Chatting Pine Needles and U.S. Women’s Open with Kyle Franz

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

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

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Speaker 1: And when I find my ball in a brid egg Frida Egg there, Frida Egg, Frida egg bride egg Lie.

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Speaker 2: I'm about ready to run off of the.

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Speaker 3: Welcome back to another edition of the Frida Egg Podcast. Today we have a special guest. Every guest of ours is very special. We have Kyle Franz, who is a quickly ascending up the architecture ranks. Kyle is very busy. He's got a ton of projects which we talk about a good handful of him.

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Speaker 1: Uh.

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Speaker 3: He worked for Tom Doak and Bill Core and Ben Crenshaw. He is He's a great guy, great architect and his restoration is on display this week with the US Women's Open. Should be a highly entertaining watch this weekend. I would recommend tuning in Pine Needles is a really neat Donald Ross course that everybody can play. It's part of the Pine Needles, Mid Pines and now Southern Pines resort there. Kyle has restored each of those golf courses, so he's got extensive Donald Ross experience. He was also part of Bill and Ben's crew that restored Pinehurst number two. So thank you to Kyle for coming on and fitting us into a very busy week where he's on site and and I hope you guys enjoy this. Hey, what's it been like being a you know, up and coming architect. You've had this boom of projects obviously, you know there's work going on everywhere. What's been the hardest thing about getting really busy.

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Speaker 1: The fact that we are busy, a lot to do, a lot to think about, you know, being a golf course designer is it's kind of a shell game, you know, where where you're trying to make sure all your work is as good as it can possibly be in the field while working on getting ready for the next project, the specifications, the budgets, just preparing of everything, permits everything, and then getting out there and get after all these new jobs. And like the hottest market since probably since when I first entered the industry, So it's a it's a heavy shell game, you know. And everybody knows Andy that that of all the architects, I'm like the least social media conscious, just like the classic artist knows of the grindstone. So I actually hired somebody to help us from around the resort here at Pine Needles this week for that in the in the future, because at the end of the day, sooner, lad you're gonna do at least a little bit of marketing. So it's been a busy, busy stretch, but all for good reasons. We have such a great run of projects coming up between you know, just what we can I got going on here this week with Pine Needles and the women's open you know, sam our our our young Internet shapers out there in the field until dark thirty last night, get everything ready and uh we got Lookout Mountain coming down the pike next week, cat of Citrus Farms after that, Uh, womping og up north, Great Old Ross Course that Brad Cline and Michael Fay uh uh I think they started the Donald Ross Society had and uh and some cool stuff we've been having going on lately between Charlotte Country Club and uh Club Southern Pines opening back up. Yeah, you know, it's been a blast. Some stuff up in the northeast and the Green Mountains doors at Field Club, great Old Club up there, and uh, you know, more stuff at Country Color Charleston. So we've been incredibly busy, a lot of cool stuff and uh you know there's even a new bolt, new build here and a new build there floating around the neighborhood. These days, the market is incredibly hot. So it's been a lot of fun.

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Speaker 4: Have you had to scale up? Obvious?

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Speaker 3: You know, I think that's one of probably the trickiest things about growing and and getting busier. Have you had to scale people up? And and how has that been, and how have you had to let Has there been any struggle letting go of certain things?

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Speaker 1: Absolutely? Absolutely, you know, as you know from my history. You know, I started my career working for for my old boss and mentor, Tom Doak, and I started at the you know, the finished level, doing detail work at Pacific Dunes, whether it was it was you know, fairway detailing or bunker detailing, plantings and just making stuff look like it had been there forever. So at my at my heart, you know, having done that at Barn Google and Pacific and all those early projects, jumping up to shaping and uh at Barn Google and then you know, lead lead shapeer at things like cow Club for example. Uh, you know where you're living out in San Francisco these days, too. You know the same with the with the Piners Stumber two project. My heart is always with the detail work in the field. You know. The guys always know that that I want to like get in the machine and uh and and you know kind of do do my thing. And fortunately, you know, I've built my business to try and be a sort of a blend of my three mentors. You know, Bill Core He's not gonna get in the dozer, but he's gonna finish the greens. That's what he loves to do, is beyond the sampro. Whereas as Gil he wants to be on the bulldozer, as everybody knows all the time. And uh and then Tom, you know Tom don't. Tom will occasionally for fun he'll get back in the machine, but he does more of kind of walking and managing and looking over things. So he's kind of a blend between he and Bill and uh. So I've tried to take pieces of all three of those mentors and just mold it together and what I really want to do out there every day. And it allows me to, uh to pull myself away when I need to to get out uh and do kind of the more planning and the budgeting and the managing and the and the everything of being a golf course designer. But that's it means that I'm gonna get back in the sampro when there's one that I really want to, I really want to have some fun with my uh myself all the way down the line or get in the uh in the ex ectivator of the dozer. So so it's a lot bigger operation. The last time that we talked to you, I wasn't far off of a one man band back in those days. Uh but uh, but it's been a lot of fun, and we we have a lot of fun. You know, I've always I always liked that that that quote about Steven Spielberg that uh that that he just makes every day of the work fun towards doesn't feel like work anymore. Something of that effect. That's what we really we try and do, even when when we're at our most stressful, uh heavy moments where we've got to get things done, we have try and have as much fun as boss.

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Speaker 3: I feel like we're similar, you know what what we were hanging out when we hung out last I was a one man band, I believe also, so you know the uh you know no more one man band and and I completely agree. I think, you know, if you if you do something you love, you never feel like you're working. And uh, I think we're both into we get to talk about golf and golf architecture here today that that doesn't feel like work. So I uh, this week US Women's Open at one of your I think, you know, one of the projects that put you first on the on the map and a big part of your you know, kind of ascension into the top tier ranks of golf architecture was your work at mid Pines and Pine Needles there in Pinehurst. And this week we've got the US Women's Open at Pine Needles. Tell us what the key themes? What do people need to know about Pine Needles? This Donald Ross Course.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, we have worked. We have just worked and worked and worked on this for six years. You know. I was joking out there this morning that we started this puppy in the summer of twenty sixteen and we finished it at nine o'clock last night. And we've changed a lot, you know. I mean, it has such wonderful history here, you know, obviously just a great old Donald Ross course in the sand Hills and then owned owned and operated for you know, decades and decades and decades by by Peggy Kirk Bell. And it's just awesome to work for the Miller Bell McGowan family. I always joked at the great golf family in America, you know they, Uh, there's so much fun to work for. The enthusiasm they the you know, the the hospituality driven like family owned resorts style. You it's just so much fun. And it's really been a lot of fun to to get back to what this golf course you know, looked like when Donald Ross worked on it and uh and you know all those decades ago when when Missus Bell bought it. You know, we've been restoring the the sandy hardpan and the native areas around the golf holes and uh, the natural bunker style. We've widened the fairways back out uh to where you can you know, players of the highest handicaps, they can really golf it around and have a lot of space out there. But for the for these professional players this week, they have a lot of space out there to aim the sides the fairways. And I really strategized quite of it. And I've just been like a kid in the Candy stooril morning, just getting out there and watching him doing just that. But really where this project started is a kind of reverse order for say Midpines, where we did a lot of the bunker work first and then we jumped into greens and expansions after that. Since greens are always shrinking on this golf course, we started with the greens first, and the greens after having been regrassed a few different times between the nineteen thirties and the nineteen or two thousands, two thousand and eight or so, they just you know what happens a lot of time is they settle and they when they get rebuilt, they soften just a little bit each time. Especially, it's really hard to switch from old push up greens to USJ greens before we had the GPS and scanning ability to put it back absolutely perfectly. So I spent a ton of time just going back through all the old photography of both Pine Needles and just the golf courses around here, and we injected back in a lot of what I call the kind of horse and blade touched the really cool small intricacies that really really make the design shine. It makes you really think about you know, you got to think of little hard about how you're gett into that whole location. And it tucked in a corner because of a big spine that works into a green, or or a fall off that goes off the side. So we really expanded down the slaps quite a bit, so you get more of that that uh ejecting sort of motion of the shots when you get offline here, kind of like number two, but also a lot of the cool intricacies that go into the green. You know, kind of an unwritten rule among the staff that that worked on this project on the greens. And that's small enough. I can I can remember everybody's name and not screwed up. But uh, you know, myself and jaeger Kovich and Ben Warren pitched a little bit on it. Uh the uh, I think I got everything everybody there, and uh we had it. I just had kind of an unwritten rule. It's like I just told everybody to get one contour. Let's find one contour on every green that that is is so cool and and abrupt and unique that it couldn't be made by a bulldozer. You know. It had that cool sort of like really wildly sort of detailing to it. Did the Ross excel that here? You look at photos of like say number two Greenow, number two Bulldozer, it's just it's just too heavy to get that kind of truly abruptness. You need an excavator or back then the horse and blade. So we really got a lot of that great nuance back in there.

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Speaker 3: So, how how is this course differentiated from the other? I guess you know, there's so many ross courses in the Pinehurst area and great golf courses there. How does how does pine Beedles have a different identity than say Mid Pines, Pinehurst number two, Southern Pines, or Pinehurst number one, you know the other ross courses that you're so familiar with there.

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Speaker 1: That is a great question, great question. So the Yeah, the first and foremost most important thing to mention of Ross's work is the while it all, you know, fits in within a common theme, he did try and make every one of them just a little bit different, you know, the concept was a little bit different. And that's where that's where he was always just separating himself as such a great artist. Obviously so, and he was also evolving a lot during the course of his career. Here his courses and the teens here completely different from his work by say nineteen forty five or so. So the easy way to do it was to set the goal on each project to try and emulate a different period in his career. But getting back to basically what he was trying to accomplish. In the case of Pier number two, you know, most of the land on pider Snumber two is really pretty mellow. You think about one, two, eighteen ten, all those there is a pretty mellow terrain through there. So he was able to get away with those big, huge areas of sandscapes. Those don't really work on the big sloping golf holes where it washes and it's kind of difficult to maintain. So that's why Finer's Number two has those big, huge swash, big wide corridors and all that heavy sand around the edges of every hole. In the case of Midpond is much different. It's sloping, it's very steep. You can't have as much sandscaper. It just gets blown to smither rains by the weather. So he chose to do a really difficult golf course where it was going to be tight compact. The fairways was wide, but the areas outside of the holes. The buffer on the sides was nil. It was nothing, So you go right into the wiregrass, right into the wisteria, right er the tough stuff. And it was meant to be more like you know, the players Club around town. In the case of Needles, you know, they built the big resort kind of attached around with the big beautiful building you see behind number two. It was really meant to be kind of a great championship test, but much more playable. So I've always noticed, you know, as you look at the uh, the aerials of it had some decent sized corridors a little closer to number two, but also to where the fairways were really big and wide and spacious and less in the way of force carries. He's the early work in Piners was laced with forest carry after forest carre half the holes on course one. Of course two had a big carry on it, so he was always evolving and changing and uh and so I've really tried to I've really tried to draft off that when we were doing the Piner's Number two project. To make a long story short, we tried to do the early forties work where big they did some bigger sand flashes in the bunkers, but what was more mellow, a little more maintainable, and that was perfect for what we were doing leading into the US Open work. It was a big storm, they could put it back together, but it's still very art scene, splashy and cool. With his mid thirties stuff, he was going all out, you know. He did the wildest screens of his career in pinehursts. He did the wildless bunkers, big huge, high sand faces, and I felt like that would be perfect for the vistas of mid ponds with pine needles. You know, we know we're going to have these kind of events like this time, so we want to be a little bit more like Number two, where not as big as sand flashes, a little bit easier to put back together if you get a big storm and things wash out a little bit. And by the mid forties, he in late forties, you know, they'd gone through the depression of the Warriors where there wasn't a ton of money, and he'd started to get more like the rollover grass face bunkers like you appreciate in those great courses in Chicago you played all these years, so we'd become a lot more mellow and understated with the styling here, and I felt like when we'd finished Midpines, we'd maximize kind of that style with Number two, we'd maximize that early forty style was a blend where I really wanted to do something was cool and like understated. Like we would talk about Shinnecock's bunkering as much as Piner bunkering when we're working on this, because that's what you kind of would see in those old photos from the late forties. So there's a lot of turf grass at Pine Needles. It's wider and more playable than kind of the other guys. Again the nice mellow bunkering style, but it also sneakily does something else with the styling of the of the greens because all the bunkers are kind of sunken down any of those more like lower grass face elements, so it allows you to run the contours that sucks in shots like a links course further into the putting surfaces. So the first and foremost goal was to really really run those shapes way into the greens. Were a either jet shots off the edges, it would just suck in balls like a vacuum from outside in the green into the bunkers. You know, the players are getting a great taste of that right out of the gates day on several holes, but you know, one is one that's really like that. Whereas if you get on that left hand side of the green, you know, ten fifteen, twenty feet into the green, balls will roll down into the bunker. Same with the third green, and so goes eighteen. So it allowed us to do some different things with the styling of the greens, knowing that we were going to that we're going to be really low with the bunkering. One hand kind of watches the other. There.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, those greens.

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Speaker 3: You have to be so so careful and cognizant when you're approaching an edge.

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Speaker 4: You know that.

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Speaker 3: That's one of the things that I take away so much from there is the topography of the place, where in so much topography and landing areas out there. But then also how delicate and precise you need to be if you're going anywhere near a corner pin.

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Speaker 1: Yep, yep, absolutely, if so, if you.

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Speaker 3: Were gonna you know, pull out maybe maybe two or three holes that you that viewers this weekend should really pay particular attention to at pine needles, which ones would you select? And I know that's kind of you know, a question that's hard to you know, answer and sometimes pinpoint down. But I know you you like a couple of holes there, you know on that golf course.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, let me think about it here for a second. And there's so you know, it's it's uh, I joke all the time. It's uh, it's it's it's it's almost impossible to like ever zero in on holes that I like better any of the other ones that our courses. I have to think the hardest about that because we're always so focused on details of what we'd like to accomplish over to all architecturally. But you know, one hole that I think is going to one be a big change for the players in this event, and we've made some big changes on is the is the tenth hole. You know, when they would have played here the last the last turn, the uh, there was no crossing feature on the tenth hole, whereas is now there's a really cool feature that if you're going to try and go for it too, you got to carry that baby in the air about fifty sixty yards short of the green. So you know, the USGA was was really you know, encouraging of us to try and get a little more thought provoking stuff in the landing zone down there. And originally the fifteenth hole had a crossing feature on it, but because of the uh the whole has out of bounds kind of on both sides. The village has grown out and around it over these hundred years. It really didn't make a lot of sense to restore the crossing feature on fifteen. The hole would just be too hard for the for the average player. But I really wanted to get Ross's famous crossing feature back in you know, you'd love to do those every once in a while a lot in his early career. So I was like, well, why don't we do it on ten. It's the other part five in the back nine, and it's perfect for it because it's a dog leg. If you if you bail out away from the left hand airway bunkers on the interior side of the dog leg and the t shot, you have a really big carry across that crossing feature, whereas you challenged the bunker. All of a sudden, the red Sea's part up there, so he had the two twin bunkers on the side and we just connected them with the kind of a sandy scape, so players really there's a there's a much more of an incentive for the players to really play aggressively on ten and a great reward for it. So that'll be a big departure from the UH from the previous events. I think that's gonna be a lot of fun. But really a lot of the things that I think are gonna be really enjoyable this week for the viewer and the players is the elements that we restored that just we're missing the last three opens here, for example, the right hand side of number six has a really cool kind of sandy ridge that injects in to the fairway and the landing zone and it makes for a phenomenal T shot.

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Speaker 3: That's one of my favorite T shots out there. Blind you are staring up over a really clean horizon line and you've got those beautiful sandscapes up the hall. That T shot is an incredible T shot.

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Speaker 1: Yep, yep, Yeah. You have that big kind of walk the plane kind of T shot where you want to stay up on the flat up there where you can see and the great look down of the green, but on that right hand side of the fairway it starts to like it starts to valley in and it really kicks shots hard to the right. So what we did is there was ross had some sandy areas and and kind of a mountain kind of feature on that right hand side as you get past that valley that would make it a blind T shot if you got down in the low down there, almost like a Shinnecock or National Golf leaguecy style thing where where if you get in the wrong section of the fairways like oops, I don't know where I'm going now. And so we injected in the sandscape to help with that and and really make it's where the players are going to hit the driver there. They've really got to They got to hit on the screws and they got to get into the right section down there, or it's gonna bounce to the right with the blind shot, or worse, it's gonna bounce into that sandy zone down there. So I think that's gonna be a really pivotal and cool hole. It's the toughest T shot I think on the front nine, with the exception of maybe one or two uh where where you get a big advantage out of it. There's hard T shots like eight. But the ones that I really like are the ones where you have these these up and overs. I mean, that's the hallmark of Ross's work here, getting back to basics. How he made pine needles different from the other ones is, you know, midpint sits in a big bowl where you have a lot of like side hill kind of T shots where you can hit draws and fades to your advantage, and Pine needles to make it different from number two, where you have the big sandy swaths and the bowl of midpints, you did the up and over T shots, those hog backs where if you hit good, solid T shots you get that big speed boost, the big bounces forward. You hit weak ones, you're going to be taking three clubs or two clubs more in all day long and maybe way back there. So uh So, the holes that I really love out there the most are where all those pieces come together, like number two, like number six, where you know, you hit a big, solid T shot, you get that big bounce forward, you're coming in with a couple couple less love.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I think two is another great hole, and I think it one of the things that I love about it is how early in the round I think that hole really encompasses what you're going to see. Tell it gives you a glimpse of the story that you're going to play against, you know, the the challenge of Pine Needles right off the bat, like, you get that that hole is just such a tremendous golf hole.

00:22:24
Speaker 4: You know that, you get a little bit.

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Speaker 3: You know, there's a lot of blindness out there, which I think is a really neat feature for professional golf. And uh so you you went out and watched a little bit today. What type of things are you looking for as you go watch a tournament as an architect and obviously you had the opportunity to watch the US Women's Open at Country Cobe Charleston, another one of your courses. What what types of things do you look for and specifically are you looking to watch at at Pine Needles.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, uh three different things. One is it's just it's a dream come true for me to get out and just watch. You know, we're pretty lucky. That is the is the schedule shakes out. We don't start at Cabin until July and we don't start a lookout Mountain until uh after Monday, perfectly time.

00:23:12
Speaker 4: So one might say you know what you're doing.

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Speaker 1: You know that. Yeah, you know, so the the uh, the timing works out, the time, it works out really nicely that I'm gonna get out there and do it. But the second thing is really you know, it's really fun to see how the players are are playing the shots out there. Uh see how if they're noticing the strategies and the things we're trying to throw it out there, and and and and make them think a little bit. And then the third piece is, uh, you know, just just seeing how it works, if it's if it's really working. It is, watching the scoring, seeing if it's if it's if the whole thing is working the way that we've always visualized it. You know. The cool thing about Ross's work here is that, uh, I do really think that it's incredibly timeless. You know. Uh, big wide fairways that are fun for the average player to play while being very challenging. The the elements in the periphery are are challenging. So when you get off the fairway, uh, it's uh, it's no crap shoot out there. You're gonna have to you have to golf your ball. But it's eminently playable for everybody, and the fact that Ross is so great at just nailing the size of the scale of the of the greens perfectly, and the h and the falloffs and all the cool intricacies that make piners famous, you know, all of those creative shots the players get to play, putting, chipping, hitting, pumping runs. It just it tests everything in the bag out there, and so it's fun to see it all come together. When we had the Senior Women's Open here, you know, they played incredibly well. The year before at Chicago Golf Club, they ended up you know, Lord Davis shot sixteen under there. You know, it's one of my favorite golf courses anywhere in the show. Yeah, exactly exactly. But you know it's it's uh, it's and that's the way with the scoring should have been, you know, it should have been uh uh uh it played perfectly. I walked her out it that weekend. It was just absolutely awesome. It was a great setup and uh and she just played played her tail off. It was amazing. The next year at Pie Needles, I was worried that the girls were gonna they were gonna they were gonna shoot a low score here too, you know, and uh, but the the golf course you know, Ross is styling. You know, it comes back to basics. If if the players are hitting the clubs into the green that Ross intended, you aren't gonna ever shoot a low score pie needles. You know, this style is just really difficult. And that's what I think is so kind of timeless about is is that, uh he meant these to be really really hard golf courses and they still still have played really hard. So it really makes for a for a really solid test for for the U. S g. A's mantra of like trying to defend parr and uh So it's fun to watch these tournaments play out and just see how that's all going. But a stride when you get back to uh get back to uh the end of the day on it, I'm at our kitect. I love to watch players get out there and try the shots that were set up for, whether it's the nuances or trying to use you know, contours within greens to hit a draw or a fade to a certain bin. It's fun to see how they're they're doing out there, and especially you know, the different kinds of players out there. You know, this week, you know, I I was really lucky this morning because I was following around, uh, the person that's in the lead, and she was just crushing it. You know, she's at this this hour, she's out at four or five under. She was playing really good and she was hit she she was hitting it, uh, just forever out there. I'm gonna forgive me if I mispronounce her name. She's an amateur, she's a newbie, Ingrid Lindblad, I believe.

00:26:39
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, yeah, she's a great college player.

00:26:42
Speaker 1: Yeah she was. She was just on fire. I'm looking at the scoring now, she's uh, she finished the opening round at six hundred parts. She just killed it out there. And then I was she was in the same group with with Anica and uh, who obviously needs no introduction, and uh, you know Anica, you know she she's seen her Open champion, so she doesn't hit it a ton anymore, but she still hits it beautifully out there. And I was having the time of my life watching watching her hit shots, because she's one of the greatest shot makers ever and she's coming in with a lot of the clubs that Ross intended out there. She hit like this, like one two three skipper up on eighteen green. She hit it up into up on a two green with a little like Ross little running shot. So it's a lot of fun, especially because you know, we because I'm such a ross nerd and such a pineer's nerd, I always know that, especially here, he was always thinking ground game first, ground game for his ground game first. So it's really fun to have somebody of Onnica's caliber out there watching her try and the stuff that he was designed for. We put so many of the nuances back in that he had, like the spine that ran off of the front left bunker on two. You know one of your favorite holes out there that runs out in front of those front left pins they had, like that mid to front left pin. Seid today want to hit this cool little skipping shot up there to the fallaway green. So, you know, a week in a day like this, I'm a kidney candy store. I'm gonna be out there there every day, don at dusk.

00:28:09
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00:30:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, it's it's just been a dream come true. I mean, if somebody would have told me fifteen years ago that I was gonna get to come and work on the restoration number two for Bill and Ben and that was gonna start this chain of reaction of all these other projects here, I would be like, know what, I've never gonna be lucky enough to do anything like that, But you know, I mean starting Midpines, that was the place that we went and played when we were working on number two, is like my golfing home away from home to see the greens, because nobody had ever really changed him that much. But the place that we went to like dream about was was Pine Needles because we knew we'd probably had more cool events like this and'd be fun to do a restoration on it, And then Southern Pines and especially Son Pines because you know, when I was when I was working on number two, I had the entire depth of photography, all the old photography either in front of me or I could go into the tough archives on the rain days, and you know, Audrey Moriotty and the great staff at the Archives would help me to find anything I wanted to find. I would spend hours in there. I'd spend like five seven hours in there on the rain days, and and so it really gave me like an encyclopedic knowledge of the styling of work that Ross was doing, like we were discussing, and one style that I was just always really fascinated by was his early work there where he uh he was a younger man. He was my age. You know, it's kind of ironic that like Ross was almost the same age when he started at Southern Ponds that I was when I was restoring it, you know, so uh so younger brasher, wilder architect, you know. Uh you know, Ross was in his his heyday of doing cool wild stuff. So we had more of the way of force carries like we were talking about before. You know, I mentioned that number two. Of course one those had half the holes where he had like force carries. He'd mellowed out a little bit by the late teens, whereas maybe more six or seven holes and uh where he had these force carries in the middle of the golf holes. And uh so I would when when we would go over and play Southern Ponds during those years, I would kind of dream ahead. I'm like, you know, of all the golf courses that uh here that I would like to restore, that would be the one I'd like to do the teens in the twenties style where he was just a little bit more wild, a little more wooly, and uh you know again he's just a fun, young, brash, young scott architect in those days. So so I always dreamed ahead of that one. You know, Kelly had told me that Kelly Miller, who was the managing partner and owner here, he told me that he'd really wanted to uh to to do a deal with Southern Pine someday, and so I had many years of thinking about it, and uh fortunately that's kind of how it all came to Fruition. You know. We uh we went in with the goal that we wanted to do that period of work. So the bunkers in that period of ross work were really really big, you know, Like I've got this great photo of one of the holes on Course three where it's got like a it's got like one hundred and twenty yard long bunker and it's slashing across the middle of the golf hole, and you know's some cool zany stuff. So I went with the golf really big, bold, bunkering and uh and some crossing features. You know, we got six or seven holes where we have that where you know, you got kind of a sandy native area that kind of crosses the middle of the golf hole, as opposed to having that that full swath of of maintained stuff all the way all the way across you know. Uh. You know ten at Pine Eels was the only time that we dipped into that category, you know, gilded on on nine at of course four, but it was like the one piece to the puzzle that nobody had jumped on yet. And so I was really excited about doing that. And then if we're gonna do that with the you know, the the internals of the golf holes, I kind of wanted to stick to that theme with the uh, with the green complexes by the nineteen early nineteen thirties when they switched from sand greens to grass green, when they finally figured out how to make the agonomics work. His earliest work here was always its most bold as well. Like you look at the pictures of Piner's Number two greens from thirty four to thirty five and growing, and it's like a jaw droppers, Like what they really built something that wild on seventeen is they did you know, uh, every hole that you look at a photo of it's just a little bit more amplified. I always said that, you know, the Piner's number two greens, they are indeed the concept of what's what he wanted. Still today there's always the great debate of whether they've been raised or lower and all those things. And I've always felt like, by and large, it's really simple. You're playing the concept of what he wanted. It's just the details of change over all those regrassings of our times where the highs are a little bit lower and the lows are a little bit higher. Well, I just had in my mind it's like, Okay, we're going into Southern Pines and we're gonna we're gonna have that that that that dichotomy and elevation changes and the sharpness of features and pine needles. We needed to be more mellow because the greens are twelve thirteen out there on the stimutor today, so it needs to work for for USGA events, it's the very very fastest level, whereas with Southern Pines it's always had this this you know cult following. You know, guys like you, guys like me, Guys like Ran Morris and Chris Boody who you know, Golf Club Atlas and Great Rider Chris.

00:35:47
Speaker 4: Yeah.

00:35:47
Speaker 3: I mean that's been Rand's home course for years. He's got to be just through the moon with what it is now. You know, that's the one of the neat things is that, you know, one of the most influential guys in golf architecture covering it from a Reik standpoint, has played at Southern Pines. He's lived there and you know, probably could have gone played all over. He played Southern Pines, and uh, it is a cool place to call home. And now you know, every all the photos I I always they they stop and make me stare because the work looks beautiful. I can't wait to get down there. You're starting next week. Lookout Mountain another another one of the ones that was always on the list of man if if if they, if they ever did something that could be pretty cool. I I believe I've read that it was the second most expensive golf course built in the Golden Age, behind Yale. You know, building a building a course on literally the the edge of a mountain is uh is a tough task and you're teaming up with Tyler Ray for that project. Uh what what's going to be the work in in the focus of that project.

00:37:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, big big bunker restoration job and uh green restoration job. You know, it's the same kind of things that we work on all over the place where the greens have shrunk a little bit, or in the bunker projects they've done over time, they've kind of been rounded off and lost that that really cool like hard line uh element to uh you know the shaping you know, just like we were talking about with Southern pines, where where the greens has just been made softer and gentler with changes by other architects over the decades, and we really tried to amplify the excuse me, the the wild putts from top to bottom or the cool contract coming in and out. So is the same that we're gonna get on uh on Walk Out Mountain, where you know, we get the cool little nuances, a little squared off corners that are so famous and rainer McDonald greens and uh just get all the cool details back the corner pins and uh, all the fun stuff. But a great bunker job as well, where we're gonna get you know that uh kind of cool old world uh you know most styling, uh of of the shaping work that Rander McDonald, but also just just all the great old shapes, you know, like the beauty of their of their style of having the templates. We have all these these dozen two dozen golf courses that we can go back to like that's what That's what it looked like on the on the Berrets or the Alps or or any of those holes. So we have it's a it's gonna be a fun archaeology job. You go along with, uh the design and the construction side of it to get to uh, you know, the coolest, the coolest possible product. A lot of tree removal to really get the big views across the property. You know, for people that have never been to Chattanooga, never been to Lookout Mountain, I can't overstate just how cool of a property is. You'd never believed there's anything like it in the American South because everything's such a gentle, rolling landscape and other than when you get to the Appalachians and then you go to Chattanooga and you you're standing out there at the level of the Tennessee River and look it up there you go, you know, twelve hundred and fifteen hundred feet up there on the top of this cliff, and that's where Lookout Mountains sits. So it's a it's just an amazing three sixty view. Yeah, I mean the views down Lookout Mountain towards Georgia, across the valley, across towards the city. It's an incredibly beautiful place, wonderful neat like rock out cropping. So we're gonna cut a good bit of a good bit of trees out there and just expose expose it all so you really get that that kind of uh, that kind of top of the world vibe that the that only Lookout can provide down here in the Southeast.

00:39:29
Speaker 3: The other neat thing about that place is how much gravity just influences your golf game out there. You don't feel like you're you're on like the side of a mountain all the time, but then you hit a shot and you're like, whoa, that thing just rip that. Like you hit puts and they just and you don't see the break and they just rip.

00:39:47
Speaker 2: Uh.

00:39:47
Speaker 4: You know, the different a different way that you think it.

00:39:50
Speaker 3: It is a it's a golf course that you know, I feel like you could play it hundreds of times before you really understood what everything that was going on because because of the setting there on the side of the mountain.

00:40:02
Speaker 1: Absolutely absolutely, and you know the club does does everything right, you know, the fact that you know they don't overseed it all there. And as you know, you know, the the the fastest surfaces in the world are either you know the great old blend of Effectskew and just Lynks Classes grasses in the UK. And then second really it's dormant Bermuda grass. It's like just that shiny sheen, just super fast running a surface in the winter time. And uh, between that and the contour out there, it is a cool, cool ground game course, you know. So uh, definitely one of the top priorities. Just maximize that out. You know, the all the false fronts that we're gonna kind of span back out and add those are really gonna get it to where much like you and I have talked about so much when we walked around Midponds, you know, remember all those false fronts where I just went down the slope as far as I could with the green heigh grass. You're taking that velcro effect out, you know. Uh, I think we're gonna have a huge boost in the uh in the fun factor of what's already incredibly fun fun uh ripper on fast golf course during certain times of the year.

00:41:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's one of the big themes of of the restoration work that I've seen of yours is the recapturing of unpinnable UH area.

00:41:16
Speaker 4: And I think like.

00:41:17
Speaker 3: It's you know, courses and across the world. Really the you know, sometimes when when maintenance practices go one direction and is the first thing removed or the things that aren't recaptured necessarily always in restorations is that unpinnable space because they think, oh, we can't put a pin there, so what why why why do we need to mow that is short short, you know, green height grass. Talk to us about the dimension that that unpinnable space, what it adds to a golf course.

00:41:51
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, the it's it's almost like as simple as one, two, three sort ans. So you think about it, the uh you know, usually these these super fast hole locations on the green were meant to be the fast sections of greens that when the when the golf course is built. So when you lose that, you're losing the spiciest hole locations that the original architect and tendant, especially at the margins of greens, where where are the first places that usually go because like, well, that's too steep, that's too fast, balls are just rolling off the green, or that. You slow that down just enough and all of a sudden you've got world class hole location. Yeah, you know, prime example. The first hole that I got out and watched this morning was was two thousand and two or sorry, over on sixteen, whereas in two thousand and seven the green had become you know a little bit too steep and a little too fast on the far furthest left hole location, there's a cool little hollow that ross built out from the left hand bucker and and extending out in front of the front left pin. But it had gotten to the point where that was like four and a half five percent. So I slowed that down just enough that you could you could put a pina back and there at you know, hot two and a half almost three percent and uh And Shannon Rouilliard awesome lady. I love working with Shannon. She sets up all the Ladies events for the U s g A, and she works so hard at She's been so much fun to work with and to be around or make suggestions or just to pick her brain. I always tell her that I just love learning from her. Uh the the nuance of of of setup. You know, I've learned so much from from the three events we've worked on together between here and uh uh the US Women's Open at UH Country with Charleston and then the nineteen Senior Open here but uh, right out of the kates boom, Shannon went right for that front left pen right out of the gates today. Uh So it's fun to see, uh, the the the sections of greens that got abandoned utilized on the on these tournaments in the settings where where really counts quite a bit. So it has really really expanded the palette that Shannon can utilize to get these players thinking and uh and uh and reacting and and and having fun out there.

00:44:05
Speaker 3: That obviously, you're just hitting on a very hot topic in golf architecture, green speeds, restoration of greens and green speeds.

00:44:14
Speaker 4: And pinnable space.

00:44:16
Speaker 3: What's the kind of the line that you personally walk with with softening greens versus restoring them to originals. You know, how how do you how does that balance work? Obviously I imagine sometimes it's club specific, but you know, what's your general mentality with that?

00:44:35
Speaker 1: Yep, yeah, you know. I think we've gotten to a really great place in turf grass management where right now still what we do it works. It's not too taxing on the planet to the point where you know, uh, it's it's just smoking it. I think if we go any further, I think if we go any further with speeds, it's going to make it where uh it's actually a negative. You know, it's can be just that much more expensive. That was harder on the on the plants, and and also, you know, getting back to basics, we don't want to lose these great hole locations on on old golf courses, you know, the uh uh the the results need to match the goals. So I think it's great that we've gotten to where speeds can can can be this hot and this fast and uh players can get it really bouncing around on the on the grins, even on uh golf courses where it's you know, not the right soils or or it gets wet out there. But we don't want to get it to where where it's going either too fast or going backwards to where it's it's too slow. So I always feel like a lot of time, if you have a golf course where you're losing whole locations, you should probably should slow down the greens to get it back to where you need to be. But if you're gonna do a big project and you're gonna do the uh the the work on them, you should take the opportunity to really get it right and get all those whole locations back to where they they really work without without overdoing it, without you know, taking the cool mustard out of the greens and uh and and going backwards. So it's a very fine line. It's it's it's a great question. Uh. It requires careful thought. That's why everybody should have really a really good active uh you know, restoration architect.

00:46:19
Speaker 3: All right, well, we're gonna keep this one short. We're gonna you know, with all the work you got, we're gonna be we're gonna be talking again sometime soon. It's been too long since we last talked. I mean you were probably in the first twenty five episodes of Friday Podcast and that's right, and uh we'll get you back on here here shortly. But thank you for for coming on, lending your immense knowledge of Ross and the sand hills there in North Carolina. And uh, I want to let you get back out of the golf course and watch them golf and congratulations and can't wait to talk again.

00:46:55
Speaker 1: Kyle sounds good. Yeah, thank you, thanks for having me on. And uh, like I said, we got to get you. We've got to get you out some of these projects and be a fun summertime and come visit us.

00:47:04
Speaker 3: I'll tell you I'm I'm on the road. I could assure you that I've got ample travel time. I just need to work at work, work your you're that I got to work the southeast in Uh could be it could be a fall destination.

00:47:19
Speaker 1: Let's do it. Let's do it, all.

00:47:20
Speaker 4: Right, Kyle, We'll talk soon.

00:47:22
Speaker 3: And good luck with Lookout and Cabot Citrus in this week.

00:47:26
Speaker 1: All right, go ahead, Thanks Bud, have a good one.

00:47:38
Speaker 3: Thank you for listening to another edition of the Friday Podcast.

00:47:43
Speaker 4: Thank you very much to meg Atkins. She does a.

00:47:46
Speaker 3: Wonderful job editing out you know all my mistakes.

00:47:50
Speaker 4: And as a quick reminder. We've gotten Father's Day around the corner. We are doing a sale.

00:47:57
Speaker 3: It is fifteen percent off everything in our Approach shop except for photography. So it starts this Friday, the day this podcast goes goes out, and it runs all the way through Sunday, the nineteenth. So we've got a bunch of brand new merchandise that will be in the shop. We should have some country Club at Brookline, some US Open themed merchandise soon, within probably a week or so, that'll be up. But get fifteen percent off everything in the shop outside of photography, and it'll automatically be applied to check out, so you can't even pay full price if you want to, so do that. Go to the pro shop dot the Friday dot com see our new stuff up there, and thank you again for listening to another episode of the Friday

00:49:01
Speaker 1: Act