A Pair of Golden Age Munis: George Wright and Swope Memorial

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Frida Egg Podcast. I'm Garrett Morrison and I'm here today with Andy Johnson. Andy, how's it.

00:00:06
Speaker 2: Going, Garrett's I'm wonderful. How are you doing?

00:00:09
Speaker 1: I'm doing all right. So we're talking about two major municipal courses today, Swope Memorial in Kansas City and George Wright in Boston. We're excited to talk about these places. But first, this episode is brought to you by the Frida Egg pro Shop.

00:00:27
Speaker 2: It is it is our pro shop, proshop dot Thefrida Egg dot Com. A really cool new item that we have is our Rainerman logo, which is modeled after Seth Rayner, so it's got his hat and glasses. It's kind of a silhouette. We have that available on b dratty polos. We have it on a b Dratty sport pollover, which is very nice, good fall layering piece. And we also have towels and I think the hats are coming relatively soon. All these things. We wanted to time it all up, but honestly, the way production runs are happening, with all the supply shortages, it's it makes it a near impossible task. So if you're a fan of seth Rader a golf architecture. This is a cool little shirt that's that's differentiates. I always like these types of shirts because it breaks up the logo monotony. You don't want to be the guy with a couple of logos on. This is a perfect way to differentiate and have something that's not from a golf course and it's not just like a generic shirt.

00:01:25
Speaker 1: All right, cool, So proshop dot the Friday Egg dot com, check out our Rainerman logo and as always we have all the other stuff we usually have, including our photography prints which are which are pretty cool. We're always adding new courses, so so check those out as well at our pro shop. I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset. When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset. And when I find my ball in a bright egg Frida egg the dread and Frida Egg Frida Egg Frida egg egg Frida Egg bride egg Lie, I'm.

00:01:56
Speaker 2: About ready to run off the golf course.

00:02:21
Speaker 1: All right. So, Andy, you have been traveling a lot lately. You've been seeing a bunch of different courses. You were in Boston before that, you were out at our event at Prairie dunes, and you got to see a course in Kansas City as well, And we just decided that we'd talk about two particular municipal courses that you saw recently, and they are both pretty special places. You have George right in Boston, and you have Swape Memorial in Kansas City. Maybe we should just start out by talking about George Wright. Give me the basics on this course. What's the rundown? If somebody hasn't heard of it, what is this golf course?

00:02:57
Speaker 2: It is a dal Ross golf course in the City of Boston, Boston Municipal golf course. It was built in nineteen thirty eight Donald Ross's plans. Allegedly he went and signed off on him. It was built by one of his longtime associates.

00:03:13
Speaker 1: His name escapes him me Walter Irving Johnson.

00:03:16
Speaker 2: There you go, Well, my great uncle Walt Johnson. How could I forget? But he I guess. Originally the plan was this was supposed to be a private golf course, but the kind of the Great obviously financial crisis happened and it became a one of the public works projects. So this golf course costs like a million dollars to build. It is on a very great piece of land. It's extremely dramatic and honestly it's one of the best municipal golf courses in the country as it is today and has a world of potential too. It's very well preserved as it is. You know, they the superintendent Len Curtain, does a lot with very little. The thing that I appreciate probably the most about what they do is they really are diligent about mowing out the green pads. You know, they aren't green all the way, but they are at approach height, their shorter height, and they have been very diligent about keeping those out to where they should be, and that's key for potential of getting better in time.

00:04:27
Speaker 1: So just to give a sense for the ambition of this project when it was built in the nineteen thirties during the depression, what's this piece of land like?

00:04:36
Speaker 2: It's very rocky, it's hilly. The two flattest holes like, it's really interesting to hear people's commentary the first and eighteenth holes are so bad. Well, it's like the two places that are flat on the entire property, and they are essentially ways to get to the great parts and back from the great parts. Of the property. The clubhouse is on believable it is. I mean, it is one of the best public clubhouses I've ever seen. It's old school. If anybody's been to like Sharp Park, it's kind of similar to that, but in a in a grander Northea way, bigger. But on the inside inside it feels the same way old school locker room, old school bathrooms.

00:05:22
Speaker 1: Like.

00:05:22
Speaker 2: It's a it's a really neat place. But you know that that land is you know, you've got your exposed rock it's It's one of the things that I was this was my first trip to Boston. I just fell in love with the landforms in Boston, how varied they are, and how how different the land in general is. This land has those rock out croppings, but it's very dramatic, lots of big ridges, lots of holes that play over these ridges, along these ridges, and and there's you know, outside of the first and eighteenth holes, there's not many flat lies out there.

00:05:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's a massive piece of land. It basically consisted of rocky ledges and swamp at first.

00:06:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's very similar to Yale.

00:06:05
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly right. And Yale was this enormously ambitious project for its time as well. This is a public This was a municipal project. I mean it started Donald Ross designed a course to be private, but once the depression hit things changed. But the funding was provided by the Works Progress administration. This was a publicly funded project and it was so ambitious, not only in the golf course, but as you say, in the clubhouse. The clubhouse cost I believe two hundred thousand dollars, and if you think the golf course itself cost a million dollars, that's a lot of ambition. This was kind of the vibe of the time in municipal golf construction. The most ambitious projects in a lot of ways were the ones that were being funded by public money. And that was true outside of golf as well. But this course definitely is of a certain era. We just don't build municipal golf courses like this anymore.

00:07:03
Speaker 2: The thing too about it that's that you can appreciate so much is that it was designed like there's this thought that public golf needs to be designed a certain way. This is one of the best public golf courses and from a design standpoint in the country. It was designed to be a private golf course. Like there, there shouldn't be any differentiation between the design of public and private. Both golf courses should have really cool stuff, and this place is filled with really cool stuff. And I've seen a lot of Donald Ross's work, and just from a pure bones standpoint, this is near the top of the work that I've seen. Like this is this golf course has so much potential. It's so good today, even you know, with the challenges it faces, it's so good today. And it's one of the best Donald Ross golf courses public or private, from an architecture sense that I've seen.

00:07:59
Speaker 1: So this course was routed by Donald Ross, he came up with the plans for it in nineteen twenty eight, and then an associate of his, Walter Irving Johnson, who served as his engineer and draftsman for years, is my understanding. And so you know, maybe Donald Ross wasn't kind of there on the ground planning this golf course, but do you still see kind of like fingerprints of his architectural style there.

00:08:25
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, And obviously, like I think the later years of Ross, he wasn't at a lot of places. He was so busy at that time. It was this was his process and you whether it's Walter Hatch or JB. McGovern, all the associates for Ross were really fundamental in the construction of the projects, and not so much you know Dal Ross at the end because he was going site to site drawing the plans, leaving him behind. I think the thing this is a gargantuan property from a scale side, but one of the things you always know with a Ross course is it's like very intimate to walk. I walked the golf course in the morning. I walked it, looked at stuff, was walking around a ton and I pulled up my like kind of apple health thing. I was under ten thousand steps like that's that doesn't happen very many places. Like So this golf course, while it is it's huge, it feels big. The everything's so tightly knit together and everything works so quick, like you're walking right off a green to the next tee.

00:09:32
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:09:32
Speaker 2: And it makes this big property very walkable because of how easy it is to go from spot to spot. The greens also are really wonderful. There's some a lot of intricate contours and greens. Some that you see places in the stuff that I really fell in love with was just some of the artistry of it. I posted something on Instagram and Twitter about the seventh hole. It's this whole that plays. It's really dramagic. You tee off on a hill and there's two ridges. There's a ridge right in the landing area, and you can either play up on top of it and you leave a longer shot in, but you get a really good look at the green, a clean look at the green, or where most people are going to end is down in the valley, and you'll from there you're blind. But the way the green that sits behind another little ridge just kind of blends. The back of the green blends in with the ridge, and just the horizon line matches. It is so elegant and it just fits with the land, and it's really neat because the most obscure side is the left side, and that's the side you're scared of, But that slope, everything behind that slope helps you from there and feeds into the green. The right side, which is way more visible, everything kind of falls away and there isn't as much of a kicker slope down into the green. So if your ball land's kind of short right, it's not going to get to the green. And it's just a beautiful way, you know, the vision deception. And obviously we live in a time of rangefinders, but but there's still the way that hole kind of sits in there. And if you're playing a lower trajectory shot, which you might be, if you're in the trees, you might be. If if you're if you're a shorter hitter, you've got that left side to just kind of funnel it in and if you end up right, it's just going to go away.

00:11:22
Speaker 1: Does it have a drainage function to that feature?

00:11:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, obviously. I mean, like the thing here too, is like, this is not a property that's going to drain well because there's soil and rock.

00:11:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, and and swamp and naturally it was a swamp. Like let's keep this in mind. This place was significant portions of it were water logged, and so they had to deal with that.

00:11:44
Speaker 2: And I talked to Len Curtin, the superintendent, for a while while I was out there, and he told me that the golf course, He's like, surprisingly, it drains really well. There was an area that they were putting a significant amount of drainage in on the fiftle that clearly was an area to work. But like you know, it was, it was pretty firm out there and it's not a place that you would expect to drain well. But then you saw like some really neat stuff that was built for drainage. One that comes to mind, and I'll have to post something so people can see this visually. But the behind the tenth Green and along the right side, there's this beautiful cut. The only you know, people sometimes people lament drones, but the only reason I picked up on this is because I was flying a drone and saw it and then I went and looked at it. But there's this beautiful cut along the right side that kind of in the thirty yards approaching the green. The green sits down in kind of a hollow, and that where you hit your t shots a high point, so you're hitting down into this hollow. And obviously water was a big concern where the green was situated, and they cut on the high side on kind of the hill, a big long cut that's about ten yards wide, and you can tell that the function of it was just to catch water off the hill and keep it off the green. And it's just this elegant thirty yard long feature. It looks really cool and makes the green kind of have a sharp right edge, which is, you know, from a standpoint of if you miss a little right it's not going to come back in. It's going to kick into this like hollow depression, almost like a grass bunker. But the main purpose you could tell of this feature, given where it sits and with the ridge, was likely drainage and it's just keeping the water off the green, which is just a brilliant thing and stuff that a lot of times today would be simply cured by a catch basin that would end up being not as cool and not as visually pleasing. Yeah, when sometimes constraints not having everything at your at your disposal is what yields this creativity. And sometimes I think, you know, in golf architecture where it's gone astray, is a lot of you know, you look at like the autocap stuff and the ability to flatten fairways, Like what happened was tools led architecture to become less creative. And that's why George Wright stands out so much in the world of public golf is because of how creative some of these little solutions are, but also just the golf course. The golf course embodies the place so well, you know, and you can see if they just put if they had a little bit more budget like this is, this is. They have some tough situation, tough constraints with maintenance and the amount of money put into it, but if this place could just get a little bit more, it would be so good. And I, you know, from a pure architecture stense, I think this is the best municipal facility I've seen. And I haven't seen every single one of them, but to me, it's got the topographical interest of Bethpage Black. But then you get on the greens and it's in definitely more interesting than Bethpage Black. It's more fun because there's more variety of short There are like some long ass kicker holes, but there are also some really fun, short, quirky ones that are that are cool.

00:15:15
Speaker 1: You know.

00:15:15
Speaker 2: One that comes to mind is like the sixteenth is par four that plays up. It's a volcano, kind of like a short volcano type green. That's a really fun hole. There's a great variety with the par Three's the twelfth hole it's got to go. I think it goes down seventy feet or maybe eighty feet, plays down eighty feet and it's a pretty short part four and you hit the ball and it's just you know, kind of like it's completely blind straight downhill off like this ledge and your your ball and where it ends up is very randomly determined by a bounce and where it lands on this like kind of rumpily rocky downward thing, a downward kind of slope. So that hole is like it's very quirky, but it's like that you don't just don't see that very many places, and so that I think from that sense, like you know, the other places that would contend with it are like Sleepy Hollow in Ohio is another one that I think is in the same boat. And just generally we're talking, you know, talking about Swape and George Wright today, like Sleepy Hollow and Manichiki are in the same boat. Of these public golf courses that like you wonder if they're going to get restored, you know fully someday because you know, just reading the tea leaves of architecture and what's going on, I kind of feel like there could be momentum for these golf courses.

00:16:45
Speaker 1: Maybe, I mean we should talk about that later. I want to hit on a few other points about the architecture at George Wright. But it is an interesting question whether these courses are trending toward full restoration. I'm not totally sure that the financial model is there yet for that to happen, but we'll see. But something I wanted to talk about with George Wright, touching on something you said earlier, is the routing of it and how well it works. Now, this is a really hilly, difficult site, and they did use a lot of dynamite at it, so it's not like this was a lay of the land project through and through. But at the same time, they knew that people would be walking the golf course. They did not expect that people would be taking golf carts, and so they had to figure out a way to make it walkable even though this is such a hilly, difficult piece of land. And I think that's part of the magic of a course like this is that it was designed under the assumption that the players would be walking it, and so they didn't have any other choice but to do what they could to make it as pleasantly walkable as possible. If this course were built today, then there would be a million little decisions that could be made saying, yeah, this transition between this green and this tea isn't that great, but people are gonna be taking golf cards, so don't worry about it. They couldn't say that back then, and so they had to come up with more clever solutions. They had to be more innovative because of the limitation of walking.

00:18:16
Speaker 2: One of the coolest things about the whole morning out there is I got out there, you know, probably thirty minutes before sunrise. Groups were already teeing off. I was, you know, I'm walking. I move a lot faster than people play golf. When I'm walking, I'm paying attention to everything. I stop and look at everything, but it does it's nowhere near and I'm walking. And the first group out was these two older ladies carrying their clubs and they were motoring like I was having trouble passing them as a single walker with no clubs, hitting no shots. They were moving so fast, and you know, they're carrying their bags, they're you know, they're talking, but they're carrying their bags. And I talk to Lend, the superintendent for a while, and I said, and it was like the sixth green at this point, I'm past them and they're quickly catch up. When I start talking to Len and I'm like, hey, you know, like these these ladies they move fast, and he goes, oh, yeah, there are de sweepers every Saturday Sunday. They're out there first off and they fly. I mean they had to be done in two hours flat, two fifteen.

00:19:24
Speaker 1: That's the way to do it. I mean, isn't that aspirational?

00:19:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was cool. And this is a golf course that allows like a good comparisons like Aaron Hills. Yeah, if you're the first group out Aaron Hills, two fast walkers first other than the morning, you might be able to play in four hours.

00:19:44
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:19:45
Speaker 2: And it's because what you talked about, the routing, the concessions that you make modern architecture because you have the ability to and that's a walking only facility. And this is you know, this is the brilliance of these older architects that you don't it kept everything so compact.

00:20:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it takes cleverness to do that. It doesn't take necessarily more funds or you know, better equipment.

00:20:09
Speaker 2: Well, it actually saves money. Like the thing that nobody ever thinks about with like when something's compact and put together. Is how much money they save on gas over the course of the year for maintenance. Yeah, this is it's just like a crazy little thing that you don't think about, but they probably save tens of thousands of dollars on gas in comparison to a golf course that's spread out that sprawls across a big property.

00:20:34
Speaker 1: So if you were to wave a wand and fix some things that George Wright do some projects that would improve the course, what specifically would you do.

00:20:45
Speaker 2: The thing that this and Swope, both of them. I came away really pleasantly surprised that they weren't really far away. You go to some places and they're just so far away and you see like it here they have the pads of the greens, short grass.

00:21:01
Speaker 1: This is not a Rancho Park situation in La exactly. It's just like this is a great piece of land. This is probably a great golf course, but it's just nowhere near being restored.

00:21:12
Speaker 2: Like this place is close. Like I think like some of the things that you could do, just in some small things that they could do if they had a little bit more money and a little bit more maintenance staff. Which is a struggle, A huge struggle for them is if they just got some of the brush back, it would expose out so many more rocky features, and it would give it so much more of a defining aesthetic look, because a lot of it's just underbrush that's covering these things up. If you go to the edge of the fairway on a lot of holes and you just look into the you know, it's a lot of it's like buckthorn and stuff like that. If you look in there, there's like rock behind it, and it would be really cool if a lot of holes you're just playing and it's just rock walls on the on the one side of them like that.

00:21:57
Speaker 1: You know.

00:21:58
Speaker 2: I think in modern design, one of the things that could really sway the golfer is just eye candy, and this thing would give it so much eye candy, and then obviously, you know, just fair way with it just you know, I think the biggest thing that it could use is just a bigger maintenance budget and the ability to you know, attract more maintenance. Like that's what they need the most, is just a little bit more help from the city.

00:22:25
Speaker 1: What are some of the challenges that they're facing as far as their maintenance staff is concerned.

00:22:30
Speaker 2: So in speaking with Len, and we might have Len on a later date to talk more about this. But you know, they have a maintenance staff of four or five people. I can't remember exactly what he told me, whether it was four or five.

00:22:44
Speaker 1: Or of course that big. I mean, I guess you can do it. You know, there are a lot of courses that have a staff of two. But yeah, I mean, it just that's tough.

00:22:54
Speaker 2: And their issue is like they can't recruit, and it's because they pay twelve to fifteen dollars an hour. It's seasonal work. You have to be a resident of Boston, and then they do an intense criminal background and you know, and I believe drug testing, and you know, like you just think about like the pool of people that want to work, you know, lose their job in the winter and work for minimum wage.

00:23:19
Speaker 1: And have to pay you know, whatever the rent is for a Boston apartment. I mean, it's it's not a cheap city.

00:23:28
Speaker 2: So so you're just your pool and it and it's you're working at four am, Like I think being a superintendent working on ground screw is great, but like at the same time, you're waking up at four am. Half the half the time you're working is freezing, you know, and and it's hard. It's manual labor. Like it's just like why would you do that? Or or you could go work on I'm sure you could probably work on a landscaping team for similar pay and have better hours, right, you know, and not have to live in Boston.

00:23:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean this is what we have to talk about with a lot of greenkeeping jobs. Is yeah, it's tough to find staff a lot of places, but you have to think about why people would want to take the job and what you're doing to incentivize them to take the job. I mean, being a greenkeeper is such a great job in a lot of ways. You get to be outside, you get to be in this beautiful place, you get to be doing interesting work with interesting people. But come on, I mean, there are so many sacrifices that you have to make already to do this job. If you're not going to get paid in the winter and you have to live in an expensive city, then why are you sticking with it? You know, we have to give people reasons to do these jobs.

00:24:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I like this is a statewide issue with you know, the golf course I can't remember the name of it, that abuts the country Club at Brookline.

00:24:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, Robert T. Lynch, I think is what it's call.

00:24:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, the superintendent became good friends with the longtime country club superintendent, and the country club would actually send equipment and send staff over there to help out. Because the funding from the state I believe that's the state golf course. The funding from the state and or the city was never enough to properly maintain that golf course. And because of the friendship between the two superintendents, the country club would send staff and equipment over there to help regularly, you know, like and the it is the reality for a lot of you know, people complain about municipal golf conditions. It's like, well, I would say that George Wright's conditioning is extraordinary for the hand that lend Curtin's dealt.

00:25:40
Speaker 1: And the same is true of another city municipal course in Boston called Franklin Park, which you didn't visit, but we want to go see at some point in the future. And I've heard a lot of great things about that. Looks like a really really cool golf course. Mark Mundum has worked there as well. The architect Mark Munchum, who did who has been doing the work at George Wright over the past twenty years that has really brought that course back. He's also been doing some work at Franklin Park. And by the way, shout out to Mark Munchum. You know, he has been doing yeoman's work at these courses for a couple of decades. Now that's a tough job, you know, working with the city and doing these projects kind of piecemeal when funding comes through. And just I think he deserves a lot of credit for what these courses are now. He has really improved them and he's he's doing work that in a lot of ways is pretty thankless.

00:26:31
Speaker 2: And the thing about George Wright is it's packed. It's bringing in a lot of revenue.

00:26:36
Speaker 1: Right. There should be some gratitude, I guess is the word I'm looking for from the city for this course, some emphasis like this is this is such a huge asset.

00:26:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean, and that's the thing. It's when you taught, when you do research on like the East Potomac Courses, the courses of Washington d C. The National Park Service how their goal when they set out to build those courses was to build a golf course, the golf courses that were on par or better than the country clubs in the area. George Wright, if it was maintained the way some of the fancy country clubs in Boston were maintained, would maybe be one of the three or four best courses in the city. Period. Yeah, that's how good the place is.

00:27:22
Speaker 1: And that's saying something. There are a lot of great golf courses in this area.

00:27:27
Speaker 2: I mean, it's got one in eighteen or kind of meholes. Everything else on that golf course is it's a roller coaster. It is such a neat spot and the great you know, the beauty though, is like it hasn't been messed with. And that's the promise of it is that it's close. It's not far like that's This isn't a ten million dollars restoration. This is a if you could find three million dollars around the city of Boston, which I imagine there's some wealthy golf loving people in Boston that would be you know, but it's three million dollars and you'd have something that you know, no other city you'd have a better golf course than that. Page Black.

00:28:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the way to go. I mean, finding the money is one thing. Making sure that the money is spent in a good way and that the project gets executed well and with as low cost as possible is totally another thing. You know, there are a multitude of reasons that doing these kinds of renovations and restorations at municipal facilities is harder than it is at private courses. I mean, there are just so many reasons that that's the case, and so many little bureaucratic messes that get in the way. I really hope that they can, they can find something extra for the course, but I just, you know, I'm not seeing it that the restoration trend is so strongly at private courses right now, where there are memberships that can fund it, that you can assess and you can find the money. That way, it's so much more simple. Should I have more hope than this?

00:28:59
Speaker 2: So this is where I differ with you. We've been saying as an architecture community for twenty years. Oh Man, if Yale ever ever restored their golf course Oakland Hills, like Oakland Hills, if they ever restored.

00:29:15
Speaker 1: Those are totally different situations.

00:29:17
Speaker 2: They're different situations, but here they're different situations, but these were like the courses like, ah, that's never gonna get done. They're going to keep doing what they're doing. That the tides are turning, everything's getting restored. Public golf follows private golf trends. They're behind the times. I think resorts are on the forefront, right, They're the ones that have the most incentive to be innovators. Public golf courses should have as much, but they're run by there's probably a lot of government employees here. If you can work, if you're if you grow up and you want to work for the government, you're probably not the most like innovative, out on the edge type person. I don't want to offend anybody. So resorts are the innovators in golf in the golf course space. Private clubs follow them because they have a fierce competition to get new members. That's what they're always in battle with. Behind that is public golf. Public golf is like five ten years. By the time they get on a trend, the trend has changed. Usually.

00:30:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you're talking historically about like what happened in the nineties at a lot of public golf courses and municipal golf courses where they were made more difficult. There was more rough, more trees, kind of following the trends that had been established in the post war era.

00:30:40
Speaker 2: Great public golf architecture happened six seven years after the Golden Age started. Yeah, well, the great public.

00:30:50
Speaker 1: Golf A lot of it happened in nineteen thirties. Actually, like a lot of it because of the push for government funded projects, because of the Works Progress Stration, right that that's.

00:31:01
Speaker 2: The DC courses were in the twenties, Cobbs Creek was in the twenties, Bethpage Black was in the thirties.

00:31:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, Progress administration and kind of telling how things so with Swope, which we're going to talk about. Yeah, I mean, it's just a totally different era though you know nineties early too, but you're not the government is still funding stuff.

00:31:22
Speaker 2: But this is my point. Stuff anymore, there are years behind the trend, and we're getting to the point where restoration the trend of maybe we've gone we're going to go too far on restoration. There are a lot of courses that are going to dump money into restoring stuff that have no business restoring anything because there were never anything good to start Like, that's the reality like there's hundreds of courses that are, Oh, we're going to restore our whatever it is. Don't restore, build something better, like you can build something better. But at the same time, so we're at the point where we're getting to the end. I think of the restoration era, like there's just not as many places to restore. There are very few project great golf courses to restore left. Okay, the best restoration projects are these, These are the best restoration projects in the country available, are becoming these public golf courses, these municipal golf courses, which tells me their next Well.

00:32:19
Speaker 1: So I understand the golf trend. Where I don't know where I'm unsure is the financial trend is the kind of trend in government right now, which is not to put more money into stuff, especially not into golf. I mean, I think that they would if a course is struggling, that a lot of city governments would close it down before considering putting more money into it.

00:32:44
Speaker 2: We're seeing other we're seeing city governments do the opposite, though across the country.

00:32:48
Speaker 1: It's select which city governments are we talking about. We're talking about Charleston, Carlson, We're talking about some cities in Texas. We're talking about winter Park. I guess Corca Park and Oakland Corca Park is, Yeah, that's a really good example. What what city is that in exactly? Is it an opening? Is that owned by the city of Oakland. I'm not sure so where? Yeah, And I'm asking that because what I haven't seen yet, and I'm not sure we're going to see anytime soon, is big cities like San Francisco, New York City, Boston. What we haven't seen quite yet is cities of this size really pushing to renovate or restore their municipal golf courses. Maybe it'll happen, It could happen. There have been some big cities where municipal golf courses have gotten makeovers. You know, Houston Memorial Park is is obviously a big one. Though that was more driven by private money, I think than it was by government. And maybe that's maybe that's that's the trend that the money, the money has to come from private sources.

00:33:51
Speaker 2: That's Cobbs Creek and Philadelphia. That's that's the the National Links Trust in d C. That's what has to happen in order for these these things to happen. And why that's happening is because restoration is such an accepted thing. It's by everybody in golf. Yeah, at this point, that's why I believe that it's going. These are these are the great restoration opportunities left. Yeah, Like there are very few if you go down the list of great restoration opportunities, and maybe we need to make one, but like I can't think of many that would be on top of you know, Sleepy hollow Manakiki here Swope, Like those are the best ones. I put Bethpage Black on that list because it needs a restoration.

00:34:36
Speaker 1: Needs another one. Yeah, well, I hope you're right. I think that the National Links Trust would be a really good model for a place like George Wright because there there is such a good argument that this golf course has kind of civic and historical importance.

00:34:52
Speaker 2: And also I got to say that the models all messed up. They aren't charging non residents enough out there.

00:34:59
Speaker 1: What's the resident rate?

00:35:01
Speaker 2: So it's forty one for residents on weekdays, fifty on weekends. For non residents, it's fifty on weekdays and fifty seven on weekends. Yeah, seven dollars more on a weekend for non resident that they could charge one hundred and twenty bucks.

00:35:17
Speaker 1: Oh definitely. I think they might want to do a little bit more to the golf course to totally justify that. But certainly this golf course is kind of big enough and flashy enough, if that's the word, to justify that kind of rate. When you look at photos of this golf course, it jumps right out at you like, this is a pretty spectacular golf course. I know.

00:35:38
Speaker 2: That's the thing is they aren't charging what they could be getting. I think you keep the affordable golf for residents the same, and maybe you do a county rate like for you know people, but like if Chicagoan comes out there at plays, they should pay one hundred and twenty bucks, because in Chicago they pay one hundred and twenty bucks for something that's way shittier than that.

00:35:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, so we should probably talk about Swope. Yeah, you went and saw this course before going out to Prairie Dunes. You played it with Will Knights, our own Will Knights and Curd Everett in Curd Everett, Right, it's an aw telling house course nineteen thirty four, I believe. Yeah, tell me about this course. What are the basics.

00:36:21
Speaker 2: So this is a wild piece of land in a different way. It's right from the start, not like George Wright. It's got huge, huge landforms that you navigate and it goes right from the start, but again really compact like it does not you have to climb up and down hills. It's much more of a taxing walk and sense of up and down hills. Some terrible cart path placement out there. In general, it's really really offensive. But again, the thing that's beautiful about Swope is that nothing's happened to it. It's still the same. It hasn't been monkeyed around with. You know, you walk out and it just like George Wright, it's got like this tremendous You drive in and it's got an unbelievable drive in. It's like a kin to a country club. You drive in, there's this front front gate and it's a beautiful, like five minute drive up the hill to the clubhouse. And then from the clubhouse you see all the stuff going on. You know, you see one eighteen plays back. I think the fourth hole or the fifth hole comes back to you. The ninth hole plays back in, ten plays out, and they're all on different levels because of how hilly it is. It's just a wonderful place, I think, Like I was really expecting this one to be in worse shape than it is in comparison to George right it is. You know, the greens have been lost, a lot of the size of them have been lost to rough. You know, they're buried and rough. It is hey, you know, and there's stuff that you wouldn't design today, Like you know, you start off with three short three straight short par fours. That's how good for pace to play? When one, two, and three are all short part fours. They're all very unique and different from one one another, which is really really cool. But you know, it's not the ideal way to get a swift pace of round around. You know, it's with three straight part fours when you're that place just does rounds on rounds on rounds. It's got some really neat focal points, like you can tell that there's these higher these ridges, and that they that tilling Us used over and over again. A good thing that anybody could pick up on is the par threes. Essentially every part three plays into the same area and it's a very disorienting routing. Like you've really lose where you are on the golf course, especially when you get on the back nine, which which is a cool thing. Yeah, like you you know, at one point I think we're on like the fourteenth hole, and I said to Will, I was like, I have like no clue where the clubhouse is, like none whatsoever. And it's got these great long vistas. I would say the back nine is a lot closer.

00:39:08
Speaker 1: You know.

00:39:08
Speaker 2: One of the things that the back nine has is it's got some holes that have like substantial width, you know, where you've got options and playing And in the hole that comes to mind is the twelfth hole, which is this great sweeping par five. It's it's a semi blind t shot and then the green sits at the end of this ridge and the backdrop is just a it's like it's like something you make. It makes you feel like you're in the mountains because of the backdrops. There's a couple of backdrops out there that are just so gorgeous and you can't see anything in the middle of a major city and you feel this escapism like you're gone, you're in nature. And that's I think that's one of the neatest things about the place is like how it's this golf course in the city. You know, there are places where you see the skyline from on the ridges of the second or the third hole, there's a great skyline view, and then on the seventeenth hole there's a great skyline view. But at the same time, there's parts where you're tucked away and you feel like you're the only you're out in nature.

00:40:10
Speaker 1: And that's one of the great things about that a municipal course can do in a city. It can provide a sense that you're getting out of the city and you're going out and kind of getting exercise in a wild, natural environment. I think that's one of the great services that a city golf course can provide and something that people should talk more about when they're promoting municipal golf courses.

00:40:35
Speaker 2: That place, just like George Wright too, is like the thing I walked away, Like, the corridors are pretty good, like there aren't too many trees on them. They need just more short grass and more green.

00:40:49
Speaker 1: Size and maybe redesigned cart paths. Maybe some rethinking on that.

00:40:56
Speaker 2: But if somebody could go, if somebody goes down Google Earth, one of the funniest things as a seventeenth hole. The path it comes, it cuts right across the fairway and then just stops.

00:41:05
Speaker 1: Oh god, it.

00:41:08
Speaker 2: Is out of play though, like it might be in play for people's like second shots, and nobody's driving it there. But yeah, I mean there's some great dramatic holes out there. They have a great hazard. The ninth hole is really unbelievable. It's it's different, like the great hazard comes into play out off the tee more so than the second shot, especially now with the distance people drive it, so you can hit driver over if you hit good drive, you hit over it if you you know, shorter player has to lay back of it. And then the hole goes dramatically downhill and the green sits up back on a ridge about level with where the tea is. And the green has three tiers, so it's kind of like imagine Pasta Tiempo's sixteenth turned on his side, so it's got the high right tier that dramatic. It's not a mini version. It's kind of like I always think of it. It's like almost flipped around fourteen and Augusta has a similar effect, right, not as dramatic, but you know, it's funny because I posted a picture of it in Jaeger Kovich, who's worked on a lot of tilling Hast restorations. He goes, you know, like almost every great hazard green has that triple tiered green. Oh cool, which is something I didn't I had never picked up on, but you know, he and he started rattling him off.

00:42:23
Speaker 1: But so maybe I could say something briefly about what the great hazard type of hole is.

00:42:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, so great hazard is a par five design for the most part that tilling Hast used. And what he did is he bisected the hole with a series of bunkers. So think about Hell's half Acre at Pine Valley. Is like the first example that was the where you know that was a tilling Hasse hole on Pine Valley.

00:42:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was tilling has suggested, right. So obviously tilling Hass did not design Pine Valley, but George Crump, who was the guy on the ground designing the course, brought in all the great architects of the era basically and got advice from them about the holes. And we think that that hole at Pine Valley Hell's half Acre was a tilling Hast recommendation.

00:43:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then he has it at I think it's a seventh hole at the Cricket Club. There's one on Balta Strawl's lower course.

00:43:14
Speaker 1: A restored one round Gill Hans has kind of brought back the full dimension and character of that hazard.

00:43:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, and Gil has used this at a number of his designs. So a bisexs of faaraway. Usually what it does is it puts a huge pressure on your T shot. Yeah, big emphasis on the T shot, because if you don't find the fair away, you've got probably a very small chance of being able to get over the hazard. And if you don't get over the hazard, it leaves you if you have to lay up short of it, it usually will leave you like a long iron into a par five green. Now, getting over the hazard, then you're either up near the green or you have a wed shot in here. The hazard bisects I think it's about two hundred and forty two fifty off the tee, so long hitters they hit it over it and then the ball goes just way downhill. The one thing is when you're down there, it's an extremely uphill shot from down there, so it's not like it's a really easy shot like it. You know, I'm sure you know all the data people would go nuts, but like that uphill shot isn't that much you know, that much easier than if you're short of it, and more at a level playing field, Like obviously you're probably going to hit a lot more shots on the green, but it's so hard to hit the green from way down there because of the approach angle, like your your ball's coming in so flat and it's a very shallow green.

00:44:38
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's a it's a really cool design that's really flexible. It can be used in a bunch of different ways. Sounds like it swop that the great Hazard is a little bit closer to the tee than it might normally be.

00:44:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think it's just because of the land. Yeah, like the reality of the situations.

00:44:54
Speaker 1: Big slopes, huge like roller coaster kind of hole is what it looks like.

00:44:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, like where George Wright has these like kind of cool roles that are like twenty feet roles, yeah, swopads some that you go down like seventy feet. Yeah, like you know, like that ninth hole. I don't know exactly what it is. It's got to be down sixty feet and back up sixty feet minimum.

00:45:18
Speaker 1: So my general thought here about both George Wright and Sweat memorial is that these are two really well designed courses by well known architects of the Golden Age. There are also city courses that a lot of people grow up playing and maybe not thinking about in that way, maybe not thinking like this is a great golf course, more thinking oh, this is the municipal course where I learned how to play. It's kind of crappy. There are some things that are not so well conditioned about it. This is not to say that people in Boston and Kansas City don't appreciate Swope and George Wright. I'm sure they do. But there's something about going to these courses and noticing the pedigree of its architecture. There's a shift of perspective that has to happen when you do that. And so, how is it that you can go to these courses that are that are accessible to all and that are maybe not in the greatest condition, maybe not fully what they should be, but still notice what they can be and notice the great things about the design. What are the things that people should look for if they want to do that at more golf courses. Say they're in Cleveland and they go to Sleepy Hollow or Manikiki, they would be doing the same thing, right, They wouldn't be paying attention to the details of the maintenance because it's not that great. So what are the things that people can notice in order to appreciate these courses fully?

00:46:39
Speaker 2: You know, I think a really easy way to appreciate this stuff is when you're at the green looking at the contours of the green and looking at you know, what the contours and the green and thinking about, okay, like if the pins here, what is it asking and where would the best plot to be coming come, especially like swapes, greens are very severe. You know, you wouldn't be able to have those greens that fast just because of how severe they are. But they promote different options of play in a sense, like a different ideal places to approach, and those places change significantly when you move the pins to different places. Now, you know, one of the issues is like this is kind of hamstrung by the fact that their mowing lines aren't great. But like a lot of times you end up in the rough and you're you're looking at a hole in the way it orients and you're like, ah, this is the right spot. The other thing I think about a lot and it is just like the placement of the greens. Where the greens are placed. You see them on the ridges a lot of times, and how you're like, oh, that's a really that's the best spot for the green, you know, Or they're in hollows where like you play down off a ridge like so where the greens are placed, and what you'll start to notice is how close a lot of green are together.

00:48:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, And or that they're on the same kind of writ ridge, you know, like that if there's one ridge that extends across the property, often you'll see the greens all on top of that ridge. But also I think the art of it is that at a really well designed course, there might be all these greens on the same landform on the property, but the holes approach those greens in such different ways that you don't necessarily notice it right away that the greens are in similar places.

00:48:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, I completely agree. The other thing is, like, especially at Swope and George Wright, is how the land, how the holes, you know, traverse this really interesting piece of land, and how they do it differently whole after hole, How the slope might go a little bit different way and the green might sit a little bit different just like those are the little things that I think you can You can look at a lot with these, with these golf courses.

00:48:56
Speaker 1: I mean, something that I like to try to do is to look beyond the mowing lines. You know, if the green is a certain shape, then look at the edges just off the edges of the greens. Or if the fairway is a certain width, then try to see beyond where the fairway lines are sitting and look at how the hole interacts with the ground overall. Maybe even imagine that the fairway is whiter or that the green is bigger, and then I think you get a much clearer sense of what the architecture is actually doing in that way, because I think mowing lines really narrow people's perspective of what a golf course is supposed to be. And so if you just imagine those mowing lines pushed out a little bit and look at the slopes and how the hole is using those slopes, then you get a much better sense for the art of the architecture.

00:49:45
Speaker 2: One of the other amazing things about Swope outside of nine and full five, I can't think of anywhere else. There's maybe one or two other holes that have fairway bunkers. Yeah, like the land so good that there was no need for hazards.

00:50:02
Speaker 1: And maybe there was also a budget problem right where when tilling Hast was designing the course, he was like, well, we can't have that many bunkers here. We've got to be really selective. By the way, at this time, Tillinghast was traveling around.

00:50:15
Speaker 2: The country America.

00:50:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, and with the Works Progress Administration taking out bunkers at courses in order to make them more budget friendly. So certainly you can imagine when he was designing Swope he was thinking, we've got to be pretty minimal in our approach here.

00:50:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's it's just such a neat spot. I uh, you know, Kansas City, I don't know what you're known for, but like, really, but they could have one of the best golf public golf courses in the country.

00:50:45
Speaker 1: Aren't they known for? Barbecue? Isn't that the barbecue?

00:50:48
Speaker 2: Yeah? Oklahoma Joe's Yeah, don't eat it before you go walks, Well.

00:50:53
Speaker 1: That decision, yeah, do it afterwards.

00:50:57
Speaker 2: But yeah, like that's the thing they have a there's another public course we didn't get to go see, but Hillcrest down the road. That's a down a ross too.

00:51:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, so Swope and George Wright. Those are two courses to go see if you're if you're in those cities. I mean, the great thing is that they're in places that a lot of people go. I mean, people probably go to Boston a little more often than they go to Kansas City. But these are these are.

00:51:21
Speaker 2: Easy ways to go to Kansas City get some local color. What's that thrown shade at Kansas City.

00:51:27
Speaker 1: I really don't mean to throw shane at Kansas City. I think it's probably just factual that more people go to Boston than go to Kansas City, right.

00:51:35
Speaker 2: I mean the story behind the Kansas City, Missouri Kansas City, Kansas is wild.

00:51:40
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, do we want to get into that? Is that? Is that the last story of the podcast? Here?

00:51:45
Speaker 2: I guess the state line was drawn and then the then Kansas City thought that there Kansas Park thought they had bitter more right to the name Kansas City. So it's the real Kansas allegedly, but Kansas City, Missouri is al So this is in Kansas City, Missouri.

00:52:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's there's like a rivalry between the between the two sides of the metropolitan area too, right like on like on the Kansas side, they feel a little bit raw toward Kansas City, Missouri. Maybe on the Kansas side they feel like they're the real Kansas City because they're actually I.

00:52:19
Speaker 2: Don't feel like they. I don't think they should be allowed to both have the name Kansas City. I think that all right. Yeah, that's it, this Swap and you should go play those if you're in those spots, they're they're worth seeing. Like I think, I think they both have architecture that is totally worth seeing, along with like the likes of if you're in Boston, you're seeing country, You're going to see a bunch of private courses. George Wright's got stuff that those places don't don't have, and Swap has got some wonderful stuff. Definitely see that, all right.

00:52:53
Speaker 1: Thanks Andy. This episode of the Frida Egg Podcast was edited by Meg Atkins. Thank you, Meg. One more plug for Proshop dot the fridagg dot com go check out the Rainerman logo, and thanks for listening.