Andrew Green on Restoring (and Renovating) Inverness Club

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Frida Egg Podcast. I'm Garrett Morrison, and today's interview with Andrew Green is brought to you by Zero Restriction. Zero Restriction is the official outerwear of the Frida Egg. It's also the official outerwear of the Solheim Cup. The Solheim Cup is the premier team matchplay competition in women's golf and it's coming up next week at Inverness Club. So I hate to say it, but fall is on the way. It is time to load up on pullovers, jackets, vests, rain gear, and Zero Restriction is just the perfect choice for those kinds of items. I have a Zero Restriction raincoat as well as a vest and they are absolute go twos for me, just the highest possible quality. But one great thing about Zero Restriction is that they have an outstanding selection of items for women as well, and I'm sure that will come in handy next week for the players at the Solheim Cup. I haven't looked at the forecast or anything, but you never know what you're going to get in Toledo, Ohio. So if you go to zero Restriction dot com, you can find official licensed Solheim Cup gear as well as other everyday items and if you use the promo code TFE twenty five, you'll get twenty five percent off at checkout. Twenty five percent is a lot when you're buying a nice piece of outerwear. It's a pretty good deal. So zero restriction dot Com TFE two five. So, as I mentioned, the Solheim Cup is happening next weekend team matchplay US versus Europe. It's one of the golf events I've been looking forward to most in twenty twenty one, and a big reason is the venue. Inverness Club in Toledo. This is a special course. It was built by Donald Ross in nineteen nineteen and it has an amazing championship history. Hosted four US Opens, two PGA Championships, and a bunch of other events, but Invernus has sort of fallen out of the men's major championship rotation. The last US Open held there was in nineteen seventy nine, the last PGA was nineteen ninety three, and the club has made no secret of the fact that it would like to host more majors in the future. So in twenty seventeen, invern has hired architect Andrew Green to prepare it for big events, but also to bring back some of its original Donald Ross flavor. Now Andrew has some experience with projects like this. He has done restoration slash renovation work at Oak Hill and Congressional, both of which are scheduled to host PGA championships within the next ten years. He's also doing work at clubs like Sciota, Wanna, Moisset, interlock In. So he is certainly one of the best people to ask about current trends in golf course restoration. He's also one of the best people to ask about what I think is a really interesting conflict in golf course architecture right now, and that is the conflict between the desire to restore old courses and the need to lengthen them, to update them in various ways to fit how the game is played at the elite levels. So it's it's sort of a conflict between the past and the present. With that said, here is Andrew Green on Inverness Club I miss a Green for example, I'm already upset when I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.

00:03:17
Speaker 2: And when I find my ball in.

00:03:18
Speaker 3: A brid egg Frida egg, the dread Frida egg, Frida egg, frid Egg.

00:03:22
Speaker 2: Brian egg Bride, egg Bride.

00:03:23
Speaker 3: Egg Lie.

00:03:24
Speaker 1: I'm about ready to run off the guff course. Maybe we should start by talking about the original Donald Ross course at Inverness, which opened in nineteen nineteen. What would you say are some of the strengths of that course.

00:04:00
Speaker 2: It's always blown me away with Inverness Club when you come off of Door Street and you go kind of behind the clubhouse, the property is so dramatically different from what you might expect. You know, you have those dramatic highs and lows, those draws, the inner nests, this little creek valley, and the way Roth used that property is just doneing. I just it's hard for me to wrap my head around how quickly he could visualize some of those golf holes and the utilization of that space. You know, just one in ten played perfectly parallel. They're not that different in distance, but they're totally two different golf holes just from the way you know they had one a high and ten green sits down low and the shots that are required. You know, that really struck me. And then there's some things in that original drawing that you may have seen in the clubhouse when you visited that were part of the design that we don't see a lot of other places. There was like a waste bunker thing that happened off the ninth tee that we didn't restore, but you can kind of see the old skeleton of it in the landscape. Very kind of interesting, unique scar in the landscape. And then there were things like almost church Pew esque bunkers down the right side of nine, again something we didn't restore, but you see it in the overall drawing that that was quite unique, you know. So the mixture of holes that he was able to provide, Yes, there are a lot of back and forth holes. That's something people often say, you know, there's a lot of holes that play back and forth. But my contention is that might be the case, but he did a masterful job of making them as unique and different as possible.

00:05:48
Speaker 1: So as far as I can tell that critique that you just mentioned that there are quite a few back and forth holes, especially on the back nine between thirteen and seventeen. There are a lot of power fours on that back nine, and a lot of them run along I believe it's a north south axis basically, you know, they essentially go back and forth across a couple of major landforms that are close ish to the clubhouse. Right there's that big gully that a lot of them kind of run over. What would be your full response to that criticism, How do you think Donald Ross introduced a variety into that part of the course where it might not seem like there's a lot of variety.

00:06:32
Speaker 2: Sure, So I think that that tea shot on thirteen plays down an interesting little drawl that breaks up the linear fashion of that internet's gully valley, which then creates an interesting part five concept with a green that's set back from the precipice of the edge, it's pushed back on the high that then creates, you know, a different kind of shot into there, and then turning around a plane back to the south. On fourteen, the tea shot plays over that gully and too, you know, the flatter higher ground headed back to the south and an interesting green concept there and some interesting bunkers, and then fifteen plays back and it's almost all downhill. The green sits down low and when you're stay on the fifteenth green you can turn to the left and see up eighteen. So it creates a very different and interesting thing. So in those holes sixteen plays back south and is probably the most similar to fourteen, And in my head, those were the two holes that I tried to do whatever I could to differentiate them. And so the hairpin bunker on fourteen and fifteen differentiatiates itself a little bit more from what I would say is maybe more of a traditional look on sixteen of just some bunkers off set from one another going down the fairway, and then seventeen plays I don't know if you call it or reverse of some of the others, but it plays to that high edge and then it's a real downhill shot to the green a longer hole depend on which tea you're playing. So yes, those holes absolutely play back and forth. They're all part fours. But I think if you pay attention, there's some significant differences in what he was asking the player to accomplish.

00:08:15
Speaker 1: You mentioned the hairpin bunker, and hair pins are small, and so that might give the wrong impression to those who have not seen this bunker. It is a massive thing. Tell me a little bit about the hairpin bunker.

00:08:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it was something that we saw in the original roths documents, the original course documents, and actually there's one inside of as well, which it's a little different in its format, but at Inverness it was probably about half the size that it is today that we extended it because by extending it and elongating it, then we made it more relevant on fourteen and fifteen, So it was a way to kind of tweak the original intent and get the most value out of it in a modern stand. But it's a very narrow strip of sand that wraps around a series of mounds that kind of run in a very linear fashion, and the way it's set up on fourteen it's kind of, you know, projecting itself out into the landing zone, and on fifteen at guards more you know, kind of a shorter area. But it still makes you think, that's for sure.

00:09:23
Speaker 1: At this point, you have worked at several Donald Ross courses, helped restore several Donald Ross courses. When you look at Inverness, that original nineteen nineteen design, what do you see in that design that you would consider distinctly Rassian?

00:09:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, great question. It's interesting. We don't have field sketches, We don't have some of his inner thoughts that we have at maybe some of his later work where he was doing a lot of field notes that then he'd send to his offices. In the early Ross period, he was really doing a lot of the work on the ground or within his own fines. He didn't have a big group of people helping him other than construction crews. So I think there's a little difference in some of the applications of his design strategies. At Inverness. I mentioned a few earlier, some of the differing bunkers, some of the interesting larger bunkers that were part of the original design that you don't see a great deal in others. You know, expansive areas of sand. You say to a general architectural buff you say, hey, you know raws bunker. The first thing that might pop in their mind would be a grass spaced kind of modest size, you know, kind of pit of sand. But at Inverness, a lot of the bunkers were shared between holes. They were some larger areas of sand, a lot of variation in their presentation, fairways, some joined, some kind of all over the place, interconnected. Everything was very well connected. Part of that was, you know, the mowing and maintenance of the time. And then green wise, I'd say probably not is many crazy green shapes as you might see and some of the later raw stuff. And what I mean by that is, in some of the latter Ross designs he had kind of appendages or corners that really stretched into interesting spaces. At Inverness, those were i'd say more modest, still interesting green shapes, not circles by any means, but less of those interesting kind of corners.

00:11:26
Speaker 1: I guess about the greens, there seems to be a general misunderstanding about what constitutes of Donald Ross green. A lot of people gather from Pinehurst number two that Donald Ross was really into building these turtle back greens, But if you look at just a few Ross courses other than Pinehurst number two, you see that that's not true. And so, in the interest of working against that common misconception, how would you characterize the style of green construction at Inverness.

00:12:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, not to get too many people upset with me or my philosophy on this scarret, but in fact I have a great series of pictures that I use clubs all over the United States where I show how the greens that Inverness evolved over time, and they went from being very intricate and interesting with kind of more defined contours two very domed turtleback shapes in contours, and that's purely a process of aerification, top dressing, maintenance, evolution, soil settling, all those things, And so we worked really hard to get the edges to be a little more I guess crisp in the restoration work. And I think you can have a serious discussion about what makes the greens the best version of themselves. Are they greens that evolve and move and get overmowan and rounded out in places? I think that's the potential. You could also say that we're really respecting what ross and vision by getting those harder lines, the sharper edges, more of the dedicated fil pad where the green went right to the edge of what was filled in shaped to be putting surface. So I think any of those are probably okay and right, you know, depending on how do you want to look at it. But you know, at Inverness we really worked on those harder edges, sharper lines, getting the greens really out to the extense of the fill pads. And then even without the really crazy shapes, the greens are very interesting with lots of great whole locations. In fact, you know, in an early discussion we talked about trying to take the green right to the edge of the drop off, and we just thought there were so many potential problems playability wise, maintenance wise, where the irrigation heads go, a lot of things. But maybe one day we'll do that somewhere we'll see.

00:13:54
Speaker 1: Taking the mowing lines on the greens out to the edges seems to do so much at Inverness to me, and it seems to do a lot at a lot of ross courses that I've seen, you know. One that jumps immediately to mind is Roaring Gap, where they pushed the greens out more towards the edge of the pad Green Pad and captured some fascinating external contours, whereas in the middle of the green there wasn't as much stuff going on. On the edges, there was a lot of cool stuff going on, and so pushing that mowing line out to the edges recaptured some of those really fascinating contours and made them part of the green again. It seems like to my eye, I mean, I haven't seen enough pictures. I don't think of what the course looked like before you arrived, but it seems like some of that work of pushing the green surface out to more to the edges, to the edges of bunkers, to the edges of where the drop offs are. Reincorporates some of those external contours that ross built into the green pad. So would you say that's right?

00:14:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. When you look at how do you get contour and putting surfaces without you know, destroying usable space. Having interesting contours that are along the perimeter that feed in and affect the way golf shots react and putts react, but don't take away from usable space. There becomes a really nice kind of marriage between the two. And then also in my mind, the closer the green gets to the edge and connect well connected to these pieces, the more variety and uniqueness can be brought out in course set up where instead of having whole locations that are right down the heart of a putting surface, you can start to maneuver those and all of a sudden, for a member or for a player, just you know, a guest, whatever the circumstances, your daily experience is elevated. And then for a championship or for the Solheim Cup, let's say in this event, now there's going to be whole locations where players in a matchplay situation can be very aggressive or conservative based on their playing competitors. I just think that adds great wealth to the game.

00:16:11
Speaker 1: So, moving forward to the part of Inverness's history where you entered the picture, you were originally hired. I believe to renovate the bunkers. That's correct, and obviously the work that you ended up doing was more ambitious than that. Can you tell me about how the original mandate having to do with the bunkers specifically evolved into this more thorough restoration project that you did.

00:16:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you know, whenever you're looking to make any kind of significant investment in a property and a golf course, you're thinking about what are the right steps? Are there any things that we need to consider, even if just on paper or in a discussion of you know, should we think about doing this because we're going to spend money on bunkers, irrigation, whatever it is. Do you look at the more holistic picture to see are there opportunities you're missing or things that might cost yes, a little bit more money, but are tied directly to what your beginning goal was. And I think that's very much the case at Inverness, where the idea was certainly to redo the bunkers and make them better. But it was okay, if we're going to spend this money on bunkers, on holes that were not really in keeping with Ross and trying to go the Ross direction, did it make sense to look at how could we reincorporate some of the old original characteristics of those holes that had been lost to time.

00:17:41
Speaker 1: One of the most noticeable changes that you ended up doing was building three new holes out on an edge of the property. Those were replacing holes that were built by George and Tom Fazio in nineteen seventy eight and are now part of the course. A couple of years ago, you actually came on the pop cast and talked to Andy Johnson about finding those those new holes, and so I thought we could just play that tape right now.

00:18:12
Speaker 3: And as I was walking the outer part of the property, I crossed through the fence line out into the farm field and saw basically high points and things that I thought, well, based on what I've seen and how Ross put golf holes on the ground and identified good tea and green locations and kind of connected the dots, I was like, well, that works. There and for the new part three third hole, that's a long part three. My idea for it was to replicate the original eighth hole, which was two hundred and nine yards in the nineteen twenty, US opened up a pretty good golf hole for them, right like a driver, yeah, right. So all of a sudden, I'm standing on one high point and I'm taking my rangefinder and shooting the next high point and it's two fifty and I'm like, well, well that works pretty well. And then walk out and see how with a little bit of work and keeping the soil all there, I can replicate a lot of what was on original eight, even though original eight was on a pretty flat piece of ground. And then I walked out behind that green location out in this farm field, and you know, it was another high point and you could kind of see looking back how a golf hole could fit that would come to be the new fourth and walk through a tree line and kind of saw how the golf hole would fit the ground really well. Right, without doing a lot of work, it just would fit. And so when I did my interview in November, I showed them how I thought that could work. I showed the committee here and Originally I had the fourth hole as potentially a par five because looking at just the way the yardage is set up and with you know, the two par fives, and you know, did that make any sense. I showed that as a potential option. As we worked through the process, it became clear and clear that we could represent the original seventh hole, which was a hard dog leg left that was somewhat short, but I could build that as that new fourth hole. And then everything fell onto the line the green site location, the forward T. You can play the forward T and you could hit driver and try to get it on the green, almost like Ted Ray did on the original seventh and twenty. You could go way back and have this amazing, really hard golf hole. It just fell into place. It was like it was meant to be, and it, you know, like it was like Ross would have doing his little sketches and stuff walking the property. He would have identified kind of similar things. You know, hopefully people will and it certainly appears that way that people will feel like those holes fit the property better than the old holes from the seventies, and that we tried to draw on all the things that were done on the original holes and tried to just pull that into what we did on the new.

00:21:05
Speaker 1: So why don't we take a step back and talk about the holes that you were replacing, which were built, as I said before, by the Fasios in nineteen seventy eight in preparation for the seventy nine US Open. Could you tell me about the changes that the Fasios made to Inverness and why they made them.

00:21:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I don't have every bit of behind the scenes conversation, but the general gist was the original rowth routing had been tinkered with a little bit. Dick Wilson had done a little bit of work. But the holes that were in the heart of the golf course, and I don't want to lose the listeners in all the different numbers, but there are a series of golf holes that really revolve around what is currently the eighth pole, which is the par five. That hole was broken into multiple pieces. Actually the three holes you mentioned they were in that general area, and so what they did was take the three holes out. It was a short part four, two short part fours, and a par three. Those were eliminated in kind of the heart of the golf course and a new part five was installed. And then another par three the thirteenth original thirteenth hole was also removed. The general consensus was they were taken out of play because they were maybe a little weak for championship golf, and they really made gallery flow and the things that you need to have for major championships work. Even back then when the infrastructure and things weren't quite as great or nearly as great as they are today. The holes that were put in place went along the edge of the existing property. It was there was a third hole that was a par three, and then it kind of linked back into the original ross routing, and then you played a hole to the south and then had to walk almost at least half a golf hold back words to reconnect to another part four that then kind of looped around, and then you walk back across the ross routing to get back to what's currently the seventh hole, and then played back in. Anyways, it was kind of a it didn't flow well the walking experience, which Inverness has a wonderful walking tradition. It's a great walk, it's a wonderful golf course from that standpoint, and that just made it a little cumbersome. And then I really think. You know, no one makes a decision thinking it's a bad decision, right, But I really think it was probably the architects were thinking the whole golf course at some point would fit more of their modern vision. And no shame in that at all, but that was probably the thought. And after the holes were instituted, there was a pretty significant disconnect between the new holes and the old ones. And it just seems to me whenever that happens, it just is so disconnected that it stands out. And then there was a small pond that was off to the side of the third hole that had been utilized as an irrigation source, but the water quality and styling of that pond was not really in keeping with anything classic or natural either.

00:24:20
Speaker 1: Was there any consideration of simply restoring the old ross holes, of abandoning that portion of the property and just putting those old rossholes which were in the middle of the property amid the other holes, putting those back.

00:24:35
Speaker 2: Absolutely The first thing I did was look at that. The conclusion I came to with the boundary situation of where the original rows eighthole, and six, the boundary was an issue, meaning that safety to off property was a potential concern. The safety between golf holes became a little bit more of a concern of how go balls would be sprayed. The original seventh hole kind of dog legged around seventeen green. So there were some things that originally probably weren't that big of a deal, but in thinking about trying to pursue that made me nervous, you know, were we really going to get something that worked? In doing that, the thirteenth hole, which was a part three that sets completely opposite from the clubhouse, Like if you'd set out on the patio behind the clubhouse having a post round beverage, you would be able to see the thirteenth This part three study that forever. In fact, I actually put a whole drawing together a proposal to the group I was working with, and we studied it long and hard, and at the end of the day we came to the conclusion that yes, it could work, but it really limited not only future land use in championship potential, but also just daily play. There was some risk in where golf balls are flying now that they're flying farther and potitionally more offline, and so we just decided, hey, we it just it wasn't in the cards.

00:26:12
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, to be clear, the original ross routing was quite a tight routing. It was quite intimate. The holes were close to each other, and the front nine was only something like three thousand to thirty one hundred yards, and so, you know, it was a course that was certainly fit to the scale of the game in that era. Sounds like part of what you discovered is that that scale was a bit mismatched with how the game is now.

00:26:37
Speaker 2: It's exactly right, and that's a tough decision. And you know, when we talk about the idea of restoration versus renovation, I think there's some gray area in between, and hopefully, you know, folks are going to see and those that have played the golf course either there's a way to respect or we were fortunate enough to find a way to respect the original but spread things out and get them in a good position.

00:26:59
Speaker 1: Well, I'm curious about that gray area and the way that you negotiate it. You know, you might be the best person to ask about this, along with Gil Hants, because you have been restoring older courses, many several of which are planning to host major championships, and those seem to be two purposes that you know, can both be pursued, but would come into conflict with each other in just about every project. Right. So, on the one hand, you're trying to restore courses that were built in the nineteen tens and twenties for a game that was a lot smaller and very different than it is now. You're trying to bring back that, but you're also trying to prepare these courses to host not just to be a venue for the modern game as it's played by the amateur, but to host major championships for the best players in the world, some of whom can hit the ball three hundred and fifty yards while barely breaking a sweat. And so those two purposes would seem in certain cases to be very divergent, very far apart, and you have negotiated that in several projects you've done. I wonder if you just have a set of principles for trying to find a happy medium between classic restoration and renovating for the modern championship game.

00:28:23
Speaker 2: And it's a great question. I guess I could take it in a couple different ways. Let me take the easy part first. I think classically designed green complexes, contours, green shapes, and green side bunkers or other hazards whatever they may be, Helmick's hollows, whatever landform, those typically stand the test of time, meaning that greens that are well designed on good pieces of ground with good thought, that aren't just thrown out there are pretty good. I don't care if you're playing hickorys and featheries or you're playing the pro v. You know there's some good things about greens as a whole. So I really try in any of these projects to respect the original green design as much as possible. Now, green speeds and slope, yes, I gotta watch because green speeds have certainly changed. Beyond that, I think if you have the space, tea position is a huge thing to look at for major championship play. Some golf courses are blessed with space to stretch and get t's in different positions, and that's one way to try to get distanced. Then fairway bunkers, fairway lines, overall width or narrowness. I can't believe I'll say this, but trees or other other things that are out there and they'll be in your mind, those are totally up for grabs when it comes to adjusting to for the modern game. One of the most interesting things I've seen with a lot of Ross's work is he would have a second set of fairway bunkers or something thoughtful out at a three three fifty four hundred yard range on a number of his holes, and it was more than likely intended to make the shorter player back in the day think about, you know, if they've hit kind of a poor drive, you know, making sure they're thinking their way on down the golfle. But those are awesome bunkers to restore, you know, from a major championship play. I really am trying to rethink and we'll see, but I'm really trying to rethink the idea of twenty five yard wide fairways that are bacon strips, you know, the whole way that Really I struggle with that concept because when you look at original architecture, it had so much width. We can do a whole nother talk on width and angles and preferred angles to play. We won't go there today, but I do think there's width for the member, for the average player that is well utilized that the long player would never even think of. So why not have fair ways that are thirty thirty five forty yards wide? Up to two hundred and fifty from off the tee. The guy that's sitting at three hundred and three fifties, they're never even thinking about it, but it makes the golf course more playable. So that's a way to kind of interconnect and respect some history. And then the last thing is anything you can do with angles of play, dog legs, things to make the player think about how they're moving the golf ball around the golf course. I think that's important.

00:31:37
Speaker 1: So getting back to your work at Inverness and focusing in on some of the details, some of the detail work that you did there is really interesting, really fine. Obviously, your original brief was to work on the bunkers, and I think that the shaping that your team did around the bunkers is really distinctive, really interesting. How would you describe what you were going for there.

00:32:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a picture in the clubhouse and the I'm not sure if it's I think it's still there. It's been a year or so since I've been there looking around, but there's a great picture from nineteen twenty looking out from the clubhouse out towards the temple and there's a fairway bunker on the left side of ten. And when I saw that picture, I said, wow, that is very unique and it feels so old and handcrafted and just so unique. And that's the picture I took to the guys when we first started shaping bunkers, I said, let's figure out how to do this. And you know, funny story, we shaped one of the first bunkers on the new second Green, which actually shifted back, and that was the first hole we were working on bunkers and we shaped the thing in and I said, oh, that's not right, that's not right at all. I was like, we got to get this thing more rustic. So then we walked up on it and started to almost like, you know, I don't know, donkey feet or horse feet, you know, trying to figure out how to get this thing to look more rugged. And that wasn't the answer either. As you can imagine, we just looked like fools. But then we came up with a way to actually use a piece of equipment to kind of track in the faces, and then we didn't touch them. We left the tracks from the machine on the faces and it made them perfectly rustic. So that's a dirty little secret of how that came to be and then we did a few other things to get that kind of sharper top line, and then it was really just making those bunkers kind of sing in the landscape with the highs and lows. And the greatest thing, the absolute greatest thing about working there at Enver, this that the dirt is supreme. It's some blend of sand and loam, and so you could mold it, shape it. It would hold just enough shape, it wouldn't fall apart, it had enough moisture content to it. But man, was it easy to use a shovel to get good details. You know, it wasn't heavy clay and it wasn't blowing around sand, so that certainly added to it.

00:34:11
Speaker 1: Another notable bit of shaping that your team did was in these areas where there are kind of chocolate drop type mounds on certain holes. Tell me about those areas of the course where you have those kind of hummicks. What were you trying to do there?

00:34:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, the I guess I'm getting a reputation for the hommocks, but yeah, look, I just think they're so cool. You know, I'm a decent player, and I've been a good golfer in my life, not nearly on the world stage by any means. But I see the differentiation. And you know, for some folks, getting in a bunker's jail, even if it's two feet deep and you know, no face at all, you know, just a little slope, it's just so paralyzing. And I see the comics is a great way to make those players have a chance. Yes, they get an awkward stance, their ball ends up in them, but they're not scared the death of sculling or you know, hitting a shot fat or leaving in the bunker. And when I think about the better player, when they get an awkward stance, they tend to start thinking about, Okay, am I leaving my face open? Am I closing the face? Where am I putting my weight? You know, all these other things going through their head, not just trying to get the ball out. And so I just think they make for a beautiful kind of combination of a little easier for the higher handicapped player and probably a little more thoughtful than a clean bunker lie for a good player. And so we put them in a few spots, most notably folks will see them on the tenth green side. There were some early pictures of that green without having bunkers, with these broken mounds surrounding them, that makes for a very interesting setup. And then I'm not sure how many holes or how many matches in the Solheim Cup get to seventeen, But on the right side of seventeen there's some devilish hummocks there that were an extension of an original design element.

00:36:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, and if you look at number seven, the current number seven, Ross's number five, one of the best part fours I think I've played. But it's just a great, great hole for so many reasons. But one of its features is along the left side of the landing zone for the drive, there is a group of hummocks there, and if you get there, you're in a pretty bad position. You aren't in a bunker, but you're among these hummocks. You could have any old lie and you're also you also have a pretty bad angle into the green. You can't really see much from over there. That's a place that you really want to avoid. But then again, if you go too far right, there's a creek over there, So you know, there are some calculations you have to make about where to miss on that hole, and those hummocks certainly play a role.

00:36:55
Speaker 2: Now.

00:36:56
Speaker 1: I think that the shaping that your team did on the hummocks is similar to what you did around the bunkers, in that the esthetic is not necessarily natural. It's intentionally not necessarily trying to say these were always there. You know, we didn't do anything. We just let nature be. You're not trying to fool anyone that these hummocks were a natural part of the property. And yet they are very interesting to look at. They're really cool to look at, and I found myself wondering what the distinction was between the hummocks that your team built at Inverness and the containment mounding that we're all familiar with from courses that were built in the eighties and nineties, right where you just have these kind of mounds going down both sides of the fairways and around the greens, and I find that really unpleasing, you know, when courses have that kind of mounding. And yet these little chocolate drops that you build at Inverness, I find those quite interesting. Though I can't argue that they're necessarily natural. It's not They're not better because they look more natural, And so I was trying to figure out what was good about them, and I was wondering if you could tell.

00:38:07
Speaker 2: Me, well, a couple of things, you know, trying to make them intentional, but not over the top. Right, there's a fine line there, and look, I probably crossed it occasionally in my career so far. But a couple of things. And this might sound a little nuts. You know, growing up in the mountains of Virginia, you see in the way those lines in the landscape set up where just naturally, the high points aren't exactly a dead center. You know, you as a kid, you might draw a mountain in kindergarten or something, and it'd be a perfect peak right in the middle. But when you really study landforms and you see that the high points are offset, or one might be just a little to the right, and the next one's a little to the left, and maybe the next one start ye and comes down and out a little broken saddle and moves through. And so a lot of the sketches I did for those hummocks, as well as the assistance I gave, either it personally shaping or modifying the shaping, was really thinking about some of those images in my head of how nature creates the highs and lows some of those points and then trying to be you know, trying not to get too over the top with them, you know, and it is a fine line. And then things like there's a couple maybe two or three between holes two and eleven, and they just provide a compliment to the bunkers that are in that space. But the ones you mentioned on the seventh hole on the left side are really a great balance to the creek down the right side. And I have to say the club president that hired me, one of the first times he played the hole with the hummock sit it right in, I got a little earful.

00:39:57
Speaker 1: A they're going to be na after you at some point maybe, so yeah, I mean, when you look across the landscape on certain parts of Inverness, you know, there are parts of that property that are pretty flat. There are also parts of the property that are really not flat, and there are some you know, interesting landforms that are carved by creeks and stuff like that. But you know, in the middle of the property, the part where a bunch of holes are kind of running across to get to the more interesting stuff on either end of the site, it is pretty flattened there. But when you look across you see some of these things that you build data, the bunkers and the hummicks, and it introduces a little bit of visual interest. Is that something you thought about? You know, this is a fairly flat piece of land in the middle here. You know this can offer some visual intrigue.

00:40:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, you know, breaking up the site lines. I'm a big believer that when golf holds are close together, you find ways to make them feel more connected instead of trying to make them turn their backs on each other. So things like one in ten playing parallel to each other, you know, putting the shared bunkers in some of the mounds and things with the landform between two and eleven. Kind of a different set of circumstances, but you know, a similar kind of application of figuring out ways to make those pieces fit together but still be separate. If that makes any sense.

00:41:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean to make the holes feel like they have something uncommon, so that the holes aren't all kind of off in their own world. They're sharing a bunker, or they're sharing a set of mounds. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong. But if you miss left on one, and if you miss right on ten, you might find yourself playing among some of the very same mounds.

00:41:44
Speaker 2: That's correct, yes, yeah, and it's you know, if you think about Rosss and probably what he was exposed to, you think about the courses in Scotland, Dornick, you know, such an amazing place, the way the golf course is set on the ground and the way some of the those holes, even though they're parallel, they have shared interests that can come into play if you get out of position.

00:42:07
Speaker 1: All right. Well, So to wrap up here, I wonder if there are two holes that you could pick out and tell people to watch for at the Solheim Cup. So if they're watching the telecast and you know, looking for something architecturally to pick up on, what are two holes that they should keep an eye out for?

00:42:27
Speaker 2: Can I give you three? Sure? Why not? Mainly because the one that everybody has to look out for that's pretty well known the eighteenth hole. They actually are going to make it the ninth hole so that it gets to be part of the experience and it's such an interesting short part for and watching the ladies play in the drive On Championship last year, they played it in some interesting ways and I'm very intrigued by the tea placement during the competition, how that might change in where the player might play based in match play versus stroke play. So I think there's a lot of risk reward there in potential trouble if you get out of position, and then the others. I think on the third hole, I'll be interested to see if any players it's the new part three on the south side of the property, Long Part three, Long Part three. There's a dirty little secret though. You can land the ball thirty yards short and let the ball run in, and so for a front hole location, it's a great place to play because you can control your destiny and avoid some of the trouble back left and right by playing it that way. A lot of members play it that way, the juniors, the junior am those kids never thought about it. But I'm wondering if any of the ladies will. I'm not sure if they will or not.

00:43:50
Speaker 1: Well maybe I mean it might just happen, you know, because I'm sure these it's a junior amateur male players, even even when they're younger, hitting the ball straight up in the air, and you know, there are definitely some ladies who do that too, hit the ball a mile and put it way up there. But there are also still players and who will be at the Solheim Cup who are playing with a lower trajectory, And am I right that on the third hole you would kind of play up the right side a little bit to roll it up onto the green Well.

00:44:18
Speaker 2: There's a natural rise in the landscape that's about thirty yards short and it's got a pretty significant downslope to it. So if you land on that downslope, the ball wants to project itself forward and onto the putting surface. Gotcha. It's a very safe way to attack a long, demanding hole. So I'm interested, you know, especially if you know somebody gets out of position, they're playing competitor gets out of position and they're just trying to get it up there somewhere close. Do they try? I don't know if they will or not. And then the new fourth hole, I'm interested to see again keep position and how aggressive players take on the creek. It crosses at a very unique angle, and there's a bunker fairway bunker out to the right, and you can lay short of bunker, you can play beyond it, you can play equal distance to it, and if you're long enough and from a short enough t you could play over that creek.

00:45:06
Speaker 1: Right, it is left on that whole kind of the longer carry over the creek for four yes, and the safer play is to kind of be short of the bunker on the right and to take the shorter carry over the creek. So you're kind of curious about where in that spectrum the t shots are going to go.

00:45:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can't wait to see that.

00:45:25
Speaker 1: That should be fun. And then on eighteen you mentioned that there were different ways that the ladies played the hole in the drive on. It was the drive on tournament last year, which was a great watch. What was it Daniel King who won that?

00:45:40
Speaker 2: She did played great?

00:45:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a super high level player winning at a great course. So what were you seeing on eighteen which will be nine for the Solheim Cup?

00:45:50
Speaker 2: So I was fortunate enough to get there to watch some play in person. So even things that weren't on the television coverage, right, you get to really see how the different players are coming through. And it was surprising to me a number of players were laying way back, way back from what even you and I might do, you know, even hitting potentially irons or something off the tee where they have, you know, one hundred and thirty one hundred and forty hundred and fifty yards in which to that green I'm not sure that's really what I might want to do, but I get it. I think, you know, maybe the confidence and having a good full club in and I didn't see I really I don't recall seeing players get overly aggressive trying to hit it like into the greenside bunker with driver right, which the juniors certainly no.

00:46:33
Speaker 1: Was're just letting me. Yeah, absolutely, that's how they play now. Yeah, I mean on the eighteenth hole, there's kind of these staggered bunkers and your choice is, okay, which one of these bunkers am I willing to take on? Sort of you know, you can go right or left, or you can hit an iron, you can hit driver, and there's different levels of risk for each of those plays, I suppose.

00:46:55
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly. Yeah, so, and I think in the match play that'll be interesting.

00:47:00
Speaker 1: All right, Well, Andrew, thank you so much for sitting down with me on what's a busy week for you and really looking forward to seeing Inverness in action next week.

00:47:09
Speaker 2: Awesome. Thank you very much for the opportunity. Can't wait to see how it all goes, and I'll be excited for both teams, but gotta say go USA.

00:47:28
Speaker 1: You will be able to see Inverness Club in action next week at the Solheim Cup. The matches start on Saturday, September fourth and run through Monday, September sixth. It will be on Golf Channel and NBC in the US, and I believe Sky Sports elsewhere should be a fun watch. If you're enjoying the Frida Egg podcast, then maybe send an episode to a friend. That's one of the very best ways to support us, just good old word of mouth. Thanks for listening.