Speaker 1: This episode of Designing Golf was produced by Will Balsam. Thank you. Will once again make sure to check out the Fried Egg Golf Pro Shop at pro shop dot Thefrida Egg dot com. My colleague Meg Atkins does a great job stocking the pro shop with really cool items, and in particular, the major season Mackenzie Bunker illustration done by Cameron Hurtis is just so cool. I have it on a few items myself. It's kind of subtle, it doesn't scream at you, but it's also instantly recognizable. Lots of cool stuff at pro shop dot the fried Egg dot com. It's a great way to support our company. Thank you for listening. Enjoy the Masters, and we'll be back again soon after the Masters with another episode.