The Fire Pit w/ Matt Ginella: Becoming Coore & Crenshaw [PART 1]

The best way I know how to describe Ben Crenshaw is simply say, look at our company name. Tell me one other major championship winner with an unknown golf course architect who would form a partnership and call it by the other guy's name first.

It didn't happen. It wouldn't happen, so.

He has every right to be up first.

I followed Bill. I'm gladly followed Bill.

With another log on the five nobody is getting tied.

This is the fire Pit with Matt Chanella.

The sixth episode of The fire Pit is part one of the people, places and things that had an influence on what Bill Core and Ben Crenshaw have become as architects, How and when they met, who was involved, and why it works. We start with suecoor Bill's wife.

I say, Ben Crenshaw.

You say, because that is my connection with Ben. But I really think of Bill and Ben as brothers. I swear they came from the same mother because they are so similar in temperament, They're so similar in graciousness they are. They don't pay attention to things together. They pay attention to things together, and I think they make each other better.

Next, we hear from Julie Crenshaw, Ben's wife.

I say Bill.

Coore and you say genius.

Reminded me a lot of Ben. Very quiet, very polite, soft spoken. I can see why they have a lot in common. They are kindred spirits.

I can tell you.

That in this era of golf course architecture, I believe Core and Crenshaw are the most consistent and thoughtful builders of the fun and fair adventure we seek. As avid amateurs, they move very little dirt and yet extract so much soul from the land that they leave behind. I've been fortunate enough to chronicle the development of almost half of their portfolio. I've heard them preach restraint, celebrate strategy, and I've watched them walk raw land in search of the

Rat.

If it weren't for Julie and my wife Sue, we wouldn't be here today.

I'll tell you that Julie Crenshaw confirms.

They're like brothers. They how they think they both don't have emails.

You know that.

You can get them to call, you can't get them to text, but.

They do it the old school way. Everything about them is old school.

Bill Corr was an only child raised by a single mom who worked multiple jobs to support the family and any of young William's dreams and aspirations. Sue Corr shares some perspective.

I think that he had the most amazing mama on the planet. She just encouraged him to be the best at whatever whatever he wanted. He came home and said he wanted to be an astronaut, she'd support that be the best that you could be whatever he wanted to be. I'm just sorry that I never met her, because she raised an incredible man.

As for designing backyard golf holes, if his mom was home, he told me the routing tended to go around the house. If she wasn't home, he often went over the house.

Well, at you're right.

I grew up out in rural North Carolina and my next door neighbor played golf and he introduced me to it, and there he was really the only close neighbors. So we would play around through the our backyard to his.

Backyard, to the mailbox, and out across the dirt road where we lived, and even in through the corn fields when they were cloud under, so we'd make up our own holes and things but I would caddy for him and on some very special occasion he would go to Pinehurst.

So he is the one who introduced me to Pinehurst. And then later when I was in high school and then of.

Course in college, I'd go there a far more regular basis, But at they were fun times and there were, you know, the cornerstone of what I my introduction to golf and my introduction to what interesting golf architecture was all about.

Sue Corp shares some perspective.

Bill wasn't raised with a father, and his parents were divorced when Bill was quite young, and there were lots of men who took over that position and really cared for Bill and really nurtured Bill. And his mother was smart enough and confidence enough to encourage all of that.

As for Ben Crenshaw, he grew up at Austin, Texas, navigating Lyons Municipal and the old Austin Country Club, which was a Perry Maxwell design.

The places where I was playing started me on kind of thinking about golf courses. One of my first sort of road trips was Brackenridge Park in San Antonio to play in the Texas State Junior. It's an old tillinghas course very tight. I mean there were a couple of holes there you had to thread the needle big on trees. But it started me thinking about different golf holes. And then when I started traveling, I said, yeah, I've been

Just blew my mind.

I wanted to know who built the courses, who was and you know, the organization's history of the game, the players. I just from then on, I just started studying everything I could find.

Although Bill Core was intrigued by the concept of golf course designed, it was Pete Due who inspired more digging.

I knew I like certain courses and certain yeah things, and I tried to figure out why, but I really wasn't that much into it. And when I saw what Pete was doing, a little public course called O Call in high Point, I just said, gee, this is different. I wonder how you do this? And I was I was about to get out of the army. I was single. I didn't need any more money. Fortunately, working for Pete, you weren't going to make much.

But whatever it took to you know, I took myself alive, and so yeah, that's how you get to that that.

I began to basically just badger Pete. I thought I'd like to see how this is done. And in the beginning it was with the intention I'd just like to see how you actually create one of these things. And I was always thinking after that, I'll go back to graduate school.

Well obviously that didn't happen either, but.

It's for my whole My whole career has been a very circuitous, almost in so many ways, unplanned journey.

As for meetings, Jack Nicholas at the nineteen seventy one US Open and Marion ben Crenshaw had what you'd call a spontaneous plant.

I was changing my shoes in the locker room and somehow Jack walked in by himself, and I said, oh my god, here's my chance.

I've got to go got to go meet.

Himself, following him upstairs, and it was a restroom up there, so I said, oh god, I got him there. So I went to the rest so I stuck out my hand, I said, Jack, and John he said, well, I'll I'll leave with him just.

So. But that was my first meeting with Jack.

I admired the way he played everything else, but I knew at that point he was just starting to get into golf course architecture. So I thought, well, that's that's pretty neat right there. And he ironically, you know, he worked with Pete Died at Harbortown, although minimally there. Yeah, and then he sort of knew that he was he could do both jobs as a obviously world class golfer and then obviously pursue architecture too, and he had a

After chasing down Pete Die a few times in the early seventies, Bill was watching the local news which reported Die was going to be building the Cardinal in Greensboro, North Carolina, not far from where Bill lived.

They were talking about that Pete Die was going to be in town. They were going to start this golf course. Still I'm thinking he didn't even call me, you.

Know, tell me anyway, drive out there and he's with a guy named John Gray who was Pete's construction form in there and associate and he just finally time sun for this guy to do.

He just wanted to get rid of me and Matt.

I started with a pair of hip waiters and a chainsaw.

Well, Ben Crenshaw was having success on the course. Core was going course to course with Pete and Roy died, which is how he ended up in Huntsville, Texas. Is water would the course that Pete kind of left you at and said, you know you'd be the superintendent here?

Is that?

Yeah, Matt, that's a very kind way of putting it.

He got rid of you.

Peache sent me to work with his brother Roy, supposedly to help Gary grand Staff, who was the golf course superintendent, and work for Roy to help Gary.

Uh Spanish water with National Well.

In Huntsville, Bill met Ron Whitman, who was a Canadian going to school at sam Houston State. Bill quickly became a mentor and a friend.

Well, I didn't have any money, so Bill always bought the pizza and uh, I mean we played golf. I just got to hanging out with him on the weekends at Waterwood, and you know, Bill was out there seven days a week, and uh, you know, over time we just got to play a little golf together and then and hang out and and I just loved being around him, and he would talk about golf course design, and you know, I was just trying to play golf at that time.

Now in the early eighties, still in Huntsville, Bill gets a call from Pete Die He needed a guy in Austin and he needed him.

Now.

We were out doing some work, I think on the Ninth Green and he got a call from from Pete. Pete wanted somebody to go to Austin. And you know, as he said later, dump trucks, you know, was to watch the dump trucks dump and tell him where to dump and that sort of thing. He took the phone call, came back out and asked me if I wanted to go to work with Pete. And I just was the

So Rod is now working for Pete Dye. Bill had worked for Pete Dye, and Ben was keeping an eye on Pete Die.

You know, when I was saying in Austin at the Austin Country Club, Pete would come to town and then you know, he would have visitors. I mean, Tom Kite would come out there and Ben Crenshaw would come out there, and you know, they'd walk around and try to hang out with Pete a little bit and just watch him work. And so when he did come out there, I mean, obviously I got a chance to meet him because I was part of that entourage. And you know, Pete told me,

I was told by Rod Whitman was Pete De's foreman, and I'd gotten to meet Rod, and I'm really interested in what he was doing. I saw Pete many times. They both made and he said, you know what, you need to meet Bill Kourr. You need you need to meet Bill Kurr. I really think that you'd like him.

I would go back and forth to Huntsville every now and then and talk with Bill, and I told him that I'd met Ben, and I thought, man, this guy is just a really nice guy. He's really cool guy. He's interested in designing, and uh, you know, I just I just know that talking to Bill that I mentioned that, you know, it would be nice if he if he met him.

The seeds had been planted, but before they met. A man named Dave Kerry helps get Bill his big break down on the Gulf Coast of Texas, four hours south of Huntsville.

He said, look, we've known each other now for a two years. He said, I know you're the superintendent here, by I know, really what you'd like to do is be in the golf course design business. He said, this may be the chance, and he took me down Rockport Hendry Club, mentioning enough was it in the middle of building their first nine holes, and for some reason, I've never known what happened, but there were some as they say in Texas, are falling out between the owners and

We need somebody.

This is the maximum you can spend and if you want the job, you got to and figure it out.

And it's yours.

I guess I was so naive, and so, as they say, walked into the deep end of the pool paddle around again.

Even with his raw talent and ambition for architecture, Bill cor couldn't go it alone. He called upon Jerry Clark aka Screwed, who had been helping him with coursework at Waterwood.

And so when Rockport came along, I said, Screage, you want you want to go?

You want to go? Let me and try it, see if we can make some of this. Yeah, but I'll go with you. And so we the two of us.

Go down there and and we we start working on it.

Said basically, just two of us start with.

And then another guy who lived there named Mike McKay who ended up working with Ben and May for years, and it actually became the nucleus or the cornerstone now of you the guys that we have today because Jerry Clark and Mike McKay trained like jimbo right and and Dave Accent and these guys who have now gone on to train all these other guys. So you can trace it right back to that. But yeah, we we finished the nine holes in Rockport. It turned out, you know,

So it was eighteen.

The guys and I were kind of tiptoeing along, but we were I guess, I guess you could say we were officially in the golf course design builds.

I asked Rod Whitman for his thoughts on Rockport, the first original Billcorp design.

I loved Rockport. It was a great little setting in a small town. And yeah, every day you get up, you just want to play golf and it was a lot of fun. I could see where anybody looking at it, knowing that it was new, to say, man, that's pretty classic.

Rockport was good enough to get that team some attention, but according to several potential clients, they were missing something.

One most memorable story, at least to me, happened in Houston, Texas with the man who was a very successful real estate golfers had a nice, beautiful office and I guess what at the time was the tallest building in Houston. He goes Bill. He said, I've seen your golf course in Rockport. It's really good. He said, it's really good. He said, but nobody's ever heard of you. Nobody knows who you are. This business is about selling real estate.

This is not so much about golf.

If you walk in here tomorrow with Lay Trevenue on your arm, or Tom Watson or you know somebody like that, he said, I'll hire you until then, and he walked me over to the window of his high rise office.

We looked down on the street.

He said, until then, until I can walk down there on that street and call out your name and people stop to look around to see where you are, you don't get hired.

So well, I don't do that.

And I said, I just haven't really felt like I said, job, we got another job.

We hopefully we'll get another one. I don't know. I just it's just not.

Something i'd really given much thought to. He said, well, if you did, who would it be?

You just referred to it Matt.

Ben had just won the Masters nineteen eighty four, and this probably was happening maybe the month.

After that. But I didn't know Ben.

But I just I'd read the articles in the magazines where Ben's talking about golf and golf architecture. I just said, well, I guess I guess there were gonna be anybody be Ben Crunchaw. The guy looked at me and he just goes, God, a mighty bill, he said, I know Ben.

He said, he was a romantic and naive as you are. A few guys together would be his master.

So then along comes Charlie Belair, another wealthy Texas businessman who had some land on the Gulf Coast. He wanted to have Bill cor And again a well known player, take a look, and although he still didn't know him, Bill floated the idea of Ben Crenshaw again. But Bill's first visit to that land was by himself. As for his first impressions of the potential project.

Mad it wasn't gonna happen. It's just one of the worst sites you'd ever see.

It went underwater, salt water, so, I mean, it wasn't gonna happen.

Bill had seen enough and he left town.

Charlie calls me back and he says, Bill, can you come down here. Ben Crenshaw is going to come down here. I want you guys to look at this. He was still hopeful. I knew I got down the golf coast. Ben comes over. Ben looked at the site in a nano second. You know, Robin Williams would say, no, we're not building the golf course. But that man did, at least from my side of the equation. He's the one, uh who who got us together that day. Uh we you know, we met for the first time. We ended

And I looked at that golf course and there was there was something totally different about what I saw. It was interesting, it was natural. It looked like it sprang right out of the ground, and it had at It had a particular appeal to me, and I thought, wow, this is this guy has a really sense of feel of the atmosphere of where he's working.

About this time, Crenshaw had just left IMG and had hired his childhood friend and business partner, Scotty Sayers as his manager. Sayers recalls seeing Ben when he got back to Austin.

He walked into the library at his house after spending the day with Bill and Julie was in there, and I've seen him excited, but this was one of the most exciting times for him, just because he really didn't have a partner or didn't have a plan on how to get into the business.

They had met, there was interest, and in Ben's mind it was a done deal.

It was just unbelievable how this happened. Nineteen eighty five. Nineteen eighty five is when we decided to make a go at this, and that was the year I married Julie. So I made two really good decisions. Remember Julie when I came back and you know, I was god I was playing. I'm still going to play tournaments, I said, Julie. I made a decision. I said, I'm going to Bill Kohor and I am in a former partnership, and she said, why in the world are you doing That's a you're a player.

And I said, you're going to have to trust me on.

This, Julie, and I was thinking, Wow, what are you kidding? And I was like, are you sure you want to do this? You know, because he was struggling with his health, struggling with this game. We just got married. We weren't even certain he was ever going to play competitive golf again.

In nineteen eighty five, Ben Crenshaw missed the cut in thirteen of his first nineteen tournaments. He was eventually diagnosed with what's called Graves disease, an overactive thyroid.

He could not break eighty, could not putt, could not chip, could not just played terrible golf. Blamed it on stressed, lost like thirty pounds instead of Sports Illustrated putting him on the cover for when in the Masters, they were like chasing him on the golf course because he was shooting eighty and missing cuts.

And it was horrible, horrible, poor.

It was sad and horrible, and I mean really we had no idea if.

He was going to ever compete.

And so when we got married, remember they did a blood test on him and checked us. They were like, your thigh is huge. Well it was off the charts. So they gave him radioactive iodine to kill it, and they said, six weeks later, you should feel better. Six weeks to the day, he finished tied for six at the US Open at Chinnakok, and we skipped around that place like he had one the tournament. I remember Raymond winning and we were like, well.

We won, you're back, you are back.

Four weeks later he won the muic Open, and then he was off.

So he took you know, took a gamble on getting married to me, took a gamble on Bill, and you.

Know, didn't know if he was going to get better, but it all worked out and he did get better, thank goodness.

So who and what gets credit for this chance encounter p Die, of course, but they couldn't have done it without Rockport Country Club.

I mean, there's no question that the routing there very traditional and not much distance between the going.

From the grain to the tea.

Easily walkable course, very interesting, good bunker work, and it was it was early Bill.

Coore, but you could sure see what was.

Going to be in his mind in the future as he designed courses. And sure that's where Ben really really was hooked on Bill Kover.

And they probably wouldn't have met without Rod Whitman.

They just seem like they would become pretty good friends. You know, they're they're both at the same sort of age and mental stability, if I can call it that. You know, they just they just I thought that they'd get along very well and uh, you know, could talk architecture on a level that that made some sense and just had a feeling.

And apparently this doesn't happen without some perseverance by Ben Crenshaw.

And I'll confess I was the one who pursued Bill in the elite. Bill was not interested in partnering with anyone, and I think I don't know a month, maybe three, and went by and it got to what I may have tried to talk him into it, and it wasn't really interested. You know, I can't.

I kind of you know, I can understand that.

And when it finally he came around and I said, you know, maybe maybe maybe we could give this a go.

It's beginning to sound like a fairy tale. You know.

We met in eighty four, and then over a period of over a year, I mean significantly over a year, we would just occasionally get together or we'd have phone conversations about golf architecture.

Ben would call sometimes have you ever seen this or that?

You know?

Of course, and thinks, but there was never really this great game plan to make this happen, and it's been has been said, he he he.

He likes to take the blame, I guess for us being together. I think he pursued it. It was.

To say that I don't It was just such a natural evolution. But at some point in time, man, and I can sincerely say, there wasn't this great dinner, there wasn't this great whatever, there wasn't too many beers out someplace, and then said let's do it. It just evolved and we said let's try some of this together.

Fate. In retrospect, I look back on it, and Fate had a fickle hand in all this. I've had some nice things happened to me in my career. This is one of them.

In Part two, which will go live in a week, we're taking this partnership all the way to send Hills in the Brea, the sand based trampoline that vaulted these guys into another atmosphere of architecture. Are you looking for good value on great golf apparel as a listener to this podcast, My friends John Ashworth and Jeff Cunningham at link Soul in Oceanside, California are offering you a twenty five percent discount on all future orders of what I Wear all day, every day, on and off the course.