2024 Solheim Cup at Robert Trent Jones Golf Club

00:00:00
Speaker 1: I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset.

00:00:02
Speaker 2: When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset. And when I find my ball.

00:00:06
Speaker 3: In a fried egg Friday egg, the dreaded Frida Egg Friday Frida fridagg.

00:00:11
Speaker 2: Bride egg, Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the.

00:00:37
Speaker 4: Welcome back to another edition of the Friday Golf Podcast. I am your host, Andy Johnson. Today we have a jam packed episode that is going to center around the Solheim Cup. First, I will be joined by Meg Atkins from our team who will be on the ground covering the event. We're gonna just kind of touch on the big storylines, uh see what she's excited to watch, and just kind of talk about the Solheim Cup in a broader sense. Then after that, I am joined by Robert Trent Jones Golf Club's superintendent Scott Furlong to just talk about his career RTJ, what the golf course is, what we should expect for the Solheim Cup, and you know, just being a superintendent at RTJ. So super exciting episode. This is an amazing week of golf just in general with everything going on. I am I'm floored to have this late September windfall. So let's get to Meg and then we'll get over to Scott. This episode is brought to you by Toro, the only brand with a full line of equipment and irrigation products to keep your golf course in top condition. Toro is serious about R and D and they're always out there listening to superintendents so they can develop products that can help you solve your biggest challenges. And when it comes to local service and support, their distributor network is second to none. See how Toro is always solving and always evolving at Toro dot com. All right, let's get to Meg Meg. Solheim Cup. We are uh, we've got the you know, back to back once we'll get back on the alternating schedule. But uh, the Solheim Cup this week super exciting, uh week of golf. I I like when the schedule makers came out with this week. It's kind of insane. It's like jammed. You have Corn Ferry Finals, you have Irish Open at Our at Royal County Downs, you have h you have Solheim Cup at RTJ, and then you also have the uh the start of FedEx Cup fall at UH at the Pro Core. Uh, you will be on the ground in UH, in the DC area at RTJ covering in person. What are you most excited about from just a sheer being there in attendance, Uh, for the first time at a Solheim Cup.

00:03:09
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm I'm excited to see. You know, I've already seen pictures of the build out of the first tea, but I am very excited for that first tea environment with it being you know, home home game for the Americans. Uh, you know, you got you got the got DC and the backdrop too, not too far from from the nation's capital.

00:03:27
Speaker 5: So expecting.

00:03:29
Speaker 3: I mean, it looks like their crowds have been out for kind of the practice rounds too, And I'm most excited for just that atmosphere Friday morning when things kick off.

00:03:39
Speaker 5: It's gonna be great.

00:03:40
Speaker 3: And you know, second thing, these Solheim Cups have delivered amazing theater the past few times around.

00:03:47
Speaker 5: I'm hoping we get another close one.

00:03:48
Speaker 3: I think we will get another close one, so that that that back and forth and that you know, the flip of matches on come Sunday and not really knowing you know what, at one point it looks like it's it's gonna be this and then half an hour later, everything's changed. You just don't get that excitement anywhere else except for these events. So those are probably the two things that that Friday morning kicking things off, and then if it's close Sunday Sunday, you'll be a blast.

00:04:16
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:04:16
Speaker 4: I feel like that was the way last last year's went. It just like the that match kind of the momentum and it flipped so dramatically. And obviously I think that the the huge storyline going into the week is the Americans and they're kind of lack of success. It's it's very similar to the Ryder Cup. It feels like the American team has just kind of generally, uh let let down in terms of expectations of in the talent. I think there's a kind of a talent disparity between the American team and the European team. One of the things I'm I'm excited about just in general is I'm pretty excited to see RTJ. It's a golf course I don't know a ton about. We've got on in this episode the back half with the Superintendent Scott for long, but like that golf courses, uh is one that hasn't gotten a ton of coverage. It's been involved with uh with professional golf for a while, but it's been renovated pretty extensively by Kyle Phillips, and I'm just, uh, I'm excited to see it on TV. I think it's it could be a low key, really good course and in atmosphere for the event.

00:05:28
Speaker 3: Agreed the pictures that I've seen and from what we've you know, we had Stacy Lewis on the pod a few weeks ago. You know, the advantage you talked about the advantage on paper for the Americans just in terms of you know, world rankings that their strokes gained categories.

00:05:48
Speaker 5: We we uh, we beat.

00:05:50
Speaker 3: The Europeans in every main strokes gained category. So that I think is going to play an important part because our TJ is a ball striker's course. Shane Bacon is on the grounds the past two days. Heard from him that it sounds like Stacy Lewis is going to be able to put her thumb on the scale a little bit more than we've seen in past Solheims, and I think we'll see it stretched out and have it played pretty long and difficult to play into the hands of the Americans. You know, they don't want it too difficult, Like you don't what Stacy say is you don't want pars winning these you know, you don't want to be a slog fest. The rough's not going to be too tall. Sounds like they cut it down over the weekend last weekend, so I think, you know, yeah, the course if hopefully, if you're Stacy Lewis, that's an advantage for your team. And in the ball strikers actually does have on her team.

00:06:50
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean the top bend talent between Cortevoo is just you know that that's something I feel like the European team doesn't doesn't really have. They don't have the horsepower that the Americans have. But that being said, weird stuff happens when you play match flay and especially these team competitions. They have a way of you know, golf is a little bit more random sport than than most and when you get these head to head match play competitions, it's just fun to watch, you know, the chaos. Who's one player on each side that you're particularly keen to watch this week and why?

00:07:30
Speaker 3: I think from the I'll start with the European side. You have, you know, leone Maguire has just come out of the gates these past two Sulheim Cups full force. You know, you don't want to see her if you're playing her on singles or in the you know, four four cents or four balls on Friday or Saturday, you don't want to see her.

00:07:54
Speaker 5: Ever, if you're on the other side.

00:07:56
Speaker 3: And how you know, with how close these have been, she has been absolutely critical to them with their success recently seven to two and one is is her record, which is just insane.

00:08:15
Speaker 5: She wasn't playing. I mean, she hasn't had that great of a year, so I think.

00:08:19
Speaker 4: That's an interesting thing, right she hasn't. It's been very disappointing year for her, and uh, you know, but she's been this killer in the Solheim Cup.

00:08:30
Speaker 3: Right And I think that's the big question is is is she going to be the Leona that we've seen this year or is she going to be the Leona from Spain last year. It's I think that on Sunday when we're you know, analyzing what happened over the past Friday, Saturday and Sunday, what's gone on what we've seen over those three days. If if Europeans on the europe is on the losing side, you're going to probably the first person you look at is going to be Leona Maguire and if she doesn't get her you know, three and a half points, which is so many points for one player to be responsible for. I think she's going to need all of that for them to come out on top again.

00:09:14
Speaker 4: So struggle of a year. But you know what her best finish of the yearth was it recently? I mean she this was the match play tournament she finished, so just like I mean, it could just be like she's just like a matchplay assassin. I think, like everybody would say, it's fluky, it's this, it's that. But I do, I do really believe that there are just certain people that thrive in match play that it's easier for them to mentally grasp or mentally you know, succeed when they understand that it's a singular opponent and they're playing one person like And I think it's also for some players that's a really difficult thing to get used to when you've been used to to, you know, everybody that we're just playing the golf course and I'm building this like you know building. I think it's a It's an interesting concept. And I think like the data people will never have enough data to where they say, like they'll just say it's it's course fit, it's it's just fluky, it's it's small sample size. But like we aren't ever going to have enough data to reach a significant point. But there's it's a completely different dynamic as a player playing match play versus playing stroke play and stroke play you're trying to build like a foundation to your house early rounds. You're trying to just stay in the tournament and give yourself a chance on the weekend to to be in contention and have a chance to win. Like you're limiting mistakes all this stuff when you go when you switch over to match play, it is like a your strategy should be different. You should play a little bit more aggressive because the double bogies hurt you less. And I think, like I would be really interested to see with this staff stitions and team competitions and like if strategy does get tweaked four match play understanding that like hey there is you know, if you're playing especially like best ball partners, like you should be very hyper aggressive. You know.

00:11:17
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that mindset switch from seventy two hole marathon to eighteen hoole sprint. You know, Leona's excelled at that. To your point about the data, like the data would does not love Leona. She doesn't hit it long, but I will not be surprised if she's pulling out those you know, deadly hybrids of hers and just putting stuff from you know, she's not long.

00:11:46
Speaker 5: She's gonna be.

00:11:47
Speaker 3: You know, that's what's so tough about Leona is you know, off the t GRT. You know, everyone hits it in the fairway that the precision game of the LPGA, in the women's game, everyone's there. She's the first one playing into these holes. Most likely she pulls out you know whatever four hybrid and sticks it to ten feet and then the pressure's on. You know, you're you're forty yards ahead of her if you're Nelly Korda. But you know she's looking got a good chance of birdie. So the game, the data is not going to like her for this course, but I'll be surprised if we don't see the Leona that we've seen in these past two Soul times.

00:12:24
Speaker 4: I think that's the other dynamic about match play that's tough is that like that there's a mental side of players that hit or that are shorter that they they all of a sudden, I know it's a disadvantage. Data wise, it's a disadvantage to be a shorter hitter. And this can work either way. If you're the shorter hitter and somebody keeps putting in the fairway forty yards ahead of you, it can be adds pressure to you. But if you hit great approaches and your approach play is on being the shorter hitter, you put an enormous amount of pressure on the long hitter because they are kind of looking at like I have, like you give them no hope unless they make birdies, like they all of a sudden get to this point where it's like, Okay, they have another fifteen footer, like they have another twenty footer. They aren't gonna make worse than a birdie or worse than a par And I have to have a really good approach just to have a chance. And I think that's like, that's the fascinating aspect of match play. And what I love about the women's game is we have it's a much wider range of playing styles and I think what match play is such a good format for is showcasing how different playing styles interact and could play against each other, and and I think that's gonna be something that's fascinating to watch this week. Who's your American woman that you are particularly keen to see?

00:13:49
Speaker 5: Yeah, I to your point earlier.

00:13:51
Speaker 3: I do think the top Lily avou In Nelly Korda Is is bearing most of the weight and the pressure of this of this team, I don't think we've ever had number one number two on our side. So outside of those two, though, I really I'm intrigued to.

00:14:13
Speaker 5: See the rookies.

00:14:15
Speaker 3: I'll cheat a little bit and I'll give you two here in Lauren Coughlin and Sarah Schmelzell. Lauren Coughlin's going to be a great fit. Just strikes the ball so well and her putting has made leaps and bounds this year. She's the best player current form wise with the past two months that she's had. So I'm really interested to see how Stacy Lewis plays her and Sarah Schmelzell where exactly they fit in. I think it's a big miss from you know, the mental side of things, from the intangible side of things. If you don't put Lauren Coglin out Friday morning somewhere in Foursomes. I don't know if the data spells out out that she's, you know, gonna be better fit for Forsom's or four ball, but with their home crowd, you know, she lives an hour away or grew up an hour away. Like, I think you gotta that's going to get the crowd going Friday morning. I think you got to put her out early. She's going to be fired up. She's gonna want to first crack that morning. She's not gonna want to sit around all day as a rookie. So who she pairs up with those interesting because last year Nellie Cordon, Allison Corpus and Lexi Thompson and Meghan King went four and oh in Forsoms. So if you're Stacy Lewis, I feel like you probably got to run that back in some way, shape or form. Maybe not completely, but that last year was the most successful the Americans have been at Forsom's. Maybe maybe Stacy Lewis pairs Lauren Coughlin and Starah Smells all up together.

00:15:57
Speaker 5: That's what That's what Susan.

00:15:59
Speaker 3: Petterson did last year with Maya Stark and Lynn Grant and put them out first on the t first match of the of the competition Friday morning. I don't think say Seliwis is going to do that. I think that's putting quite a bit on the rookie shoulders to go out first. But maybe that loosens them up a little bit and they feel a little bit less pressure because they're a two rookie team and they might not feel as much pressure. I'm really interested interested to see how much they play because they're rookies, but they're older rookies. They both have been on tour there you know there, this isn't their LPGA rookie season.

00:16:36
Speaker 5: They've been a while.

00:16:39
Speaker 4: Yeah, both in their thirties right. Just to speak to Lauren Coglan's like kind of meteoric rise, I mean she started this year at one point in March was ranked one hundred and third in the world. Yeah, she's now ranked fourteenth in the world. It's pretty incredible. I don't know exactly how many points she's learned, but I would guess based off of like Rolex ranking points earned in this year, she'd probably be a top five player, which is which is wild. It's been uh she's been outstanding, and I have to think, like so much of of these team competitions is form. You know, like golf is a variable sport and you can kind of throw a lot of times rankings out the window, and it's more about like current form. She's your best player. She should you know, one of your best players right now. She should be going out a lot, and I think like that's like it's a mistake if she's not out a lot. I think we we hold onto this rookie thing way too much in terms of like can they handle the pressure. It's like, you know what that day is golf, and it's probably the similar pressure that you feel if you're trying to win a tournament. A teeing off the first team on Sunday in a similar feel to a major championship. So put your best players out there who are playing their best early and often. So what are uh, what are what's another storyline that you're you're looking to want looking for this week? What's something that is compelling to you? Yeah?

00:18:15
Speaker 5: I think what's what's compelling?

00:18:17
Speaker 3: And obviously the main storyline is the United States trying to get the Cup back for the first time since twenty seventeen, I'm going to play you know, last half empty. Let's look ahead to Sunday afternoon. The Americans have lost the Cup again. It looks really, really dire for twenty twenty six. You're going to the Netherlands. You know, there's not going to be much familiarity for anybody on the team there. You Lexi's gonna has announced her retirement. Alison Lee is the only one on the team this year that's been part of a winning United States Soulheim Cup team.

00:18:59
Speaker 5: So you're going to go.

00:19:00
Speaker 3: Across the pond to the Netherlands with not a single person on your team having experienced winning. And it's something that Stacy Lewis talked about, is that, yeah, there's the pressure to pull it out this year, but there's also she just wants the players to experience winning because it is you know, every single person who's been a part of these winning teams, it's a highlight of their career and none of them except for Lexi and Alison Lee, have experienced that. So if it's if it's the Euros again on Sunday, it looks pretty bad for moving forward. Is it Task Force time? Do you blow things up and build it back from the ground up. What does it look like, who's your captain in twenty twenty six. It's not going to be Stacy Lewis. She's done two of these in two years, and I think she's done a great job as a captain. Like these are just these Solheim Cups just come down to, you know, the tiniest of differences in the teams. It's especially dire if the Europeans bring back Katrina Matthew. Matthew Captain extraordinaire who just got the win for GB and I and the Curtis Cup a few weeks ago, and she's won multiple Solheim Cups. So that's a storyline. You know, get ready for the debate on what is wrong with the Americans in the Solheim Cup if things go go sourly on Sunday.

00:20:27
Speaker 4: Yeah, the it would be wild to think that if they lose that Nelly Korda would have played in four Solheim Cups and lost every single one.

00:20:39
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:20:41
Speaker 4: Yeah, And while like and she comes into this one with like a very good winning percentage she's at it's sixty two, and that she's seven to four and one coming into this, like and that's like the thing I think is like we saw the Americans struggle in men's golf for years, but it was like, oh, Phil and Tiger weren't that good. Their top player is playing well, is putting points on the board. And I think that it's you know, there needs to be players like Rojang that need to step up. I mean last last Cup, she didn't win a match. Like those are the types of players that need to step up and win win some points because you know, one player cannot win it. We've seen, but we've seen what a great performance from a you know, I don't want to call Leona McGuire a middle of the road European player, but like a you know, not their superstar player. What a great performance from you know, that's what the American team needs that they haven't had in the last few Cups. Is that kind of like surprise great performer. Yeah.

00:21:52
Speaker 3: And I think what's important is you almost need two people to do that. Like last year you had Leona, but you also had Carla Desiganda four and oh and we've kind of we kind of got that last year with Megan Kang. You know, very good LPGA player, but she took it to another level in Fink a courtesan. She played wonderful. She and Lexie were probably our MVPs. But you didn't have Lily Avu play well. You didn't have Roseang play well. And I think you're going to need one of them along with Nelly to really exert themselves as the leaders of this team.

00:22:30
Speaker 4: All Right, anything else you're you're watching for this Solheim Cup, Yeah.

00:22:35
Speaker 3: I'm you know, I'm I'm wondering if we're going to have some chippiness, some controversy.

00:22:42
Speaker 5: It's happened before, It's happened recently.

00:22:45
Speaker 3: I wrote about in the newsletter the twenty fifteen debacle with then she was playing a player on the European team, captain captain now Suzanne Petterson. The quotes from that and like looking back at.

00:22:59
Speaker 5: That are are wild.

00:23:00
Speaker 3: Like everyone was ganging up on her for not conceding that putt. You had Charlie Holt and Alison Lee in tears after the match. You had Laura Davies just you know, annihilated her on Sky Sports and saying she's glad she's not part of the team. And you know, it fired up the Americans and they rallied from four back in singles. Then in twenty twenty one, you had the Madeline sax Stroum and Nellie Corda controversy with Nellie leaves a putt it's hanging on the edge and Madelene scoops it back to her, gave it to her. But because she didn't wait ten seconds to see if it was drop, which it was not going to drop. It was on the edge, but it wasn't one of them that you know, you know it's going to fall in a couple seconds. So because she didn't wait ten seconds, they lost that hole. Madeline was very upset about it. She was, you know, she said, I would have never scooped it if there was a chance it was going in.

00:24:01
Speaker 5: It wasn't going in. But the rules are the rules.

00:24:04
Speaker 3: So you've had a couple of these with with the gimmes, the so called gimmes, and I you know, maybe we'll see someone pull the JT move and measure if we're getting a little stingy with with the pets given.

00:24:20
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's with how.

00:24:22
Speaker 3: Close these have been in the margin for air being so slim, it's not surprising that we've had some some desktops.

00:24:31
Speaker 5: Yeah, maybe we'll see it again.

00:24:33
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think This is the best part about match play is that you get these like a lot of the most memorable moments on the PGA Tour came from the match play. The Ryder Cup, the Solheim Cup have delivered us like moments of chippiness rivalries. So you get people fired up because it's you're playing a person, You're not playing the course. It becomes much more like a lot of other sports. Like I mean, I just finished a couple of weeks of watching the US Open, the tennis oh US Open, and it's amazing when these players are get upset at each other like it's you know, because it's a it's a personal match, you know. There there becomes this this rivalry that you kind of miss h weekend week out with seventy two holes of stroke play. So that is a great one to call out. I think like one thing I always think about when the Solheim Cup comes is that why don't we have a a way to integrate more of the world and more of the best women in the world into a team match play format that could capture kind of the the off years of the Solheim Cup. I know that they've done the uh what's the the the the International Crown International Crown, but I don't think that's really taken off. It's kind of been like this, like that, it gets kind of lumped into the LPGA schedule, and I just think that there's got to be something, and maybe it's as simple as the Olympics having a team competition. I think that would be something that's fascinating. It's so much more of a global sport than men's golf. Even you know, there are a number of really good country countries and representatives from countries. I think we're just missing the boat on on team golf competitions in the women's game, because I do think the Solheim Cup is a is one that that takes women's golf to a different echelon.

00:26:38
Speaker 5: It's a it's a huge miss.

00:26:40
Speaker 3: I think one of the it's it's kind of this may sound hyperbolic, but it kind of it's a travesty that you we have never seen Lydia Coe in any sort of high stakes team match play event. All we've gotten, all we've gotten in her decade of a career is her and Jason Day in the Hit and Giggle Grant Thornton in December, which she won, which Jason Day raved about her short game, raved about her as a partner, and that's all we got.

00:27:18
Speaker 4: I mean, why wouldn't you rave about her if she's bringing all the snacks?

00:27:21
Speaker 3: You know, it's a it is a it's a whiff. That's you're right about that.

00:27:29
Speaker 4: It just it just seems too easy and too like I think like it has like the kind of the opposite of like what what's interesting to me is like the Soulhime Cup rolls around And I don't mean this to be like a critique, but every time the Solheim Cup comes up, I'm kind of like, well, it would be great if like the best all the best women were playing in this event, but like the reality is it's like a fraction of the best women. You know, you have three of the top ten players in the world, maybe four, but like where's every like of the top twenty you have, you know, roughly twenty percent of the top twenty in the world. Like can we get can we get an event that that has all the all the best women in the world playing match play? Like like sign me up for that, like and make it a spectacle like you have the do with the Solheim Cup. Like I I just like to me, Like, everybody is looking at what Caitlin Clark and Chicago Sky great, Angel Reese, you know, got to put that out there. It's Chicago and I ride with Angel Reese. However wrong I might be. I'm Chicagoan, you know, the sky culture. But anyways, everybody's looking at what they're doing, and it's like, Okay, women's golf can do this. They have to put themselves into the position to do it, and right now they aren't. And like that's maybe the most it's even more frustra reading them watching like this is a really compelling version of the game of golf. This is like different. It has the ability to maybe be more popular than the men's game. But the organization that runs women's golf, to me, is doing nothing to take advantage of their sport. It is it is almost like they are going out of their way to hold the sport back with their decisions on scheduling golf courses and and just like in general not thinking of an innovative team format that could be your most popular event.

00:29:35
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm with you.

00:29:36
Speaker 3: It seems in a lot of circumstances they're content with being PGA Tour light. Yes, in some cases, that's good because you don't have some of the bulk and the you're not bogged down with say, not as many events. That's a good feature of being PGA Tour light. But it's really bad and so many other circumstances that you've kind of saddled yourself with an organization that's not run well, that has many many problems, you know from from just the structure of it, and it seems like they're content to kind of follow along in what the PGA Tour has done in a in a lighter fashion, and in my opinion, you have to go out on your own. You have to take some risks, you have to differentiate yourself if we're going to see the growth that other women's sports have seen.

00:30:36
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm excited hopefully. I think this is obviously having Solheim Cup back to back years, it's a nice thing for the women's game because of the spotlight, the attention, the popularity of the event. I think this is gonna be a great event, and I'm I'm super excited and hopefully, Like you know, I think the biggest thing is just to deliver some really big moments that break through into the greater sports culture and sports world that that is hopefully what happens this week, have a great tournament and have a few moments that really capture the the bigger audience.

00:31:15
Speaker 3: Yeah, I can't wait. It's gonna be a very fun few days. I'm so excited to be there in person, and yeah, it's gonna be a good time.

00:31:22
Speaker 4: Meg. How do people you're gonna be writing for the newsletter? What else you're gonna be on a social media? How can people follow you?

00:31:30
Speaker 5: Yeah, we'll be.

00:31:32
Speaker 3: Brendan's going to be there a little bit too as well, so we'll have it have it covered pretty well from from all sides of things. Twitter, Meg Adkins underscore TFY. Let me check that. Actually I should know that by heart. Yeah, Meg Adkins underscore TFE. I'll be posting from my personal on Instagram as well, but yeah, mostly Twitter, Newsletter. We're writing some stuff for the website as well, potentially some podcast stuff, so we'll get it covered from all angles.

00:32:04
Speaker 4: Awesome. Thanks Meg, have a great week out there, and we'll talk to you soon. All right, big thanks to Meg for coming on before she gets out to RTJ. Before we get to Scott, I just wanted to mention this pod is brought to you by Toro. Did you know Toro has a full line of work vehicles. Whether you're hauling materials, towing equipment, or shuttling VIPs, Toros a vehicle for just about any need. Their Workman series is your go to for power and payload capacity, and the Vista series is perfect for guest transportation with a super comfortable ride. Plus, Toro has tons of options to customize your work vehicle, including all electric models, so check them out at Toro dot com. All right, let's get to Scott. Scott, I I was reading your you know a little bit about your background, and I think you've got a little bit different entrance into the turf world. You were a teacher, elementary school teacher. How do how do you make the jump from a teacher to being a superintendent?

00:33:23
Speaker 1: Well, thanks for having me on, first of all, excited about this. So the cool thing about this is my whole family is nothing but a bunch of teachers. So I just felt, you know, when I was younger, that's I'm going to following their footsteps and teach come from a big family teacher, So I really enjoyed that. And I started working at a golf course called Citacrest up the street during the summer and just really got into it, like the outdoor ness, the you know, the art of you mowing grass, how it looks, the death of it. We saw some of that back in the day, and and just the science behind it. And you know in that article it talks about the chairman of the Solheim Cup right now for Robert Trent Jones Golf Club. The vice president of the club was the guy I ran into in that article a basketball court and I was going to go work in another little golf course down the street and he goes, you can't do that, you got to go work at artj So I met Glenn Smickley. I'm sure he met Let's spiker before he's at the Cow Club, you know, my mentor.

00:34:24
Speaker 4: And then see them tomorrow.

00:34:25
Speaker 1: Oh there you go, right, the greatest guy in the world. He's done so much for me. But you know, I just knocked on the door back then there was no cell phones and started a friendship. And then as I was working here, I have to I have to say Mike King was one of them. He's at Army Navy Arlington that's going to do the Junior So him Cup He literally was like, why don't you do this? Why don't you why don't you go back to school and do this? Because I fell in love with it. And Glenn put me, this is what I really, I really try to do here for the youth that we have come through here, have them do a variety of things to see if they fall in love with it. They wreak bunkers every day, they're gonna hate their job, but if they're doing a variety of things. And Glenn did that, the assistance then did that. I started spraying, I started changing cups, I started doing everything, and I was relied on and I just kept falling in love with it more and more and more. And I was nervous about the jump, like can't I understand the chemistry, the soul science and all that stuff. So I took a couple of classes just to test myself at the local Nova of North Virginia Community College and I said, all right, I got this. And I decided after I finally got a job in Fairfact County where there's four hundred advocants, I get the job. I'm coaching football at Centertral High School, and all of a sudden, I'm leaving that job that anybody would Everyone was trying to get to go to go back to school. My wife didn't know what to say. She goes, you're kidding me. And I went back to the University of Maryland, got my degree, and that's I just fell in love with this place most importantly, but just the whole art of being a superintendent.

00:35:58
Speaker 4: You said, you know a variety of jobs, and like, see, if somebody falls in love with something, is there a job in you know, when Glenn gave you a wide range of jobs, was there a job that you were like, this is really cool. That kind of started that, you know, love of doing this.

00:36:19
Speaker 1: The whole thing was cup changing. So I still really enjoy setting I don't do a lot of cup changing, but I enjoy setting up the club, the golf course or tournaments, the three day member guests, the club championship and probe. And remember giving it a variety, so he kind of put me in that role of doing set up. I wasn't a good golfer. I'm still not a good golfer. I love the game of golf, but trying to play the par threes all different from the let's say the men's teas or the blue teeth for us, that the tea's are anywhere from sixty five to sixty eight hundred, and just played the par fours different and the par five is different, some reachable, some not having the front side reachable on the backside reason. So I really got into that, and actually they joked on me that I put so much effort into it on setup on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and that's when I started understanding the game, what it takes, and that if you understand the game better, you can better serve your members and their guests. So that and then also the sprays that he would set me up doing, and he was so quick with the math that I always wanted to catch him, you know, make sure that we're not going to hurt the golf course. So I would always go and look at labels and start reading labels, and I just I encourage all my assistants and interns we have our intern spray here to just open up a label, look at it. And I did that. So that's why I have the stuff on top of my head. I haven't lost my head after being here that long. Those are the two things set up understanding how to set it up and make it fun for the golfer, but then also you know the sprays, which there's so much in the DC market. It's your life. It's it's your only life. If you don't get it and understand it, you're going to be dead and looking for a job.

00:38:00
Speaker 4: We we do events all over the place, and I would say that my favorite thing to do with our events is the setup. I think it's so fun. Like I think, like you know, one of the things that golf misses a little bit is the art of the setup. Like golfers come to their golf course and play the same golf course like almost like every day, Like they're creatures of habit. People are creatures of habit. They go to the same tea boxes. And if you control setup, you have the ability to kind of craft their experience. It's almost like if you were at a restaurant, like and you didn't have a menu, like this is what we're making today, you know, this is what dinner And it's such a fascinating aspect. I think it's like one of the things with golf, and I think a lot of it has to do with the handicap system, Like well, I played this tee like I need to enter my score. But I do think like one of the big things that the vast majority of golf and golf courses miss on is the art of setting up the golf course different, knowing that you have people that for the most part, most golf courses are like regular play golf courses outside of a resort and like maybe upscale public like your munis to your clubs. Like it's just like the same people playing the golf course over and over again. Why do we set it up so similar all the time?

00:39:23
Speaker 1: Well, you know, and the big events are important, but also the cool thing about working here at you know RTJ, You know, there's a many member guests. Every day they're bringing two groups, three groups. We have twelve college as well. We don't have twelve, Yeah, we have nine colleges and there's a lot of overnight. We have twelve grooms in the clubhouse. So they're bringing people in big groups. They want variety, you know. And the good thing is Kyle Phillips has changed his golf course and done so many great things. He's he's everywhere over this golf course now and changing tea angles, which we did just an angle of the team sitting up on the left side or the right side on a park three or part four or par five, you know, changes everything. And as long as you're just not putting in the middle, putting in a middle, put in the middle, you're gonna give that golfer. And we really work with the interns on that. But I'm happy to hear that you it's important to you, for see, because there's nothing worse than playing the same golf course every day. Nothing worse.

00:40:18
Speaker 4: Well, it's like, I mean, so fun sometimes like looking at a hole that's three point fifty and saying, I'm going to play the two eighty t today, you know, and see what happens. Like That's one of my favorite things when I the little personal golf I play, is like like why why would I play the same tea like, you know, Like I like to just like change stuff up, Like I like to see how holes play differently from different tea box. I think that's like one of the most fun aspects of playing a course regularly is is the idea of seeing how different it can play in different different fashions.

00:40:51
Speaker 1: Uh.

00:40:51
Speaker 4: You mentioned Kyle Phillips obviously, Robert Trent Jones golf club. Right, it is synonymous with one of I think he's in the Hall of Fame, right, he's one of five architects in the World Golf Hall of Fame. How has the golf course You've been there since two thousand. How's the golf course evolved with Kyle Phillips? How have you been sensitive to the RTJ legacy while modernizing the golf course?

00:41:20
Speaker 1: So the coolvie. I've been here since nineteen ninety four where I was teaching, so I worked this summer. So I've seen every change here besides maybe moving a tea box here. There's changing the fairway I number eight. We're all major construction I've seen, which has been great. And you know, Roger Rovitch was the guy. He was doing a ton of work. He was a guy on site. You know, it was a cookie cutter kind of They've done it a billion times. This is what it looks like. You go to Mattiacock, it looked like RTJ. There's a lot detached bunkers. But with time things changed, right, you know, architects change, and so over time we found on the need that some of these greens were so severe that you know, with stiff meter readings going up. You didn't have any pen positions. And I'm not talking like the Oakmonts or even locally as like Chevy Chase. You're our friend Stephen Britain where their greens are changing in lall right now. But they were so slow you can get over eleven and a half or twelve. They were just too severe. So that's that was happening here. So we started changing, making some minor changes, and we also got in bed with a PGA tour, you know Dean Beeman and our Ernie Ransom VP Russell. They talked about doing a Press Cup. So we did the first Press Cup in nineteen ninety four and we got feedback from the players, which were already feedback from our members too on some of these severe holes. So our first big change was we changed between ninety four and ninety six, we changed a number six and Roger Rowds did that and it's a great green right now. After that, you know, things changed, and know Senior wasn't able to get around much, and so they looked at Kyle Phillips that had left and branched off of Jones Junior. He was finishing up a lot of seniors projects. As he got older and he started his own front and that's when we well, first of all, before that, with the PGA tour guyamed Chris Gray come in here and do a few things, and he made some applications, but they were very careful and trying to keep it in character with the Jones the bunkery. Nothing that's going to go WHOA, what is that? And you know we have maybe a little bit of that now, but over time we've kind of gotten into the groove of more Kyle. Anyway, Kyle came in in nineteen ninety seven, I think, and we started changing a bunch of greens, and you know, he was going through the Jones family making sure everything was good. And ever since then, Kyle's been our guy because everything he's done, you know, he's There's three people that are in so Fort in my life. Glens Spickley, which we can talk a whole podcast on him, Bill Hutsmith, which he worked for cases landscaping and Yellowstone, and Kyle Phillips And the last two were the detailed guys, and Glenn was all detailed too, but they showed me what was out of place in landscaping, right. Kyle showed me what was out of place architecture, and and so this place which so many golf horses back in the eighties were being built on the land, not in the land, on the land, and Kyle's got that. I mean, Kyle would change a lot more here, but he's always tried to keep it with the character of the Jones design, and he's changed a lot. I mean, there's a lot here that doesn't look like a Jones but everyone here thinks it does. Right. You you follow architecture, you'd be like, all right, that's different. But everyone here feels that they would have no clue that Kyle Phillips.

00:44:39
Speaker 4: In some of this world, it's got to be one of the most unique setups in terms of you know, renovating, you know, in terms of Kyle's position there, just with the golf club literally named after the architect, Like, there has to be so much sensitivity in the in the the work and a you know, trying to retain a lot of that. It's not a situation where you can just you know, make make it feel completely Kyle Phillips, even though it might over time, like it might evolve to that, but there has to be some kind of ode to the past in terms of the well we stay, let's stay on the course for a bit. What what do you think is going to make RTJ such a fun matchplate course for the Solheim Cup.

00:45:32
Speaker 1: So you know the great thing about this golf course is it's a driver friendly golf course. You're never going to get on the team and sit there and go, oh, I don't driving here. Maybe because of the bunkers, but out of bounds are left and right. We have no houses around us, We don't have any boarder. We have board which is the which is the lake, which is a red hazard. We put Kyle back when he came back, and well he's come back most time. In twenty fourteen, we redid all the bunkers because they weren't in play anymore for the and for the players. And now there's a variety off the whole end whether you want to hit a three wood or you should hit an iron off. But the par fives and down the stretch, we got beautiful par threes here that have different angles, beautiful you know scenery there. We have big greens, right, big greens. They're talking about playing the greens a little bit slower. We're still working through that, right, now, you know they all say championship speed, Well what's that. You know, we can all argue that. But we have big greens and there's a lot of shot making here. You're not going to see people hitting out of the hay, you know, unlessay they're really spraying. These women. I have seen them play enough now they basically like Freddie fark right down the middle, right down the middle. You put a hula hoop out in the middle of the fairway, they're gonna hit it. But we have some good risk reward stuff on the back where we've got a short par five on number twelve. We got another short par five on number fourteen that's over water. So just really fun stuff coming down. And this, of course, I mean we can narrow the fairways and beat it up and beat people up. That's not what you're to do. We don't have the you know, we don't want anybody shoot if it was a metal play thirty under, okay, but we want people have phone where people see birds. And I think there's gonna be a bunch of matters.

00:47:12
Speaker 4: I think that's one of the things I like the most about these matchplay competitions, and I think like one of the things that you I'd like to even see more of is like the idea of these match play. The most compelling aspect of these is when it's fireworks, when you have like everybody remembers the Rory Reid uh start to their Ryder Cup where they were trading birdies that I think it was Sergio and Phil played a match where they each made like eight or nine birdies. Like, when you have these matches and there's lots of birdies, it makes it really fun. And the setup should accentuate variance in scoring. That's what you want to do, is you want to push score. You want to have a lot a wider range of scores. So I think the setup should really kind of amplify how can we get a lot of birdies but also like push out that range of putt potential scores. Yes, And I think more with a and short or rough does that because you might get flyers that could lead to doubles and stuff like that. What's a particular favorite hole that you're excited to watch and maybe give us a little bit of a breakdown of how the whole plays.

00:48:27
Speaker 1: So I'll pick the hole in a second. And I really wish every match is going to get to it. But first I'll say the first team, the first he is amazing. I put something on Twitter and someone said, oh my god, you got I've never had more than like forty people like anything I've ever done in my life. I think there's like three hundred. I'm like, so of course I'm joking with everyone. I'm going viral. But number one hole I was. I went to Spain and I went to Rome. I wasn't there for the Rod Cup. I went there to support the superintendent who's coming back here, the first lady superintendent ever to host a big event like that, and she's coming over here to grace us and talk to our volunteers. But the number one first whole atmosphere, it's just amazing. It's insane, like you know. And from what I've heard is they're the ones that started swine Cuff, started the music on the team, they started all that stuff, and everyone else has followed. Super with the President's Cup and Rhya Cup. They were kind of the creator of that. So I think the first tea environment is going to be great. In Spain, they had you know, they moved it to like number four. They had a drive, a little bar, forward. Well, we don't have that, okay, And then Inverness they played it. I saw their bleachers. They didn't have nears. Man, we got fifteen hundred people sit on there with eight sweets, double four, double stack, and so we've got a ton of people there. But Everness had the first tea and their tech team. They get to see him twice, right, so if you're there for the morning, you can see him come play, you know when they come back through in two hours. We don't have that. What we do have is is beautiful. You'd be hard pressed to find a more beautiful golf course in the world, I would say, And obviously this is my baby here. I've been here a long time. But just drive around, drove around. Pete went from Congressional. He started here it was an internet at Congressional and then moved here as an assistant of Gwnce Smithley's We're all one big family. He just at all, I mean just again, he hasn't seen it in a while, just how beautiful this place is. So the beauty of it's great. But back to the hole that you're talking about. I know, I'm just you know, talking too much, but eighteen it's my favorite hole that Kyle's done, and it's all it's all Kyle. Kyle did all of one two as well, So to sit right next to each other, we don't have a returning nine and Eighteen's just the way he changed the tea's Back in the day we were raising it up. We didn't have any money, so we're making volcano back to the volcano back to he's further further back because we didn't want to. All right, the ford t's blocking it. Well, let's go up high right, So we t volcanoed everything then. And that green used to sit up on the on the up near close to the clubhouse, and he pushed it down there in the late nineties. And it's right on the water. Illegal too, by the way, I mean right on the water. I didn't do that glance maker. It was a supertendent dot. But it is just a gorgeous first shot, second shot setting right on the water, a green. I don't know if they're going to get there. I don't know if they're gonna get there, but it's a challenging it's a wide open approach too. A lot of jones. We've opened a lot of approaches. I think we're going to open even more. A lot of Jones was force Carrett forst Carrett, it's not a Forcecrrett. You hit the right position in the fairway. If you're the center left in the fairway, you've got that wide open approach and running up there because it's going to be a long second shot.

00:51:37
Speaker 4: Yeah, it looks like the way that the hazard's orient I mean, there are some massive bunkers on the left side of the fairway. If you play close to those, it will give you a little bit of a better angle and cleaner entrance into the green. It's kind of a pure strategic golf hole in that sense of a play close to this hazard get the reward of an open shot into the green. You've spoken about Glenn Spickley a little bit. Uh. Pete Wentz beent on this pod and Stephen Britton all I guess you know, a good good question for me is why hasn't Glenn Smickley been on the pod? But you know, all three of you have been on the pod. Now, all three of you have sung the praises of Glenn Spickley. What about his leadership? His mentorship really has helped your career, you know?

00:52:27
Speaker 1: So I was just a school teacher, right, So we've played basketball, pick up basketball. We'd like to hang out. We like to make golf clubs back in the day. Right. He never was pushing me to gain in this business. He did bring it up a few times, like, hey, you'd be great. I mean, he felt like I was his best operator at the time, the guy king for the for the detail, you know. And then I think our personalities are a lot alike as far as the people person. I mean, we've been calling people person. I could talk all day, you know, like Steven's one of those guys, and Spickley's one of those guys. He's Canadian, so I wouldn't want to talk to him for that long. But go from the East coast to West coast when Steve has gone for a job. I don't want to tell my secrets, but I've told board members, you know, he's the guy if you're interviewing, you're not gonna stop talking all the way to the West coast. You're not gonna stop talking all the way back, and you're gonna have one of your best friends. And that's that's the way glenns. I mean, he he was the guy that fostered all that he We worked hard here, but we also had a good time. We always we hung out after work, We went to conscious, we did a bunch of suff our ages are closer to now now my sisters are twenty five years old. They're like my kid, which is great, and I get a long My three assistants are probably one of the one of my favorite little teams I have in a long time. But language is there, supportive, always there for you. Never took himself too seriously right, never thought he's above the fray on anybody. But then I got to watch him how he mingled with with with with the membership, and then how he would go back down to the down to the shop and you know, the guy that has substance abuse, that lives on the mountain they can barely get to work on top, and how he manages that. And I watch how he did it with a soft hand and then a firm hand when he needed And you know, I just was like that, it's not like I Sometimes there's learned behavior that that you're either that or you're not that right And the most part, I feel like I'm more like Leans Smickley than a lot of other people that I know, and that's why I think we hit it all so well. And it was just he was so encouraging when I commuted. I want to go to Penn State, but I just got married and I didn't want to get a divorce because you know me, But I already what she owed to the high school sweethearts. She already saw me go through old a man and took five years to get a four year degree. Right, so I was on a long term program.

00:54:42
Speaker 4: You're you're a red shirt senior. I was a red shirt senior too. Yeah, it's nothing wrong, nothing wrong with being a year.

00:54:50
Speaker 1: We had a good time, right. I wouldn't change it for the world. But I commuted back and forth to Maryland University. So I got got on that beltway every day. I would come in. Pete Wett was working here at the time. Everyone jokes, I'll say this on your podcast. Everyone thinks that Pete worked for me and I never fixed that river ever. I just say, yeah, yeah, he worked with me, but I actually worked for him. He was an assistant at the time. But I'd get the key, open up, change cups in the morning, get on that beltway, get around to Maryland, come back and work in the evening. I mean I slept in class more than I studied in class or listened to class. And Glenn saw that commitment and I'll never forget. We're going to Jimmy Buffett concert to get tickets and we stopped the cars, we got the tickets and we're coming back. He's like, hey, let me superintend RTJ. I'm like, you got to kid me. Where are you going? And he goes, I'm not going anywhere. I'm just moving to the clubhouse. You know. So do an interview, go through the whole process, and the rest is history. And you know, he's changed my life. I mean, if John Coleman doesn't say the vice president, the chair co chair of the saw On Cup, he's the one that got the saw On Cup here. You know. He he told me to go check out, you know, RTJ. That doesn't happen. Glenn Smickley and I don't form a good working relationship. And my wife blessed me going back to school. I wouldn't be here still. I'll be having a blast teaching and coaching. But I'm having a blast doing this and I'm so thankful for the opportunity.

00:56:13
Speaker 4: I was given How do you think your background as a teacher helped you in this profession.

00:56:21
Speaker 1: I think it's the number one thing, you know. I always look at people as people, you know, and trying to wonder if they're okay. I try to read people. That's probably my one flaw or my one great crate trait is I'm always reading facial expressions, reactions, how they carry themselves. Everything I see the you know, I see whether someone's a little sheepish. And I always want to people make people feel comfortable. There's too many there's too many golf cours out there that are military driven and there's nothing wrong with it. They get their job done. They're great, super intense, and I won't name one of them. And there's also a competition, which competition is good at golf course, but that can just be very very It could just beat on you, depress you. Where someone's just trying to get over you're trying to get over, whether it's assistant or an intern. I tell my internships to get in here. If you sit there and try to one up the other intern and you're not there to help him along the way and help him with his mistakes. I said, if you're trying to assassinate an intern to get for me to look better at you and put you on a better pedestal. I said, you're going to get the worst jobs here. You're going to want to go, you're going to want to lead, and you're going to leave. Because I don't want that. I said, it's important that we treat people with common respect and make sure that they have a good time here because they're only here for a short period of time. And someone, an intern or an employee or an assistant, did make their world a living hell, and then what does that mean for me? It makes them our place look bad and that river gets out there, So you know, it's all about people. And I think the teaching and the coaching. You're constantly teaching, you're constantly coaching, you're constantly trying to motivate. I'm not going down there doing rob Ros's beaches. Well, I five guys every day, hold them all, And I think that's the key. If I didn't have that teaching background or that teaching favorite, it's called right. So I grew up. I watched that, So if you know, I just didn't all of a sudden become his teacher. I saw through my whole beauty when I was younger, and you know, without that, I wouldn't probably be here.

00:58:20
Speaker 4: Yeah, I I imagine. I think like I've noticed it as our company has grown, how much like your job changes, and like I can only imagine with a with a turf team, you know, especially like next week you're going to have hundreds of people not you know, you're not. It's not it's going to be your team. You've got all these other people organizing and and just like everybody's motivated a little bit differently, and you have to understand how what level of encouragement, how you know, it's just a managing people is a fascinating and an extremely challenging, uh task because of you know, everybody's different, and you have to understand how people, how people need what they need, you know, And I don't think I'm necessarily great at it. Yeah.

00:59:09
Speaker 1: Well, you know, like you're talking about all these people coming in. You know, we have twelve different countries coming, a lot of familiar faces, a lot of faces. I don't know what my anxiety right now as I sit here and talk to you, is are they going to have a good time? Because look, there's not a lot of work with this what we have a lot of work in the morning and we need the one hundred total people to be able to do that. If we get inclement weather, we won't have enough people. And then later on in the day there's you know, we're not trying to get fifteen on a stimp, so we're not mowing later on, we're just prepping it for the second rounds on Friday and Saturday, and a lot there's not a lot of did it so there's not a lot of evening work. So it's I want them to be happy. I want you know, we have a cookout on Sunday. My anxiety is making sure I got it right. That someone just doesn't walk up and we don't have a bat for them, we don't have closed for them. We're like wasting how this happened? Right, don't have a bed for them? Right? Those are the anxiety. That's the anxiety making sure we're putting people on proper jobs. I have all the volunteers. I hope they can mow straight stripes because we have stripes on tees and stripes on fairways. Our members want it. I try to get rid of them. They won't get rid of them. So I hope they can mow good stripes. So we're gonna look a little funny with all these blurred lines. But I have them all on big jobs. You know. There's obviously the Bunker crew, but we have our first high school volunteer team, so they work with the gcsa A. We have four high school students from Gronomy based High School that we get some kids from students from and Kaminski from Penn State's talking about me sending those kids to Tournois. I can't send an underage kid to the Memorial. I can't do that. He is too young. But I can't do it here because they're right down the street. So we're gonna have some high school people here, which is going to be really good on Really are they.

01:00:48
Speaker 4: Getting out of school? They're getting that pass out of school? What a good gig.

01:00:52
Speaker 1: They are getting out of school for the whole week. One kid said he's got you can't miss a class in the middle of the day, so he's going back and.

01:00:58
Speaker 4: Forth high school. Anythink, I guess school. It's good, good good trade. Yeah, I uh. How does getting ready for this tournament differ from, you know, a big club event, from your perspective.

01:01:16
Speaker 1: So besides being cooled in so many different directions, there's not much except for the fear of the camera turned on. So this was the worst summer. And I think if you talk to anybody in this area, we had a stream drought. Our lake is down your seat on TV, it's come up. We've got two three and a half inch storms. Not what you want, but you know in the last month and a half that barely raised up. That's how drive we were. And we went through crazy heat, right, crazy heat. The great thing about this club, this club gives us the resources. They understand that we want to be on the championship level as much as we can, with whether dictating that all year long. So I've got the resources to do it. So it's not like I need an extra budget of two hundred thousand dollars to do this. And this I don't even know what I would do with it. We're fertilized up enough, we're cover enough for for disease. But the ramp up is the same, I would say, except for the excitement, all the you know, all the trucks coming to eighteen wheelers and all your four flips driving all over your nice turf. The big thing, the big focus is I kind of had a timeline, like you know, in the spring, we actually hurt ourselves a little bit because we went too dry during our inner club, which we have all the top clubs in the in the in the world, but like Mary's Oakmonts, the wing Foots say all come and do this. This torn with us World Montreal, and so we went so dry. Well we recovered from that, but then we have to chase that. But I kept saying, guys, you know, we need to guard away from the brown. We've probably wanted a little bit too much, right because we do want to get to the day of the cameras on and I told them about two weeks ago, I said, okay, anything you turn off color now you're seeing on TV. So I've got the most unbelievable assistance with the most unbelievable staff, which is twenty h two b's which I'm which the government would fix it. Don't audit me. You can't audit me. I do everything right, but please fix the age two TV's. It's the legal way we're doing it. I got some great interns this year. They're going on to do wonderful things at Quilt Hollow. You know La Country I got two ladies working this year, which is great. So those are two ladies LA Country Club in Quilt Hollow, So you know, it is just a little bit more. But I'm an adrenaline junkie. I mean, there's nothing better than going to a Penn State game or a basketball game. I get jazz about all that stuff. I'll be up at Penn State games a lot this year. This is adrenaline. There's a lot of Wall.

01:03:35
Speaker 4: Might finally make the playoffs this year.

01:03:37
Speaker 1: They might. I mean, Franklin's the best two loss coach in the country.

01:03:41
Speaker 4: So they never beat anybody. They never, they never, They never win any big game.

01:03:46
Speaker 1: Their last great game it was I brought my two sons by One son's going to school there, but other son's going to West Virginia. I brought them to the game when they beat Ohio State, and I said, this is the greatest game I've ever seen. I don't know if I've ever see a bed one.

01:03:59
Speaker 4: So it's, uh, yeah, they's gonna be. It seems like they're gonna be in a playoff this year. You know, the new expanded Big ten. Yeah, exactly fourteen fourteen playoff league. Maybe exactly.

01:04:13
Speaker 1: I hope they'll need an Actually sections well, the big one I gotta get over is I think USC away and then and then at home, which is they're spending twenty million from a year that's stay spending eight million. I mean, come on, that's a huge difference.

01:04:27
Speaker 4: I know, if that's true about I saw. Yeah, you know, this is a divergence here. But I remember when when we got to like the lead eight of the I'm an aline Illinois fan, so we got to the lead eight, they flashed something about how much, like you know, Yukon spends on on basketball versus Illinois, and it was like astronomically more, and it's just like crazy, It's crazy the way these the college you know, all these college things. We need to have that for turf. Maybe you guys should start to start an NIL fun for turf turf students and and uh that would solve some of the labor issues, right.

01:05:06
Speaker 1: Yes, yes we would, yes, we would.

01:05:10
Speaker 4: Need need to start doing that from the from the high end clubs. You know that that's how you could secure your your the future of turf. I'm curious with you being at r t J for thirty years how do you think the industry as has evolved.

01:05:27
Speaker 1: So, you know, the old adage was change change, where you put your rest of your hat or jacket and just keep You're going to keep making more and more money and to get a different you know, scene and different people. You know, and I'm probably going the wrong direction that you wan't be here.

01:05:45
Speaker 4: But it's okay, this is you get it. You're the guests. You gotta pick quicks direction you go. I just asked the questions.

01:05:52
Speaker 1: You know. The one thing I'm trying to do is just hold on, you know. And we'd go and have some ups and downs with economy and stuff like that, but we we you know, really have we have adapted to h twop's or one of the biggest things that's stabilized. But then when we don't get them, it's it's chaos and it's it's scary, and it's just you. Your job's on the line. But you know the big problem and it's no one wants to do this job. No one wants to do this job. It's not an easy job. When you get to my level. There's a lot of stress, don't get me wrong, but there are so many great rewards. You know, whether it's someone telling you the golf course is great, or you know the golf course is great, or the problems you might have on a golf course and how you solve it, how you get it turned around very quickly. And no one wants to do that. No one wants to go through the long hours or seven day a week, you know, And we still give every weekend off. I have this weekend, we're working and one's working. But we had half the crew off last weekend. So you know, it's this work life balance which is very difficult for superintendent to even understand because we're in a service industry and we're open seven days a week and grass is a living, breathing thing. It's like, okay, we'll shut down the hospitals for a couple of days. It can't happen, right, this is Grass is going to get sick er, it's going to be happy. We got to take care of it. So it's the problem is is finding good quality labor. I have it with the HGVs. I've got that solved. Then it's getting the interms. You know, through Ohio State with Michael Keith has been great. I don't get any American in terms I do. I got a Virginia tech guy. But I guess our name's not big enough. My name's not big enough, or they just don't want to move bild Gainesville, Virginia. I don't know. We offer a lot here. We sound them to tournaments, we set up the majors. We do scholarships we got We gave out two five thousand dollars scholarships. I mean, how crazy is that? Last year? Right? Ten thousand dollars we gave out the students. We can change their life. But there's a lot that want to go. You see them like they want to go out west where it's a little bit easier. Hours are not as crazy, unfortunately, And I always tell them when they come in here, look, this is the deal. You might not like this, but I don't want to hear on the first day, the third day, or the first month. When you leave, you're no but what you want. If you want this standard or this pace, it's gonna be your call, and you're gonna be a free agent. And there's clubs that have a slower pace. There's also clubs that don't have less resources. And you're gonna work harder than you work here. So The hard thing is just getting people, finding people that are in love with the place as much as you I am and other people are. And that's my hubs have always got that, my full time staff. It's finding those fringe guys, which is difficult. You know.

01:08:26
Speaker 4: I think like the work life balance is probably the sticking point with the job, especially as you look at the future generations. And I'm you know, this is kind of like a two part question here. Do you think the potential for more autonomous more autonomous technology that kind of like you know, might take away some of the mowing and put more of an emphasis on like handwork with your staff, And do you think autonomous could help work life balance? And how have you seen you know, your assistants kind of have have gone from millennials to generation ze. How is the culture of of your assistance change over the years.

01:09:17
Speaker 1: So you know, twenty some years ago you're looking at me, Steve and Pete were running around like crazy and doing everything to make everyone happy. And and that kind of change, your right, that kind of change. And I went through a period of time that you know, I had some guys that I didn't know what to do with. I mean, I'm like they didn't see the vision I had. They didn't care. They didn't you know, they drive by will spot or drive by trash, you know, dry by weed. I picked weeds on Pete took a picture. First thing you did was take a picture of back of my car filled with crab grass and goose grass and said it to all our buddies, said, the place is in trouble. There's nothing but weeds. You know, of course we're not, but I'm always picking. But the mowers. You know, we have some husk of artis here that are doing great and they do their job. At one is cut, but I just don't know where it's going to go. I know they've got some fair one units. I can't imagine that greens are ever going to be. They had those club cadet ones that you know, they had them at Cow Club Glenn's and they turned they had to move the turning boards. They had to do this because you can get where marks they keep turning the same spot, and you know, what does that look like. It's a big race in our industry right now, which you've probably have seen. It's a big race. You know. The John Dere booth was was was packed. You know, the Toro booth was somewhat or both of them somewhat back. You went to the Husk of Honor booth, it was completely packed and I saw everyone's looking at these things now just to try to take some labor away. And you know a lot of people now clubs you are using contracted labor to do some of their their stuff is not on the golf course. So it's I don't know when it's going to happen. There's so many safety features that need to happen on these mowers that they're not going to be someone riding. You know. Right now we have GPS prayers that's revolutionized everything. It's reduced pessicides use, it's reduced error, which is great. And now there's a product out there. I won't even name it, but that's looking at you know, checking moisture as a cart drives by and put a map on your irrigation to where able to adjust your irrigation to where you want it to be on a moisture reading. And if it can do that, then now you're talking about something sustainable, something better for the environment, less water being used. So everyone's going towards that to make the job easier because guess what, without labor, you can't do your job. And that's the hardest part of this right now. And it's everywhere people can find truck drivers. You know, everyone wants to be a doctor. Everyone wants to be a lawyer. Now everyon want to be a lawyer and the doctor. Sometimes you got to be a superintendent.

01:11:50
Speaker 4: Right, it's got some job that's got really good perks. I think the hard thing, you know, the job I think has got a lot of great per when you get to your level. It's the journey to that, you know, that's the that's the challenging part. But in so many other professions that's it's the same thing. Like if you can get to the top of the profession, it's it's a wonderful place to be, but it's not an easy thing to get to.

01:12:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, agreed, And you're right because like I never say, you know, we talk about you know, work life balance. I never say no to my assistance. I never say no when they want time off. They work, they work their tail off all year long, well during the season, but we don't do we don't do crazy work when it's right and go home. Right, But if they want to take a forty weekend. They want to go, go, go, go go. I mean one just did a wedding last weekend before this tournament. Go. I want you to, I want And actually, you know, in the winter, there's no reason for us to be pulling, you know, fifty hours or forty hours. It could be a thirty two hour week for them, So there is a downtime and they see that. I think they see that. The question is is they do they want the standards and the pace because there's a different pace and you get to the hiring clubs and I would say that we're one of the hiring clubs.

01:13:04
Speaker 4: You uh, you talked about this a little bit, but you're in the transition zone. How do you describe life in the transition zone as a superintendent? And what is the transition zone For somebody that might not know what it is, It's hell every day.

01:13:21
Speaker 1: If you don't know what it is is living in hell every day and being in hell, which if you're in hell, you should be you should be fearful. I mean, you know, without coming up with anything wier than that, it is insane. It's a ride that you know, some days you're up, some days you're you're down. Uh, one day you're a hero. The next hey, you're a zero. It's like what just happened?

01:13:46
Speaker 3: You know?

01:13:46
Speaker 1: And you know we sprayed for Ferrying this year. I talked to Steve McDonald who's turfed as who's up and down the East Coast and Taltam because you never get out of you're so busy, and you know he is. You can you can spray anymore. So there's a point where you did everything. You can't here in your handside, you can't do it. So you know, it's just it starts sometimes in May, it gives you a little break, but really gets going in June. This year it started the end of May. It didn't stop. It did not stop. And we're talking thirty one days with a low being over seventy five degrees, so the grass doesn't get a break. It's cool season. Our Permuda grass driver range team looks gorgeous right now, which is absolutely gorgeous, but cool season. It wants to die and like we have rye grass which is used down in the Gusta. That's what the plane surface is. It's a transitional grass. Stand Zontech used to say. It wants to transition off this earth when it gets hot, and that's what it does sometimes, So just trying to fight that to hold on because of the nighttime tempts and if the grass not getting a break. I'll tell this, if you know at eighty degrees, you grass, your roots are not growing, nothing's grown at eighty five, or your roots are starting to die. So we call it in this region controlled death. So what you're doing is you're trying to control the depth of the plant to get to what we have right now, which is just beautiful weather. I mean nighttime tempts down in the fifties. Usually it takes to the middle of September, so it's usually sometime in June, the middle September. Maybe get a little break. This is as bad as the summer was. Is as great as the end of the summer. Early, I guess we're not even in fall yet. Has been to give the grass a break. But when it's in the middle of summer, when we had five days over one hundred, we had stretches of you know, not over ninety degrees for ten days in a row, and that sole temperature gets up to eighty five, you're controlling it to death. You're trying to control itself. We have temperatures up to a coastal one hundred in the soil. That means rapid depth of your roots. And once you do that, the plant can't live. So you're just trying to get to that cold spell or that rain that will cool it off a little bit.

01:15:50
Speaker 4: What do you do when it's like that? Is it just water to try and keep it alive?

01:15:55
Speaker 1: Yes, a lot of times its just spritzing a little bit of water. We don't surrench much, but it's just cool. I guess you can call the syringe. It's fine. Hours. We're driving around a peak this morning. We put all the fans out, but they didn't. We had fan problems, so they didn't turn them on, and I'm like, are we we're going to turn these fans on? It's hundred greats right. I kept driving around like, well, we're doing okay. I didn't want to jinx ourselves. So the number one thing for turf that's revolutionized turf as fans. I turned them off all summer because we were dying. So I was so superstitious that I'm like, if I turn fans on, we might die, So let's not turn the fans off. So that's like, that's your summer, Like you know, it was so hot that we were debating when the mob, Like we usually mow fairways two to three times a week, we're going almost a week saying all right, let's just try to find that one night that it's going to get down the low seventies and then we're mow that next morning. So it takes you out of your comfort zone. But do you know what, that's what's great about it. That's what's awesome about the midd Alantic. Garry Glenn lives in California and he's wearing sweaters. He texts us all the time, Hey, put the sweater off. It's new, and it's it's it's the middle lot right in San Francisco. And he always says, you need to get out of there or you're gonna die. You physically are going to die because of the stress. But when you get it right, and there's not always do we always get it right. There's been insects, insects out there like the weevils that I could I could I might tear up if we start talking about the weavels because there wasn't enough, there wasn't enough product to spray now we have products. Now we don't have weavels, thank god. I knocking on wood. But it is, it is a wild ride, and it's when you get to the end like this and hopefully no one drives a mac truck through one of our fairways. We're gonna look good on TV and we're not gonna embarrass ourselves. And that's from hard work, cooling off, being on it, being there. That's why you can't go home on a weekend. You can't be working five days a week at the level of this.

01:17:46
Speaker 4: M What have you ever considered other grasses like, I know that's been kind of a trend and if you have tried, you know, done some testing would have been the results.

01:17:58
Speaker 1: So if the cool season, we are old pen cross and pen cross works great here. I mean even again, not to keep talking about the Canadian peat, but you know he was like, how tight the greens are they they've morphed into being something completely different. I will talk about Pete again when he was at Kinlock. We were fed up during twenty ten, eleven twelve, those are record setting years and looked at xeon ZEUSA for the intermediate cut around all the fairies because rye grass again wanted to transition off this earth, so we did a little bit of zoysia. So what I did is the only thing I've ever played with is HGT Intermediate Cut, which we I probably should just put a capital improvement and change all our rye grass out of that, because it's just a beautiful grass. Wonderful, looks awesome, looks fantastic right now. It recovers, which is great. And then you know, we've done a lot of zoysia on our roadways where you know it's sitting around asphalt right and concrete. You know, why can't we keep good grass there? Well, you know what we said, let's put warm season there. And then the drying range, which is always like everyone wants adivits recoverable. Yeah, cover the middle of summer takes you know, two months for it to even get closer to each overy. And we didn't read it up there. So those are the two things we've we've flirted with, or three things. The HGT bluegrass has been just I've been doing it since twenty fourteen. It's a big phraise down here because it doesn't get the disease as ry grass. And then using Bermuda and Georgia where it makes sense. I know it's a playable surface on the drive range t. But even Liberty National Great put it up there at Liberty Nationally put t and you would they wouldn't even know any different.

01:19:28
Speaker 4: So I mean, I mean the Bermuda on the practice seem makes so much sense because it's like getting the most use in in your in the time where the other grass just wants to die, right and and the Bermuda is just thriving.

01:19:42
Speaker 1: Yes, it's great.

01:19:45
Speaker 4: So yeah, you're one week out from from the Solheim Cup. Uh, we've talked a little bit about how you just want the volunteers to have a good time, how you're worried about your stripes, what's the uh, what's your other biggest hope for the week Solheim Cup where you'll be happy with X like's what's the other thing that's on your mind?

01:20:08
Speaker 1: So you know, and this is probably what everyone would say, but you know, you talk to the PGA Tour. We've done some PGA Tour ements which has been great. All the rules officials with Mark Russell and Brintool and all these Steve Carbon back in the days. You know it's hard. They always come in and no one wants to talk about weather. No one wants to talk about weather. And if they if they don't bring your rain gear, then they say you jinxed this because you didn't bring your rain gear. Everyon's supposed to be like the officials are supposed to bring the rain gear and they look at the weather forecast and it looks like it's good, so they leave the rain gear home and it starts raining. So the PJA tour rules officials. You know, anti image. It's impossible to get through seven days without something happening weatherwise. Right right now, if nothing changes, knock on wood, nothing changes. It's gorgeous right now. I haven't seen the Sunday yet. If there's a sun on every day and it's right around the average of eighty degrees with cooler nights at night, it couldn't be any better. It's like Spain, and I don't even know if it rains in Spain. We were there. It's like every day was picture perfect. That's what you want, because you want the people that are spending money, spending their time or traveling from Afar to come over here and have a great time, see good golf, have a you know, the same thing down at the shop. Right, have a good time is what we want. We want them to enjoy Robert Trent Jones golf field, the beauty of Robert tri Jones golf cluld. Of course we want the US to win because they haven't won it in a while. But just something that's competitive, is something that's fun. Would just be fun here and that's you know, it's you know, everyone's going to tell you the weather. It is the weather because that's what people worry about the most because it can literally shut down the vibe of the all the of the volunteers, of the staff that are all around here catering police. It can destroy a whole tournament. So that's the number one thing. And you know that's why they like going out west. That's why you know, get out to California, doesn't you get on the East Coast TV times out there too. You can have dinner in a cocktail or a beer and a cigar and watch golf, right.

01:22:10
Speaker 4: You know, for for somebody that works in the industry, the East Coast ones aren't that bad for me because I could be I could be done with my job by by the time dinner and bedtime for a for a young young kid is being done.

01:22:25
Speaker 1: You know exactly.

01:22:27
Speaker 4: I'm flipping on you there. We're all we're all creatures of self interest.

01:22:34
Speaker 1: You know that's right, that's right.

01:22:39
Speaker 4: So but all right, uh well, hey, we wish you the best of luck. Thank you so much for taking time with us and looking forward to seeing our t J on on a big stage here next week, this week, this week when it airs this week. Yeah, we're fast forwarding. We recorded this last week, but it's really this week when people are going to be listening to this. So thanks so much Scott for coming on and best of luck next week.

01:23:07
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me appreciate it.

01:23:20
Speaker 4: Thank you for listening to another edition of the Friday Golf Podcast. Big thanks to PJ. PJ Clark, He's just dominating the podcast production here, so big thanks to PJ for putting this together. As a quick reminder if you haven't check out Club TF, I just was on a phone call this morning about some cool stuff we're going to do in Club TF next year, So best way join now be a part of it for the next calendar year. It's one hundred and twenty dollars for the year. We do a load of content in there, and we are going to put a substantial amount of effort into improving the member experience and adding member features in the in the coming year. I'm really excited about where it's going. Check it out at membership dot Thefrida egg dot com. We will be back next week. I love your co host. He went on an epic trip to Maine this fall or last week. We're going to talk to him about that. We'll probably do a little bit of recap rundown of RCD and and Solheim Cup as well, So we'll be back next week with a couple episodes. But thanks for listening as always, and we'll talk to you next week.