Yolk with Doak 15: A New Course at Tara Iti and an Update on Memorial Park

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Speaker 1: Welcome back to another edition of the Frida Egg podcast and a new episode of The Yoke with Dok. Our friends to be Dratty have a really cool new product where you can monogram a classic Dratty polo. It's it's merging of new school and old school with this classic embroidery on their awesome shirts. I have one of these shirts. I wear it all the time. I think it's just a really neat touch and awesome to have for yourself and even better to give as a gift to, you know, friend's family, whoever you're giving gifts to this summer. So if you want to get one of these, you can order them right online. So go to Bdradty dot com check it out, and you can use the code Friday Egg and you'll get twenty percent off your order. We're back with Tom Dok after a few months off. Tom and I have both been really busy. If you follow Tom's Instagram you'll see his travels all over the world. So excited to sit down and talk with Tom about all the recent happenings with Renaissance Golf. We recorded a few hours of podcasts. We are going to release the first two hours of those podcasts this week, so you're in for a treat. Tom in this episode talks about his new project at Teradi, as well as the progress being made at Memorial Park and how it's been working with Brooks Koepka. Without further ado, here is Tom Doak. Tom Dolk is back and as usual he's not holding back.

00:01:42
Speaker 2: But don't toss the Yolk and the famously candid Doak doesn't pull any punches. How do I make natural looking contour? Hire the biggest pool in the village and tell him to make it flat?

00:01:56
Speaker 1: First? Overrated, underrated, rough, variably overrated over the years. So it's been it's been a little while. What's new, you know? Following you on Instagram, I see you're all over the place, and.

00:02:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've been racking up the frequent flyer miles again this year a little bit for the Confidential Guide. I made a trip to Africa and April, which was really different. But a lot of my time this spring has been in Houston getting the project going there. And you know, we're under a pretty tight time frame that we're busy, busy, busy getting everything shaped this spring and then and now pretty much all the creative works done in Houston. So I'm back to circling around all these other new projects we've got lined up to make sure the permits are in the right place and try to figure out which one of them is going to happen first.

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Speaker 1: It's interesting how the you know, you kind of have too. You have to as an architect, you obviously have to do you know, everything, especially when you start all at fast.

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Speaker 2: It's a business.

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Speaker 1: But like the two sides of it, the operational side and the creative side, couldn't be further apart on the spectrum.

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Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, my job it kind of breaks into three parts on new projects when they're under construction. I'm making construction visits and kind of editing and watching the guy's sculpt stuff. And then at the same time, I'm, you know, trying to figure out the routing for the golf courses we're build next year or the year after or five years down the road if the permits are really hard. And then you know, the third one is just trying to sort out the other potential new projects. Is you know, is it worth my time to fly to Japan to see that piece of land? Is it the piece of land that I just saw? That's pretty good or we you know, are we going to be able to get a get to a contract with those people or they just you know, having fun talking to three or four different architects and you don't really know if they're going to hire you at the end of the day or not. It's hard to put a lot of time into that. It seems like ever since the Olympic thing, you know, every client just wants all architects to grovel and you know, do a bunch of free work to try to get the same job. Let's see all your ideas, and you can't. You don't have time to do that. You know, if if it's a really really special job, maybe, but but really you should just say no, no thanks if you you know, if you can't decide who you want, then you probably don't want me.

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Speaker 1: That's a good point, because you could just spin your tires and just yeah.

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Speaker 2: I mean a lot of young architects, young architects are all stuck in that position. That's that's their best case scenario is to do a lot of work on something to convince somebody to hire them instead of the established guy. But god, you can do it for five or ten different projects before you get a hit that somebody really will take a chance on you. And it's got to be frust you know, there's nothing more frustrating to spend a lot of time designing something and have it never happened. Nothing more frustrating.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, especially if you like love and probably most people are like you, probably fall in love with it. And absolutely, But with the new stuff, any any new stuff that you want to talk about, like with the new project work.

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Speaker 2: Oh yeah, We've got a lot of exciting things going on now, you know. I'm here with you in Chicago today. I'm headed to New Zealand tonight to try to put the finishing touches on the routing for this new course down the beach from Terry Edy. Rick Caine our client for Terry Edy. Terry is a private club that you can right now. They accept some outside guest play, but it's been so successful that he wants to do a resort down the beach about five miles away that will be thirty six holes. Bill course laid out eighteen holes that are its basically just right on the ocean, up and down looking at the ocean from almost every hole. And then because I got the great ocean front site, last time. I only get a few holes on the ocean, and the rest of it's kind of up in the back in the woods in some pretty dramatic terrain. But you know, I think it could be a sensational project. You know, our client not being one to shy away from publicity or saying things. You know, he's excited about it. You know, he's compared it to like being able to develop the Pebble Beach area, you know, first doing a private course, then doing two great resort courses just down the road. And it almost you know, it doesn't stick out on a point like Cyprus Point, but other than that, it is just as beautiful as the Monterie Peninsula. And and it's you know, it's kind of like California one hundred years ago. There's not a lot else there. There's not a lot of other people to say, don't do that. It's a really beautiful setting for golf.

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Speaker 1: That's the amazing thing is how they limit immigration into New Zealand. So it's like California with none of the people.

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Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, it's it's like the whole West coast of America with less people than Los Angeles, and and and you know, they're very protective of it because they have to be. But then the land is such a resource when you've only got that few people that you know, letting giving up a little coastline for golf in California just is not happening anymore. You know, there's there's entire government agencies dedicated to making sure that never happens. But in New Zealand, why not. We've got all this coastline, you know, why not let somebody build something beautiful there. Yeah, not to say there's never any local opposition. You know, there's always people that just don't want you know, they don't want their little corner of the world to change. So there's always some local opposition to nearly any project that we've ever talked about.

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Speaker 1: That's it's so with playing Obviously, Bill and Benner they got the coastline. But one of the things I think about a lot is how, you know, it's pretty flat, but then when you go inland of a lot of just inland, there's a lot of like like you said, dramatic property, and you can never say, well, if the ocean wasn't here, But in a lot of cases like that, it's like that's maybe the more interesting part of golf of pieces of property for golf in some cases, and if you just put an ocean instead of the trees, it would everybody think it's the holes in the world, right.

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Speaker 2: And certainly I've heard I mean, I've benefited a lot from working on some beautiful properties next to the ocean. And you know, I've heard a lot of jealous people say, oh, you know, it's just because it's next to the ocean. You know, anybody could build a great golf course if it's right next to the ocean. And there's some truth in that. I mean, it's hard to build a bad golf course next to the ocean. There are some, but it's it's harder to really screw that opportunity a little higher, Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's not. I mean, you'd have to really screw up for people not to think it was pretty. Yeah, but you're right that. You know, when you are working close to the ocean, you have to factor that into the holes you're building. You know, you have to. The view is important and everybody's everybody wants it to be perfect, so you're drawn to that that much more. And you know, when you're a mile away from the ocean and you're just back up like Saint Andrew's Beach is a great example, you know, I think one of the best projects I've ever built. And the only difference between that and Barn Google is there's one sand dune with some houses on it between you and the ocean. There you're half a mile away from the ocean, but you don't see the ocean. You can't build to there. There aren't any great views to build to because there's this dune in the way for nearly the whole thing. So now you know, in a situation like that, you're entirely focused on putting the golf holes where the contra is the coolest for playing golf, and when you're at the ocean, you're not always focused on that first.

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Speaker 1: Like routing, no matter what, the process of it changes when you're at the ocean.

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Speaker 2: Right, the process starts from the ocean and works back, but you're going to maximize the ocean first, you know. And it's kind of the same thing if you were designing a housing development or anything else, you do it the same way. Okay, this is the special thing that everybody's coming here for, so what are we going to do with that? And then work back in from that.

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Speaker 1: So with these two, obviously it's going to vault. And you've done significant work in New Zealand ra with Terry d and then also Cape Kidnappers, and this is going to vault New Zealand and a whole new stratosphere of golf destination.

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Speaker 2: I mean, I think it you know, I think that really has changed in the last ten or fifteen years that it wasn't on people's radar as a golf destination before Carrie Cliffs and Cape Kidnappers, and now it certainly is on a lot of people's bucket lists. But you know, it's so far away that it's still like, you know, most Americans still think of it as like a once in a lifetime destination. Oh yeah, I want to go there and take my wife and be there for a month someday, and you know, will do that when we retire or something else. And you know, it's it's a long flight to get there, and I can see why people think of it that way. It's mostly about the time though. I mean, you know, if you're going to go that far away and deal with that much jet lag, you want to go for long enough to appreciate it, and a lot of people aren't in a position to take three weeks off of work and go. That's what holds more people back from going. But it's a beautiful place to go, and once you go, you're like, why don't we come back here more often? It's really special. That's funny.

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Speaker 1: I keep finding myself getting into this conundrum where like I want to go somewhere, and then I'm like, well, now I need like at least two weeks. And then I start doing I'm like, well I need three weeks, and then it just gets out of control. And then if you factor in the travel times with that stuff, it adds to it, especially if you know, I think that a normal American jobs like two weeks, they can, but you were.

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Speaker 2: Not like Europe, where you get to take the whole month of August off and do whatever you want.

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Speaker 1: I think about that though, is that so like Europe is so much older of an establishment than America, So like I think they've they value their free time way more than we do.

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Speaker 2: And you know, I.

00:13:19
Speaker 1: Think the millennial kind of culture has changed where like my parents, like my dad, you know, lives to work, and I think like the shift has been people work to live.

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Speaker 2: I probably still live to.

00:13:32
Speaker 1: Work because I work way too much. But now we're starting to shift to that, and I think Europe, just because of being older, has shifted to that.

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Speaker 2: So I think yes. I mean when we worked in France and stand Amilian at one, you know, on the one hand, the the piece of work drove us crazy because, you know, because we're spending time away from home and we want to get back home and things just move slow. It's like, you know, why hurry, Let's let's go have a nice two hour lunch with wine and then get back on the bulldozer. And you know that that's the way they are, and that's the way they enjoy life, and you know, at the other level, you envy the shit out of it. You can take August off and everybody goes on a holiday and nothing happens at work at all, and that's fine. Wow, I wish we could do that.

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Speaker 1: It's always funny when you run into like a European and they're like, I'm on a holiday and you're like, what what is holiday? It's just the whole concept of everybody taking off at one time.

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Speaker 2: So going back to New Zealand, though I mean, the one thing that obviously, the thing that holds it back as a real destination is it's it's such a big trip and it's so far away. Because at the end of the day, most of the golf destinations you talk about our places that okay, let's go back there next year or the year after, and it's really hard for someplace that remote to get that kind of business. It's more like everybody's going to go there once and maybe they'll come back again in five years when somebody builds something new. But you know, like Barnbogle, everybody you know, Barnbogle has been very successful for Australia and everybody, everybody in the States kind of visualizes that, well, it must get a lot of international play. The international play is like six percent of their business. I mean, the real business is people from Melbourne and Sydney going back there two three times a year religiously, like people from Seattle and Portland and San Francisco go to Abandon. That's what that's why it's successful and it makes money. You know, getting fifteen hundred rounds from America area here is you know, maybe it's the icing on the cake, but it's not it's not why they're making money.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it reminds me a lot of like with Sand Valley, the brilliance of Sand Valleys. How close it is to Milwaukee, Madison, Chicago, Minneapolis is like, it's not an unrealistic place for people to go a couple times a year.

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Speaker 2: And you don't have to buy the five hundred dollars plane ticket at the start. You could just get in your car and go.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it's it's I mean, that's why people say Heathland Golf was like the most important golf and you know, golf's evolution was getting it from the coast to the masses. Right, So outside of outside of say Cape Kidnappers and Terry d which most people know, like in New Zealand. We'll kind of wrap this up it like, what what are the other must sees as somebody goes.

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Speaker 2: To New Zealand, Well, on the North Island, if you're you know Terry Dy and Carry Cliffs or to the north of Auckland. Carrie Cliffs is pretty far north. It's like a four hour drive up there. Terry d is only about an hour and a half. That's one of the reasons it's successful is it's close enough to Auckland, and Auckland's where most of the money is in New Zealand. But you know, going if You Kidnappers is kind of in the south eastern part of the North Island, and on your way down there you go through Talpo and there's a Jack Nicholas course in Taupo called Kinlock that's one of the hardest golf courses I've ever seen, but really pretty. If you're a good player, you're gonna you're gonna love it. And then right at the south tip of the North Island is paraparam the one famous old Lynks course in New Zealand, which is very low key. You know, it really feels like a British Lynx. It's just and the only in kind of what helps it feel like that and also what what has held it back a little bit from everybody just loving it is kind of like St Andrew's Beach. There's there's some homes around it and there's like just this one dune strip between you and the ocean, so no ocean views. It's clearly all linxy rumbley country, but you don't have the view of the water, so there's never this one iconic picture of it that everybody points at and goes, oh, I got to go.

00:18:11
Speaker 1: There, unless you really are like when I see a picture of that golf course, I just am like, holy cow, I want to see that, because you just see the little micro contours right.

00:18:24
Speaker 2: And then actually, some of the most dramatic pictures I've seen of it are when you're looking inland and you see the big you know, it's a fairly strong I don't know if it's high enough to call it a mountain range, but it goes up pretty pretty sharply about five miles inland from there. So some of the holes that play inland, you're kind of playing up to a green and then you're it just looks like you're looking up into the mountains is the next thing you can see. So those are kind of the the big courses on the North Island and then the South Island up till a few years ago, didn't really have golf courses that people would try to go seek out. People would go to Queenstown and do all sorts of adventure sports, jet boating, bungee jumping. You know, they keep inventing new ways to divide death there. You know, they they had something called fly by Wire a few years ago when we were living there. I think they have I think they abandoned that. I think too many people were getting hurt. But they love that kind of stuff. But the South Island is such a beautiful place. It's you know, Queenstown is next to the mountains and it's just spectacular. You know, the climate's different, it's colder up there, the golf season shorter, but you can you can be there in season where there's snow on the mountains all around you and you're still playing golf because the elevation changes are so dramatic. And there's two or three newer courses in Queenstown that are pretty good, the Hills where they've played the New Zealand Open a few times, Jack's Point, which John Darby, who helped us with Terry Dy, had designed on his own a few years before. But my favorite golf course there by far is this little course called arrow Town that's just in the next It's about twenty miles from Queenstown and it's just it's a small country course on a really on a It's set in a bunch of rocky ridges and it's I think it's only fifty eight hundred yards long or something like that, doesn't have any bunkers at all. It's really dramatic golf course. You're looking at mountains. You're like looking at a at a rock face thirty yards from a green, thinking, oh, I have to avoid that. Like you're way more scared of that than you are of any bunker that they would have put there, because it's like if you hit that, bad things are going to happen. You have no clue. Go God, right, So you know, it makes you think your way around the golf course a little bit. But it's just a natural place and really relaxed place. And it costs twenty or thirty dollars to play, so that's you know, it's funny of the good. You know, I've built two pretty good courses in New Zealand, but the two New Zealand courses that I put in the front of the Confidential Guide were arrow Town and Paraparam And I'm really pleased to hear. You know, people have sent me articles from the New Zealand papers. There's like two or three of the little courses that we made a big deal out of in the Confidential Guide. We're starting to get a lot more attention in New Zealand. Now, I mean people in New Zealand didn't really think of those courses as being that good until somebody came from the outside and said, no, that's really cool. You know, people should appreciate that more. I mean, you know, maybe they can't convince the Japanese and Korean tourists that they want to play that little thing, although I guess some of them are going there now too, but they've convinced more of the New Zealanders, Hey, we should go see this when next time we go to the South Island. So it's really their business is really picked up, and it's coolly here.

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Speaker 1: It's like almost the reverse of the list the list thing that happens in America, where if like a course is on the top one hundred list, then everybody even you know, you could, you know, I could tell somebody un till I'm blue in the face that they should go one place over another place. But if that other place is on the list, you know, they just disregard my advice, right.

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Speaker 2: And yeah, I mean New Zealand is kind of I mean, I guess there is a ranking of the best courses in New Zealand because there is for everywhere now. But it's sort of odd because they have the two classes of golf courses. They have the big ones that were obviously built for the overseas visitors, you know, budgets through the roof, and then all the local courses that have always been there that are a completely different price point. And it's almost like they think that it's two entirely different classes of customers. Then there's not much interchange between them, and that you know, well, if you're playing, you know, a perfectly manicured golf course with greens at ten every day, that you wouldn't want to play any of these little country courses where the greens aren't so fast and they're kind of rough and rugged. But you know, I think seeing a little of both on one trip is great and it's a shame, you know. I've tried to convince the New Zealand tourism people just, yeah, try to promote the little courses a little more than you do. They're they're really better than you think. But you know, the one thing that I didn't It never occurred to me what the separation was between the two until I was there at the end of the summer, when we were finishing Terry d The little courses don't have fairway irrigation at all. They really go, you know, they'll get baked dry at the end of a dry summer, be yellow, or you think all the grass is gonna die, and sometimes it may. You know, if they had a really severe drought, it'll just be dead and they'll have a they'll have a hard time getting the grass back the next year for a little bit. But they're kind of adapted to that too, so the grasses do tend to come bounce back once once the rains come. But that's the that's entirely the difference in price point, and that's entirely the difference in you know, we can't mark, we can't charge a lot of money and market this as an international destination because the conditions fluctuate too much. And at the right time of year it might be just great, but after a drought or after a really wet winter, it might be pretty rough for a little while, and then everybody will, you know, be upset that we lured them here and want them to pay one hundred dollars to play.

00:24:53
Speaker 1: I think that that's where golf is hopefully. I think it's I feel like it's changing because like if you think about the food and restaurant industry, like when somebody visits New York or somebody comes to Chicago, and there are the big places that everybody knows about, like in Chicago Gibson Steakhouse, but like then people like are thirsting for the local spot home Wall that nobody knows about, and then you go there and you spend half the half the money and you feel and I think that's hopefully I mean, that's kind of what aerotown is in golf, yes and hopefully.

00:25:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's you know, the controversy or the Confidential Guide has always been really controversial because they because I said some really highly thought of golf courses were overrated, and nobody you know, I'm the only one to say stuff like that in print. But you know, the purpose of the book is finding the arrow towns of the world and letting other people know. And I've I've done that a lot. I mean, people didn't talk about Cruden Bay twenty five years ago either. It was kind of the same place. It was the same kind of place. It was known in Scotland a little bit, but by the same token. There were there were a lot of people in Scotland that thought, oh, I can't really be that good. You know, the Americans don't want to come here. It can't really be that special. And you know now that now that it gets attention from outsiders, you know, Cruton Bay is funny. It's almost come full circle where they think, oh, the Americans they like it too much because it's because it's pretty. You know, the Scots have a very different attitude towards that they they talk about when they talk about it course being American. I mean, you know, I saw Kings Barnes being built Mark Parson and just passed away. I spent a little time with him just as they were starting to build that project, and he was trying so hard to make it really feel authentically Scottish. You know he had. The reason I met him is because he had Walter Woods, who I'd spent time with in St Andrews when I lived there doing doing the turf cons for them and trying trying to get the turf to be exactly like a links course would be, even though they had to you know, they shaped a bunch of it, so they had to strip all the top soil and sand off the site shape whatever, put it back just right. To try to get those conditions. It really hard to do. And it's unbelievable how good a job they did. And then they got all done and everybody loved the golf course. And but the Scots still are like, oh, it's kind of American. And then you know, I know that they drove Mark nuts and I you know, and it took me a while to understand what do they mean. And what they meant is it's built to look good, you know, they try to make it pretty. The Scot's all the old courses, they never thought it. They didn't think about that. They just build golf holes. They didn't try to lie. You know, sometimes you might they might like accidentally or not completely subconsciously, you know, line up a whole straight at some great feature on the horizon. But they weren't playing in the whole golf course around doing that. So they notice right away when somebody does, because it's so foreign to them.

00:28:13
Speaker 1: That's interesting. It's almost Yeah, it's another thing that's kind of like the opposite of American. Like we're so conditioned to expect like the long view or the view of the ocean, like we just talked about a little bit. But then like you don't notice how like a lot of most people don't notice how they use like a really interesting feature, like this is a great golf hole because of this little thing.

00:28:37
Speaker 2: Right, and a lot of it's just, you know, we're pandering a little bit to the customer because that's that's why we think they're going to go all that way to play and want to come to our place. So we've got the view flaunted. And you know it, the Scots react negatively to that that they don't not that they won't say it's a good golf course at the end of the day, but they just noticed that's your priority.

00:29:07
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about this a little later, but I guess it's a good time since we're here now. You know, in a couple of weeks the Scottish Open will be at the Renaissance called your course in Scotland. How was building a golf course in Scotland like a new course in Scotland and what was what's the Is there more pressure on doing something there as opposed to America.

00:29:34
Speaker 2: I never really looked at it that way, but I have to admit, and I haven't I haven't said this in any of the promo stuff for the tournament that I've been helping with. And I have to admit that when they first contacted me about doing that project, I was it took them a while to convince me to want to do it, and the main reason was that we just got done doing Pacific Dunes and Kidnappers and barn and they were, you know, all super dramatic pieces of land. And then the site is between Mierfield and North Barrick. You know, Mierfield is right there, like right over the wall, and right next door in North Barrick's like two or three miles down the coast, two of my favorite golf courses in Scotland and two of the prettiest golf courses in Scotland. And what we started with at the Renaissance Club was not dramatic land at all. I mean, eventually we got permission to build a couple of holes out in the more dramatic land, but when we started, we couldn't even do that. And you know, and I was like, I thought that no matter what we did, it would be a disappointment because it was their land wasn't really dramatic, and I wasn't. We weren't going to try to do the Kings Barnes thing of you know, building stuff up and down ten feet to make it feel like it was right on the water. That wouldn't have worked the same way there at all. And you know I and I didn't want to do something like that. To me, that's too artificial for Scotland and they would hate it. You know. In the end, the only thing that did convince me to take the job was that the Scots would not care about the visual part. They just wanted to see, you know, we build a good golf course that really played like a lynx and there were a bunch of good holes. They would accept that as a really good golf course, and you know that was sort of liberating when I finally when I finally thought about that, you know, I knew it wasn't going to be the golf course that you know, my friends in the States talked about the same way they talk about kidnappers. That's okay, you don't get you don't get sites like that very often. I understand that. And you know, I think the Renaissance Club turned out really well, you know it, that's one of the best playing surfaces I've ever been on. You know, they basically stole the superintendent from Gullen and gave him as much money to maintain one golf course as he had for fifty worlds Gulling with you know, half the traffic or a third of the traffic, so it's pretty much dialed in all the time. It's a great playing surface and the clients who are all Jerry Cervadi the principal client. It's a there's a bunch of brothers who developed the golf course Americans and Jerry, who's kind of the managing partner, lives over there. Before that, he lived in Pontavitra and he used to play golf with the guys from the tour at Pablo Creek all the time. And then as one of his brothers, Paul sold his company to American Express, but his company used to be the sponsor of the Senior Tour event in Houston, so they both had a lot of connections with the tour and from the beginning they wanted the golf course to be a tournament venue, and they you know, they actually had a deal to play one of those American Express events on it back before it opened, and then we couldn't get the permits fast enough for when they were going to play the tournament, so that fell through and Everett so but they wanted us to build it for tournament quality players and it was the only course I it was the first course I'd done that. That's what they wanted from the start, and then it's taken them years to get over the hump of you know, an American built private course hosting an event in Scotland. You know, there was just a natural no, we can't do it, you know. I mean Mark Parson and had it a Castle Stewart, but that was a resort slash public course, so no problem. But because these guys have a private club, there was a bunch of resistance to that, you know. So they had a Gullon instead, they had a World Aberdeen instead, and they've been they've been pitch for it for years and they finally I think they did make some kind of accommodation to letting more Scottish people or British people be able to play there and have it not just members only all the time, and that that was the turning point to okay, then you can have the tournament too, but it's going to be really cool both because you know this, they'll have it the next two years and it won't only be the Scottish Open for men. They're going to have the Women's Scottish Open too about a month later. So and I think they're going to have a really good field this year. The week before the Open, I think yeah, And I'm sure they will next year. You know, it's kind of an unknown quantity for a lot of the American players now. I don't think they know what it's like, but they'll find out this year what it's like. I think you'll see a lot of them there next year.

00:34:54
Speaker 1: Now for a quick word from our sponsor, Today's episode is powered by tv Ameror Trade. Whether on the course or in the market, it helps to have a second set of eyes to keep you on your game. That's why Tedomeritrades Trade Desk is here to help gut check your strategies so you always feel confident teeing up a trade. Visit tedomritrade dot com slash fried Egg to learn more about what their trade desk can do for you. Member s I PC. Now back to Tom Doak, what uh with it being here? Kind of first for a and tournament golf design in the back of your mind, not necessarily the front, but what are a few things that you think are unique about it, that that say somebody, you know, some viewers. It's gonna be on you know, great morning Golf. Everybody loves one golf in scott because it's gonna be on Golf channel in the morning.

00:35:46
Speaker 2: What what are a.

00:35:47
Speaker 1: Few things that people will be able to pick out that will be unique to it.

00:35:52
Speaker 2: Well, unfortunately, a lot of the prettiest tolls, you know, they've renumbered the golf course for the tournament. It's just like they can't help the themselves but change something around for the tournament. And in this case it's well, it's kind of complicated because because we added holes into the routing five years after the original golf course was done. But so the routing, the way you'd play as a member now loops back to the clubhouse at the sixth hole, and then it is about as far away from the clubhouse as you can be at the ninth green, and then tax its way back comes back at fifteen and then there's a little loop at the end. But they're gonna change it where those the most dramaticals I've always thought are like the stretch seven, eight, nine, ten going out to the coast, and those are gonna be the first four all of the tournaments, so you probably won't see much of them on television unless they're just showing highlight package type stuff. But that's a beautiful stretch of golf. It's out kind of in the trees. The seventhal is a par five that's in the trees a little bit, but a really cool short part five. If you're trying to go for it into the green kind of sits up on the end of a little dune ridge and kind of just behind the little perched up on the back side of the dune ridge. See here's the angle of approach is really important, and you almost can't get yourself to the right angle off the tee. You got to hit a fade in there to hold the green very well. And then the whole after that is a super long part four. It usually plays down wind there, but but twenty five percent of the time the wind will be dead the opposite and player's faces and if they're playing in those conditions, even the tour pros will have trouble getting you know, it's five to ten into the wind. They'll have trouble getting there into with a with a really wild green tucked in between a dune on the left and this broken down end of an old stone wall to the right of the green. It's not right up against the green, but it's close enough. Your word, you're going to tangle with a beautiful setting.

00:38:05
Speaker 1: What I think about this When courses get rerouted from when you designed it, how much does that I mean, when you're in the routing process, how much do you think about the cadence of the of the holes and when somebody you know moves switches them up? Does that really kind of affect the kind of story you're trying to tell it?

00:38:26
Speaker 2: Can? I mean, you know you do? When you don't. I mean you don't when you're when you're first doing the routing and trying to figure out how the holes come together. I don't think very many architects. You know, some architects have an idea that they of what they want the starting hole to be like, or what they want the finishing hole to be like. But I really don't think you can you can go much beyond that and have an idea of how you want the flow to be overall for THEO and try to make it that way. I think you kind of have to. You know, you work on finding good golf and once you've got that, you see where you're at, and you know, if you're going to have like, oh this is you've got four really long holes in a row here, then you may you might think, do I want you know, am I going to make that a feature? Or am I going to try to downplay that some because I think it's too much? And you know, change one of those holes to a short part five so it doesn't seem like a backbreaking stretch of golf right here, or you know, you take the same holes and make the green complex is hard or easy. It makes a huge difference in the way people think about the golf hole. So that's when you start playing with the rhythm of it and what it feels like. And yeah, if they you know, when they when clubs decide to switch the nines of the golf course permanently, oh yeah, we're just we like the way it works off a ten better. That drives you crazy sometimes And for tournaments, yes, you know, it probably doesn't matter as much. I mean, the players are playing one hole at a time, so you know, they're not caught up in the emotional flow of it the same way the visitor first time visitor is. You know, the pros aren't going to fall in love with it for better or worse. They're trying to shoot the lowest score and they don't worry about that stuff very much. So I I, you know, for a tournament, I guess I don't worry about them changing their routing. But if they really want to change the sequence from what I had permanently, that's probably going to bother me. You know that it's really going to change some things. We've had a couple we just one of the places we're consulting is Yeera Era and Brian Salonik suggested to them to change the order of the holes because they they used to have a little separate pro shop and they rebuilt the clubhouse and they put the pro shop in it, and they did away with the little separate pro shop. So the starting hole was kind of you know, the they moved the proche up to the other side of the building, the clubhouse building, so it was a long awkward walk to get over to the first tee and the first you know, it was one of those Alex Russell courses that started with like a two hundred and thirty yard par three hall, which is a little odd. You know, several of the courses in the sand Bell have that because he liked to start that way. They were kind of par three and a half holes to him, and that two thirty back then was like a driver yeah, I mean it was almost like a driveable par four to start. Commonwealth started with a driveable par four Victoria. I think when I first thought it was it was a long part three, but they've turned it into like a two ninety par four now. So there were several of those courses in Melbourne. But but a you're just falling in with okay, you have the same awkward start that a lot of these other courses have, but we combine out with the walk to get there. It's like, God, this really just feels weird.

00:42:04
Speaker 1: So start you're around with a long walk in a long part three.

00:42:08
Speaker 2: Right. So they decided to change the order and just you know, I think, let's see if I can remember this right from what the old course was. The new start is like they play the seventh hole, no, the sixth hole and the fifth hole because those came back to the clubhouse and then one, two, three, four back around to seventy and then the rest of the golf course in the normal order, and I think it is better. I'd never thought of doing it, you know, it's something I don't normally think about changing at all, because it is you know, clubs ask us all the time, should we change the order of the nines or should we change this sequence here? And if you're doing it an existing course, it's been there for a long time, the default is no, because you know, the area is a great example, the best all of the ari era, well, one of the two best. There's a great part three there, the eleventh that Mike Clayton just wrote a great article about. But one of the best part fours in Melbourne is that was the fifth are era and it's not the fifthy area anymore. It's the second hole now. So you know, when you've got people that are familiar with the golf course talking about a hole and they're getting the number wrong, that's confusing as hell. So that's that's one big reason not to change, you know, unless it's like better in every other way.

00:43:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Muni course, I mean no, no, architectural you know value that I grew up playing, like they switched the routing like five times and ten years and I've played there thousands of times. And when I talk to my buddy, who's like the assistant high school golf coach, he's telling me, oh, this happened on for I'm like, wait, which one's fourteen? Like you know, it's like you don't don't remember, and I've no more, Like I know the golf course like the back of my hand. So it's definitely some historical issues going from Renaissance Club to your project that's going on. We talked about it a little bit, but Memorial Park down in Houston. So you're pat You're what stage of the construction process are you guys?

00:44:30
Speaker 2: And this point, pretty much all the holes are shaped, clearing, grading, shaping all done. They are sand capping things left and right now, finishing greens off and starting to plant grass. It's a little behind because you know, they've had some wet weather and even when it's dry on site, they can't cut sprigs off the field twenty miles away because they got ten inches of rain. Oh it's frustrating to try to work in really wet conditions. Yeah, But so the creative part has been it's really been done since the end of April. First of May. We kind of did the last couple of greens and I'm going to make a trip back there on my way back from New Zealand just to you know, I hadn't seen all the greens finished and floated out, but you know, I'm pretty sure they're all good to go. So I'm swinging through one last time before they start playing greens, just to make sure everything's on track. But it all came together pretty fast. The weather was really cooperative to us the first three or four months, and we just flew through it.

00:45:45
Speaker 1: That's great, and then be hopefully hosting that twenty twenty.

00:45:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, if we you know, if we get all the grass down on time, you know, it's supposed to open by the end of October this year to have the tour event next year. They might give us a little more leeway if it's really wet down there, but we still think we can make the data as long as it doesn't just stay wet the whole time. But we're you know, we're starting to go to starting to think about the contingencies of Okay, are we going to have to sod three or four of these fair ways at the end or you know, what's it going to take to make sure we get done. But it's you know, it's turned out. It looks completely different than most of my other golf courses. I think if you were there, you would not guess it was mine.

00:46:32
Speaker 1: In what way?

00:46:38
Speaker 2: Well, I mean people you know, people know, and architects work for either their bunkers or their greens, honestly, and obviously for the tour. For a tour event, we have to be a little more cautious and subtle on the greens complexes than we would other places. So I don't think you'd pick out those greens right away as being mine. I mean, we've changed them all from what they were from the old golf course that was there, And not saying there's not some tricky things going on in some of them, but you know, it's it's a flat site to start with, so you're not going to have a lot of severe contra and greens. You know, you get severe contra and greens and on hilly sites. You know, Mackenzie built a lot of wild greens. The wildest ones are Pasa Tiempo, Augusta and Crystal Downs because they're the hilliest places, and every green, you know, nearly every green is set into a slope that he had to deal with. If he you know, when he built things on really flat sites, he might jazz up a few greens, but it's not like they aren't all like that the way Augustas are so in Houston kind of the same. I mean, there's there's a couple of pretty interesting greens, but I don't there's I don't think there's one of them that you just recognize as that looks like something Tom's done before. And then the bunkers. One of the when I got together with Brooks Kopka the first time, one of the things I asked him was, would you care if we didn't have very many bunkers, And he said, no, you know, bunkers, for the most part, they just don't. We don't think about them a lot anymore, you know, because you're a lot of times it's easier to being in the bunker than in long grass, in the same in the same situation relative to the you know, whether you're one hundred and fifty yards away from the green or whether you're right up next to the green. You know, a fifty yard shot is more awkward for them out of a bunker than than out of grass. But most others it doesn't make any difference to them whether they're a bunker or not, and they don't, you know, when they're thinking about where to aim, they're not factoring in the green side bunker at all because they think they can get up and down from it anyway. So why worry about it? Why let that affect where you're gonna play? And of course, you know, when you're running a tournament, the absolute worst thing after a big rain event the night before is cleaning up the bunkers and having them playable so you can start play the next day.

00:49:17
Speaker 1: You know, that's just or or even not just an event one of the busiest courses in America, or.

00:49:23
Speaker 2: For yes, or for or for daily play at a municipal golf course, that's really busy. You know. Bryan Slanik worked on it when he was still in turf school. He worked on the He worked on the crew at Oakland Hills for one of the majors there, and they had it was one They had terrible rains a couple of times, so you had like a hundred guys out there trying to clean up all the bunkers and get them back into play in the morning because there's so many bunkers. So, you know, we told the tour we were thinking about not having very many bunkers, and they were like, yeah, that would be great because you know, in Houston you will get rain. Maybe not the week of the tournament, but it rains a lot. You know, they get sixty inches of rain a year. They're probably going to get rain during the tournament sooner or later. And so you know, we started out with, Okay, how few bunkers can we put in this golf course? And still, you know, we wouldn't go to zero because we you know, all the all the municipal golfers of Houston would think we cheated on somehow. So we can't go to nothing. But it's like, how few bunkers can we have and keep this interesting and not feel like we short changed.

00:50:35
Speaker 1: Them, especially on a flat site.

00:50:37
Speaker 2: Yes, so you know we do have We have water much more in play on three or four holes than I normally build. One of the other things the city wanted us to do was try to try to capture some of the drainage going as the site and reuse it for irrigation instead of just letting it go into the river and out because in a flood situation that's bad. And they use city water to irrigate the golf course. Now, so the less city water they have to use to irrigate the golf course, the better. So there was there was a pond in between the sixteenth and seventeenth holes on the old golf course, and you know, there are kind of some trees around it. You could hit into it, but you didn't really You played the holes without really thinking about the pond being there. It wasn't it wasn't it. You know, it wasn't in your face at all. It was maybe a three or four acre pond. To make it storage for irrigation, to store as much you know, capture and store as much water as we can, we expanded it to like nine acres and it is on the sixteenth hole. The sixteenth hole is a par five, reachable par five, but fairly long, and it's not an island green. But you've got to hit. You got to hit over a little neck of this pond in front of the green, and the pond continues down the left side, and then there's a little spur on the right side too, so there's really no bailout. I mean, if you're going for the green in two, you can't just take one side out of play and hit it into a bunker. To be safe, You've got to go for the green. And then the seventeenth hole is a like a three hundred and ninety yard part four that we build him a tea at three hundred yards too, and we're thinking at least one of the two days of on the weekend, they'll move the tea up and see if guys want to go for it two ninety over the water on the fly with a green that's built to kind of receive that shot if you came to the right place. So, you know, trying to make a pretty dramatic finish, and funnily enough, that was one of the things Brooks Koepka talked about the most. I mean, his input on the golf course features worth more about subtle things like, you know, it's hard to control a shot off uneven lie in the rough. You know, that's harder than being in a bunker. So just just some undulations over there and the driving zone out of the edges would really make a difference that you know, if if you've got to hook lie and the rough and there's some trouble left of the green. Okay, now I really got to think about what shot am I trying to hit here, because this could get away from me pretty fast, and I have to admit more subtle things than I would normally think about. You know, my courses probably have some of that in them because they're undulating naturally, but I never really thought about that kind of thing that much. And that's something that you know, if we put in the right places for those guys, it won't affect the municipal player all that much, whereas a bunker does. Yeah. But the other thing Brooks through was really focused about was, you know, make the finish really exciting and dramatic. I mean, from the first time I showed him a plan of some of the things we were thinking about doing, he started looking at those last four or five or six holes and you know, is this going to be a dramatic finish? And you know, so we've got a drivable part four for the thirteenth all, we've got a short par five for the fourteenth. All, we've got a part A short part three that you can get yourself in some real trouble. For fifteen, we've got that par five sixteenth that I talked about. That's you know, those guys are long enough to go for it, but they're taking their life in their hands if they do, and if you don't, you just have to hit a very simple layup and look like a wimp. Yeah, you know, so they'll they'll get you know, the guy who doesn't go for it is going to get the chip back thing of oh, you're such a whimp. You didn't go for it when you had a chance. Even if it's a bad play for them, clearly a bad play for them, it's still like, well you could have reached, you just didn't want to.

00:55:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's tempting them when they know they can get there, right, I mean, that's it's.

00:55:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, but discussion of okay, how long does that hole need to be now? For these guys, Yeah, we can get there, but it's dangerous to try. And you know nowadays that's five sixty five seventy something like that, And so we've got teas from five fifty to five eighty on that hole to try to you know, it is Houston can be a windy place, probably not real windy in October when they have the event, but you never know. So you know, the one thing the tour asked is is you know, give us some flexibility on these teas. You know we don't you don't need a huge runway tea on every hole, but you know we might move the tea up if the wind's blown the other way. Then you thought it was, so give us give us a place to do that on some of these holes if you really you know, if you want to make a d if you want to make seventeen potentially driveable, you know that could be anywhere from two eighty to three twenty is where that would make sense. So you know, so we can move the tea with the wind.

00:56:41
Speaker 1: But uh, I guess you know, it seems like Brooks had a lot of interesting insights that and thought of what would you say? It was the thing that surprised you the most from working with them on the project.

00:56:53
Speaker 2: So far, I can relate to him on a bunch of levels. You know, he's you're hearing him speak up more press conferences and events. He used to stay pretty quiet. You know, he's kind of a I don't know if introverts the right term, but he's you know, he's pretty quiet to be around most of the time, but that doesn't mean there isn't stuff going on back in his mind, and he's starting to get more comfortable saying it and sometimes it rubs people the wrong way, and I can really relate to that. That's me too, where you know, you finally, you know, people are people like don't think you say enough, and then you tell them something they don't want to hear and they're upset about it. You know, he just he lets it roll off his back pretty easily. You know, he doesn't get too upset with what anybody else is thinking. And he is he's one of the most confident people I've ever met. Obviously in a pretty good place in his golf career right now. So maybe he wasn't that way four or five years ago before I met him, but he really is right now, and you know, not cocky about it at all. Just he knows what he can do with the golf ball. And that's to me that's watching him on television play in these events, it's like, you know, I'm not surprised how well he's playing right now. Because you know, he's really got it dialed in and he knows it.

00:58:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's been an unbelievable run, historic and it's gonna be exciting to keep watching him play. And it'll be cool probably for you. I mean, he's going to be playing that event. It'll be cool to see him play a golf course that he had some input. Yeah.

00:58:50
Speaker 2: I just, you know, I don't communicate with him a lot because he's, you know, he's a busy guy and he's got you know, a million people emailing him about this or that or whatever. So I try to stay out of that for the most part and just spend time with him when he's got time for me. But you know, I send him a note, I hope I get to see you playing this well on our course once it's done. You know, I want to see. I want to see how easy it is for you. You know, it'll probably be easy for him. I mean, you know, the one thing about the golf course is I described that finish to reachable par fives, to potentially driveable par fours, and a short part three, and a short part three and a really hard long part four eighteenth hole, but in fact ten eleven twelve is a really hard stretch before you get to all those all that run at the finish. But you know, obviously we don't care what the winning score is going to be. I mean, we're giving him a chance to go really low, and we've never talked about what the winning score is going to be. It's just like, let's make a bunch of exciting holes of the finish where there can be big swings. You know. The one place we had a chance to change the tone of it a little bit was that fourteenth holl. You know, it's a five hundred, five hundred and twenty yard hole, so that could be a Part four and it's possible to tour Wall want us to make it a part four at some point, but you know, Brookes said, no, it's if it's five ten and it's kind of into the wind. You know, if if it's going to be windy here, you don't want to call that a part four, you know, you don't. You don't want to have guys hitting four woods and hybrids at it and go to this to a small green and call it a part four. You know, to him, it's like it doesn't matter what we call par really, you know, we're we're building. It's a two shot hole. It's a hard two shot hole. But you know, I guess it did matter to him just from the sense of what everybody else would think if you called it a par four, they'd be like, Oh, that's way too hard.

01:01:05
Speaker 1: Isn't that kind of like the I mean, as an architect, like par really shouldn't even be in the equation. It should be about building holes, especially for a tournament, that separate the great you know, who's playing great from who's playing well.

01:01:22
Speaker 2: Right, And yeah, I mean I've had that discussion slash argument more than a few times in my career about what par for some particular hole should be about, or just about the concept in general. But you know, honestly, tournament players are about the only players that you can get. They're not really thinking about what par is that much. They're you know, they're thinking about what par is for them. Yeah, you know, are they going to are they going for this hole in two or not? And of course they're going for everything under six hundred yards into I'm nearer now, But you know, they're practical, They're they're thinking, they're thinking about They don't think about as par they're thinking about making four. What's the best way to make four? Or is it possible I can make three on this hole. But so what you call par doesn't really affect what they're going to do. You know, if they're in the if they're in the fairway two hundred and thirty yards away, they don't think while lay up because because I can still hit a wedge and make par or birdy pretty easily, that's not you know, They're like, if I can get there, then I go for it, unless it's really severe around. But you know, they're trying to think of the best way to make four or the best way to make three. Weekend golfers are different. Par will affect what they do, you know, just you know, mostly it'll affect how much they complain about the hole. But aside from that, they will you know, they'll think, I don't you know, I'm not expected to go for this, so I'm going to play more conservatively here. I can't get there in two anyway, so I'll just hit three foot off the tee. It really does affect how they you know, not just how they think about it, but what kind of shot they try to play to their detriment, you know, if they watch the tour more and realize that the really good players don't think that way, they might figure out something about, you know, what's the best way for them to play a hole. But you know, actually, I'm not even talking about the worst effect that it has in the average golfer is that they try to go for stuff they shouldn't because it's a part four. You know, it's a long part four. So there's a long part four with a severe green in trouble around it. So I think I'll just fire away with a three wood because I'm trying I'm supposed to try to hit this green into.

01:04:06
Speaker 1: It's f I did. I had this h I had these two professors from the University of Denver on they did a whole study on loss of version and professional golf. Yes, and they saw the holes that at Pebble and Oakmont that went from fives to FoST pros played better when they became part fours by like a quarter of a shot, you know, per per time around. So but then they they.

01:04:31
Speaker 2: Believed that.

01:04:33
Speaker 1: Reducing the power of a hole would would have an adverse effect on the regular golfer.

01:04:40
Speaker 2: Absolutely would, absolutely would.

01:04:42
Speaker 1: That's because if the pros could think of every part five as a part four, they played better. And then if if the same and that weekend golfer, if they could think of every part four as a par five, they played better.

01:04:56
Speaker 2: Right. And you know, back in the day when I was traveling in Britain in nineteen eighty two and eighty three, there were still a couple of old clubs where they didn't have par on the scorecard. They had what they called bogie, which wasn't one over par. It was like it was like not what a scratch player ought to make on the whole, about what ell like a ten or twelve handicap ought to make on the hole. So any par four that was over about four to ten they would call a bogie five. And you know, that's one of the reasons you had par sixty seven or sixty eight courses, because they weren't even thinking about par when they laid them out. They were thinking about bogie. And you know, those all those par sixty eight courses I like so much, the bogie scores, like seventy four. There's three or four really long hard par fours on them that they call five, And there's probably one long par three that they call that they called a four realistically for the average guy.

01:06:00
Speaker 1: We'll do it for part one of this edition of The Yoke with Doak. We will babe back with part two later this week where Tom talks about another new project which is some exciting news, so stay tuned for part two of this podcast later this week.

01:06:16
Speaker 2: Thanks