I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset. When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset. And when I find my ball.
In a Friday Egg, Friday Egg, the dreaded Frida Egg, Friday, Frida Egg brid Egg, Frida Egg.
Bride Egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the hump course.
Welcome back to the Friday Golf Podcast. I'm Garrett Morrison, and today we're doing a golf architecture mail bag. You asked some questions on social media and we're going to answer them. I'm going to bring in Andy Johnson to help me do that. Should be a lot of fun.
But first, let's talk about USGA memberships. For more than one hundred and twenty five years, the USGA has been working to ensure that golf has a strong future, and for almost fifty years, USGA members have given back to the game they love by supporting programs and initiatives that affect every aspect of the game, including junior golf, environmental sustainability, the history of the game, and some of the biggest
championships in the sport. On top of making a difference to the future of golf, USGA members also get back great benefits like the US Open or US Women's Open member hat, a personalized member bag tag, a subscription to the USGA's Golf Journal, which is really excellent, and more. You two can give back to golf and get back great benefits by visiting USGA dot org slash fried Egg and becoming a USGA member Today. All right, let's get into our golf architecture mail bag.
Garrett I saw I saw the USGA's testing facility today.
From them, did you really you're you're You're out there in the real what I like to refer to as the real swamp, not not Jupiter, Florida, but rather North Carolina.
The sand Hills, the one of the least swampy terrains in America.
You know, it's a metaphorical swamp.
I was. I saw the testing facility from afar. I asked, what is that house and the caddy and the group said, that's the USGA's testing facility.
So did you do some investigations of what's going on there?
Apparently they just got a machine that's hitting golf balls all the time, testing.
And determining the future of the sport right there.
That's why you need to be a USGA member. They do. You know, they can have testing facilities.
That's right, they can have testing facilities. They can they can actually bring some data to back up the upcoming rollback.
Yeah. Yeah, I think they've done a lot of that. How are you.
They have I'm pretty good. I'm pretty good recovering from a bit of an illness. Though I know that people are aware one that we had an off site meeting last week in Austin where we all got together as a company, had a great time together, and also that Brendan was sick during your recording of the Shotguns Start podcast. And I'd just like to say for the record that we have different illnesses.
I've got a cold, like I had a cold there, you know, maybe I was. Yeah. I think PJ is doing okay, though.
You're doing all right. Well, Pj's young. It's the youthfulness that allows him to get through. Yeah. Well, anyway, so I'm doing all right, but but but a little worse for the wear, I guess you could say. But uh, yeah, excited to dig into some golf architecture topics you want to you want to dive in.
Yeah, we released our vet schedule. Yeah, I think a good first question. So we do these events all over the country, all over the world. This year we've got a couple international trips. But I think one of the neat things is seeing people, a big group of people that have a genuine, genuine love of golf together experience cool places, and we do these events all over the world, and it's cool. It's always fun to see the reactions. I have to ask you, you know you you you're
not like super involved with events. I think you give input about what could be a cool event, what could be a course? What you know? What are some event course ideas?
Now that I'm kept away from the planning of them pretty pretty far, I think people know that I don't have much to contribute on that end.
Well, I'm starting to be kept away from the planning too, So that makes two of.
Us there are very organized, you know, dot the i's across the t's people in our company who can deal with this stuff better than you and I.
Yeah, but I went from being heavily evolved to less involved. But what's your favorite of the what's the event course that that you most would want to go see in the event? In an event on the schedule, on the.
I'd love to see on the schedule. I'd love to see Colorado Golf Club. That one jumps out at me immediately. I haven't been out to Colorado Golf Club before.
I've played some golf in Dnshaw, a core Crunshaw enthusiast.
This is true, this is true. I'm in the tank for Coren Crenshaw. I have to I have to acknowledge that. Let's disclose, I'm a Corn Crenshaw fanboy. In addition to that, we've never had an event at Moraine before. Really cool looking golf course in Ohio and has has been nicely restored, and so I've seen a good amount of content about it, but we I don't believe we've had an event there before.
So that one golf course. I played a USAM qualifier there in probably about twenty sixteen. That's how I first interacted with the golf course. I had seen a little bit of a little photos and I saw the USAM site come out, and I had I got a bunch of my buddies to sign up, and there are two of my buddies to sign up, and we road tripped it from Chicago and playing It's It's really cool it's it's got like a really great back part of the lot for golf, but you have to navigate this huge
hill to get there. So it's interesting how both sides of the course because you kind of play back down it and playing down it's way easier than playing over it. But is is phenomenal. I there are some holes that I think about a lot out there. The seventh is this great little short part four. The sixteenth is like a very very dramatic part four that both those played down the hill, and then there's some just really phenomenal holes intermixed in it is my impression of it.
Yeah, it looks like a good piece of land and yet at the same time maybe a kind of quirky property.
It's a very weird property. So like ten, ten, eleven, twelve, there are like really flat It's interesting because it has some like it has a mix of like super dramatic elevation changes. It has a mix of really good like perfectly scaled golf ground, and then it's got like a flat section and the flat section has some like pretty interesting greens. Like the tenth holes really neat. It kind of like bends right and has this green that like just sits up. It's like a little tabletop. Green falls
off everywhere. So it's a really diverse set of of holes, like there's different portions of the property. And Alex Nipper Campbell Alex. I think it's Alex. It might be Alex or Alex Knipper.
I'm pretty sure it's Alex, Alex, Alex Nipper Campbell. Yeah, his name Nipper is in quotes. Yeah, that's his nickname. That's how he was known as Nipper Campbell Nipper.
He designed a ton of courses in the Dayton area. But that's it. And he was in the country club, Yes, he was involved. He was a hoppro yeh believe if my memory serves me correct.
He's one of those early kind of I believe Scottish. He's one of those early kind of spreaders of the game in the US. And he just showed up kind of some places and did pretty cool architectural work.
It is. It's really cool. It gets totally overshadowed by Inverness and Camargo. But I would say that I, you know, at least one of those two courses, I would play in Marine way more out of ten than I really like Marine. I've been dying to go back. Honestly, since I played that tournament, I haven't been back. And yeah, it's always been on my mind of somewhere that I've wanted to go back and shoot. But I'm thrilled to be there. They hosted the Western m last year. That
would have been a fun tournament to go watch. But it's a it's a really cool place. So Marine is your Coloradria would be.
Golf Club looks sensational. Both of those courses you've been to and written about. Are there any courses on here? I mean mid Ocean obviously, it's like.
Mid Ocean. You know, a couple of course beyond displayed mid Ocean, a couple of days of breviewed us. So it's pretty nice, you know. I would say the the other one that I am particularly keen on, And this is an easy answer for me, because I love it in the in the area, Belvedere, Kingsley Club, a night in between. Northern Michigan's about as good as it gets. I absolutely loved both of those golf courses. I love the area. It's the perfect time of year to be there.
I mean, there's anytime you could say it's the perfect time of year to be in Traverse City anytime from about July first to the beginning of October. But it's a great time to play golf. So Belvedere and Kingsley Club, that one, to me for two day is pretty awesome, two really different golf courses, two really different properties, And
like you know, it's it's if you did that. The right way for me to do that is you go in, you go in Friday, spend the weekend in Traverse City, and then it's a Sunday Monday event and then you're in and then you fly out. Actually, like sneaky, Traverse City is getting pretty easy to get to, is the other thing. You can fly direct from a lot more places than than before. So that would be that'd be the event that I'm I kind of got my eye on. I mean, there are a lot of good ones. I
love Skokie. That's of course that I always like love going to play from when I was a kid, the occasional times that I would get to go in high school, I could I could rattle off all of these.
Sky is another first time host of an event. Pretty cool to see that one on there that there's there's been some good work there recently to kind of recover the courses architectural lineage, and and it's uh yeah, it's a great place and high high density population area. Right, it's basically I mean just north of Chicago. It's it's right in there.
It's our first Chicago event. We've never had an event in Chicago.
Oh that's right. Yeah, and finspecting Chicago, well I've moved out, I could.
You know, it's like the adage, you know, you don't you don't take poops where you live, right, whatever, What's what's the adage?
What's the well, uh, you know, well I think it's more profane than that.
Yeah, it's it's but but yeah, so now that I don't live there, isn't that an.
Adage about not not having affairs with people? Yeah, work with? Isn't that what it's about?
Okay, yeah, I think that's what it is.
It's also good advice, all right, Anyway, I.
Messed that up. But anyways, that's the events. You can see. It's all over socials, it's in club tf if you remember, just all over our social medias.
Lots of lots of club TFE specific events this year. So if you're interested in those, then joining Club TFE would be a great step toward participating in them. And uh yeah, wonderful lists that our that our team put together. There a lot of there have been some questions about the geographic coverage of the events. You know, West Coast
is not super well represented yet. But just keep in mind that this list is uh, you know, it's not going to change a lot, but there might be some things added, some things, you know, So so just stay tuned. We're not disrespecting your part of the country. And we'll also you know, year on year we we we get to places eventually. So yeah, Andy and I would not disrespect the West Coast. We both live here. In fact.
Yeah, well that's probably why we're not hosting anything in the Pacific Northwest is because of what I just said. You don't want to you know, you know, I want to expecis with pleasure, right there.
You go, exactly. Yeah, I can't come to Portland, all right, Andy, next topic I wanted to talk with you about before we get to the mail bag questions. The big discussion point in the golf architecture realm of golf discourse lately has been the release of the golf dot Com Top one hundred list. This is America's top one hundred courses according to golf dot COM's panel. Some of the headlines here. The Lido enters at number thirty in the US.
I bet I guarantee you have some thoughts about that.
Yeah. Old Barnwell enters at fifty one. Interlock In, recently renovated by Andrew Green re enters re enters the list at seventy three. It had dropped out before. Medna number three, redesigned by Ogil V. Cocking and mead OCM, a great architecture firm from Australia, re enters at seventy four. Ladera gil Hans's new course in the California Desert enters the
list at eighty seven. Pinehurst number ten, which you have played quite recently, in fact, maybe a couple of couple of hours ago in the eighty eight, so you're I don't know, maybe you have some thoughts. Sancity head old course but has recently come back into fashion. I suppose enters the list at ninety two for the first time. Old Elm comes in at ninety four.
Oh my, I didn't even realize Old Elm.
Old Elm, So hey, you thing Sins are changing, Trinity Forrest comes in at ninety six, Philly Cricket re enters at ninety eight. Those are all the new courses on the list.
Some of this stuff like with Sancity and Old Elm, I think they finally reached a raider a mass and and Old ELM's done like some amazing work over the years to get there.
But yeah, I mean Old Elm has been bubbling under the surface for a while where people have been talking about how good it is, and then now finally enough people perhaps from the panel, have gotten there.
Yeah, it's it's awesome. I mean, it's one of one of my favorite courses in the world.
So any any thoughts about some of that stuff that I've Yeah, it is pretty low on the list, probably should be higher. Any thoughts about what I just went over there, some of the new courses on the list, any an he takes there.
I think I really, I really like the golf dot Com list in terms of, like I think the list that I most resonate with of the of the major lists that you see out there. I think it it kind of so just in general, I think like I don't have anything that like I really see the world differently then I do think like just over arching, like you start to see who's tumbling down, and for the most part, like big tumblers down are our new golf courses that the newness of them is where it's square enough.
Yeah, it's like golf courses that may be opened or got renovated in the mid twenty tens or somewhere around there. So we're talking about some of the biggest tumblers. NPCC Dunes, Gamble Sands took a bit of a tumble.
Yeah, So like to be like what kind of happens is that courses do renovation work and then they and they get that new bump and it's like good work. But it's like, I mean, I think one of the things just overarching with the golf architecture world that I don't like that's going on is like the keeping up
with the Joneses that's happening, and it's totally happening. You know, a lot of it is based around these rankings, and it's like, oh, we fell ten spots, we need to we because we fell ten spots, we need to you know, this is oversimplifying everything. I want to be clear here. This is me just oversimplifying, irresponsible rhetoric, but like the general is like we're falling. We fall in twenty five
spots over the last five years. We better go spend fifteen million dollars to go back up, right, And that's what the cycle is. That's like kind of how it works. And new courses come in and new courses are the
most everybody wants to go see. Everybody wants to know how new courses are, you know, the first couple of years they jump onto the list and then they can fall out, right, Yeah, And I think, you know, overarching like about those Like that's just kind of my general idea and trends of what this is like when I look at it from a big picture, is like it's courses that got renovated and new courses of the early twenty tens are falling down and new courses and courses
that were freshly renovated or going up.
Yeah that's right, Yeah, I mean, and that's not to say that they didn't do good work at interlock In and Medina number three, which are the two kind of big ticket re entries onto the list important courses that were worked on recently. Again, Andrew Green did the work at Interlocking in OCM at Medina. I think that work has been really good. You've seen you've seen both both courses post work, I think, and your impressions have been
very positive. But guess who the smartest looking courses right now on this list are overall, and that's the Fisher's Island, the National Golf Links, the courses that have preserved as opposed to getting caught up in these trends.
That's not that's not fair. That's are working, they're working with a different set of cards. That's like saying that you know you drew a full house, you know.
Had just never changed in the first place.
Yeah. True, But like I think, like I think one of the things that that's not the way. History doesn't work that way with everywhere, you know, heads never changed.
Now all of a sudden it's a top one hunter golf course.
I just think. I mean, Old ELM's gone through a dramatic transformation. I played Old Elm in high school golf matches and it is un recognizable. It was it was like the like sure what it was like the of you know, you just go get lost in all the trees out there. It was like a tunnel every hole. So I just think, like I think, like Madonna and interlock In, Interlockin's Land is like truly extra ordinary. It
is like mesmerizing golf land, and it's really cool. I think Medina is like a completely different story because they completely blew up, They put their foot in the ground and they just said, we're going to a completely different direction.
Yeah, but my course has been has been really really kind of like the way the way the course looked ten years ago was so much different than what it was originally. There's no there's nothing to go back to at Medyna number three. Basically, it's just gone.
Yeah. I'd like I think like one of the things I appreciate about Medina number three is I think they understood that they the golf course. Honestly, the golf course no better they were. I think there were top ten in the rankings at one point, but that golf course probably never was a great golf course ever in its history. And I think like some places need to realize this is like we were never an extraordinary, extraordinary golf course. And at what point do we give up saying like, okay,
we're at ninety percent of what we can be. Are we really going to spend fifteen million dollars to get to ninety six percent of what we can be because that's like I was having a conversation with Tom Doak honestly today about this, and he brought up how he wrote this in his Anatomy of a Golf Course, literally like thirty years ago, about how much clubs spend to get to eighty percent. I think is what it was.
I think the numbers eighty percent, and how you basically have to spend double to add ten percent after that on your maintenance budget or your architecture. And to me, like my question, and I didn't mean this to be this, but my question is is it worth the money? Is it worth the extra million dollars you spend every year and maintenance to go from ninety percent of what your course could look like to you know what we get?
Like our playing conditions are ten percent better thirty days a year, and we spent a million dollars to do that. Like is anybody gonna notice that? And with golf courses, I love, like I am absolutely in the business of when golf courses renovate, it's good for me. I have new stuff to talk to talk about we have new
stuff to kick around. But like a lot of golf courses, I wonder, Okay, so, like you're gonna renovate your golf course, you're gonna spend fifteen million dollars, and maybe you're a dope five and you're gonna spend fifteen million dollars and you're gonna go to doke six, Like what are we doing? Like in a Dinah's case, I think if they had done a renovation without significant changes, they would have gone from what I believed was like a five to maybe
a six. And I think, like, from my perspective, the thing I appreciate about what they did was they said, we are going to try and do something way different, and we think we're going to be better because of it. And they are way better because they did something wildly different out of the box. And I think, like a lot of courses restore something that should never have been restored. At this point, I've swung the pendulum on how I feel about this, but there are so many restorations being
done of golf courses that frankly shouldn't be restored. You could find a better solution if you went with a renovation. It just takes a lot, and you're gonna spend the same amount of money.
Well, and it takes really good taste too. You have to have a good architect Yeah, because it's way hard, it's way riskier because once you commit to big changes, then you're in danger of it being fifty years from now and you're in the same position that Oakland Hills was when it looked at it's Robert Trent jonesified South Course and was like, this was the wrong decision. You know, we went in the wrong direction and now we've got a completely reversed course. It's just it's tough.
Well, this is the beautiful thing about golf architecture is that it's like clothing. I mean, yeah, I literally went home this summer to my house. I don't know if I've told this story on Era. I went home to my house and I was looking in my old closet and I found I saw that there's some shoes still in it, and there's a pair of burket stocks that I wore in high school. And I was like, wow,
burger Stocks are back. And I put them on and they still fit, and I brought them, brought them back to my house and I wear them, And I think, like, the thing that's amazing about a golf architecture is twenty years from now, they're going to think somebody is going to think that everything we were doing right now in time was stupid, yeah, and that they should be doing things this way. And who knows what it's going to be. It could be a run back to like long rough.
I hope not. I hope it's not. It would be great for my golf game, you know, yeah, but it would. It's you know, it could be that or like I think that's like the fascinating thing is like we're absolutely in a trend time capsule, and I think people sometimes forget to think about that.
Well, this is why I think that courses that decide who they are from their inception and just stick with it through thick and thin can end up seeming pretty smart.
Now.
This calculus is different for courses that host championships, because those courses want to host the championship now, They want to be relevant now, and so I understand why they make the decisions that they make. But those courses that just decide from from the very beginning, for better or worse, this is what this golf course is and we're just
gonna stick with it. Those courses end up, you know, the fashions come back around, and we end up valuing those courses that express something of a particular time period authentically.
I think though, like one of the things what you said about like National and Fisher's Island and Crystal Downs, I mean, there was a time period none of those were in the top ten.
That's that's what I'm referring to. Yeah, if you look at a Golf Digest list from the nineteen seventies, those courses were shit.
So I will say this is like all all of those had like absolute extraordinary properties. Yeah, And I think, like it's hard, it's hard to compare, Like I always think, you get like to me, to me, like the top ten are all on, Like, there isn't one course in the top ten of this list, and the top ten is Pine Valley, Cypress Point, Shinnecock, National Golf Links of America, Oakmont, I guess, the National, Sandhills, Marion, Pebble Beach in Lacc.
North, exactly the same ones that everybody else has.
So if you get to eleven Fishers, like at that point, there is not one ordinary piece of golf ground there. Oh yeah, at twelve, we have our first piece of truly extraordinary golf architecture that elevates a rather like it's a good piece of land, but are rather ordinary Chicago golf. And like I think Piner's number two is in a similar boat.
I think both of those should be higher.
But but you're kicking down. Yeah, I know you're kicking down.
You know who I'm kicking You know exactly who I'm kicking down. I've made my opinions perfectly clear on the subject of Pebble Beach.
It went up to spots, did it? What? What about? Their work got better over the last year. They brought boat fairway lights in so that there's not fairway running up to the cliffs of the Pacific Coast.
Well, that's the thing. I mean, it's just like we have to remind ourselves from time to time that these lists are fundamentally ridiculous. Well they're just there's no justifying them, aside from just saying they're kind of fun to talk about and debate. And here we are talking about them, so we're doing golf dot COM's work for them. But this is a ridiculous exercise. And I really wish people
wouldn't do it. But you know, I recognize why the magazines and golf media companies feel it necessary to continue to rate courses in this matter, but it's just a it's just an absurd thing.
That we do. I think the other the list has to change because it can't not change.
Right exactly. You're like, they can't change it too much. Nothing changed, Yeah.
Here's the new list, the same because we went through a period of time where like nothing really was happening. Yeah, you know, not a lot of new courses were being built. It would be amazing if it'd be amazing to see a list that never changed.
What if they just canceled it one year and said nothing changed.
Sorry. I mean it's a huge website traffic boom, but well and yeah.
And it's always been that way, not for the website, but as a mag zine seller. Nothing is better for golf magazines than this top one hundred list. It's a sensation and that's the reason it exists and and why it keeps coming back around, and you know, and so we're just kind of caught in this caught in this vicious circle with it, and sometimes I just want to get out of it.
I mean honestly though, Like if you look through this list, I know you have your grievances with Pebble Beach. I have like no in like I think I've talked about this on this podcast before. But like you know, if you asked me, do you want to play Pacific Dunes or or let's just go with one that's or we'll go Pacific Dunes or Augustin Nashvill, I've played both of them. Not a humble brag. This is not a humble brag, but honestly, some days and people would say this is crazy.
I think I probably play as many rounds of Pacific Dunes is Augustin National. Like to me, they aren't very different.
M Well, that that's because you're asking the question which one would I rather play, which is a question that asks for a subjective response and therefore an honest response, which I find to be interesting, right because we could then have a discussion about that why you why you would prefer to play you know, Pacific Dunes over Augusta National.
If you're given ten rounds, But when you ask the question what is the greatest course, then that presumes that we're about to have a discussion of objective quality, which is where I think the ridiculousness. It's a subjective thing. That's that's why. Yes, that's the Yeah. I think that's what I'm saying when I say that this is an absurd exercise because it's it's presenting itself as something authoritative, but it just can't ever be that, because that that
doesn't exist when it comes to evaluating golf courses. But one thing I do find interesting about the golf dot Com list, and maybe this should be the last thing we say about it before we.
Move on, But maybe we just won't get a question.
Maybe we'll just it'll just be the rest of the podcast. We'll still call it a golf Architecture mailbag podcast. I'll
still be the title. But one thing I do find interesting about this list is as a kind of survey of the opinions of the golf intelligentsia at a particular moment, because I think that's what golf dot COM's panel is, in contrast to the Golf Digest panel, which is huge and kind of a big tent and composed of I think a different kind of golfer for the most part, and the Golf Week list, which is in some ways similar.
The golf dot Com list is like a sort of hand selected list of insiders, of people who are very well informed generally about golf courses and golf course architecture, who are well traveled, who have read all the books and had all the conversation with all the people, and these are This is a view into what they think, what they think is hot at a particular moment. And what's interesting is right now in that group, in that segment of the golf obsessed population, Old Barnwell is hot,
the Lido is hot, Walter Travis is hot. Courses like Sancity Head are hot. You know what I would bet. I would place a bet right now that at some point we're going to see wild Horse in Nebraska enter this list within the next few years. If the composition of the panel stays.
The same, if enough people get out there, that's that's that's a big and that's a big if. If the composition of the panel remains the same is a bit is a big if.
I don't know, Yeah, not necessarily something, that's for sure. The panel that exists right now in some ways reflects the personality of the architecture editor at golf dot com who has been for the past few years, Rand Morrisset. And that's why this list is maybe the most appealing of the lists to you and me, Andy, because Rand Morrisset, the founder of golf club at lists, is a big influence on the way you and I think about golf courses, and that website, golf club at list is a big
influence on your and my education in this subject. And so yeah, that list is going to turn out to be a little more congenial to us than some others, and so I find it interesting for that reason. It's kind of a temperature check on where we are in what we consider to be quality golf course architecture, as opposed to a representation of what are actually the best golf courses, which is always an impossible thing to do.
Can I ask one final question here? Sure, say, what's the one course that when you see it on one of these lists you get irrationally upset that it's I'll give you by.
Too, Okay, I mean I'm not looking at the list right now. Why don't you give me yours and I'll bring the list up. And I have a couple of ideas, but I want to make sure.
Yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna say the one that is like the first one that I'm just like irrationally upset about, is Bandon Dunes being number forty nine.
I andy just steering into trash.
I can't, I can't do it. I can't. I think, I'm like, I don't know. I guess I'm just gonna say it. Why would I? I just am at the point I never want to play the golf course again if I'm at the resort, I'd rather spend my time other places. And I just don't think that means that it's the top fifty golf course in the country, so that that's like, I the only reason I'll go play Bandon dune'es if I'm at Bandon Dune's golf resort, as if somebody in my group really really wants to play it.
Otherwise I'll spend my time at any of the other golf courses.
I think you might be able to guess mine, But I always see it on these lists way way too high, just like irrationally high, and I just don't get it. And that's the East course at o'kille Country Club. Sorry, I don't get it. I don't. It's like fine, it's a fine, fine golf course. It's like a second tier Donald Ross design on an okay piece of land, Like what are we doing here? Why is this a top thirty, top forty golf course? What is it about it? I just don't. I don't see it. I don't get it.
I think your Golf Digest it was rated ahead of lacc which I thought was like insane, it's so hard.
It might be above Pinehurst number two on that Golf Digest list. I'm sorry. If that's not the case, I apologize, but like, I feel like Pinehurst number two is one of America's great works of golf architecture. I mean talk about like perfect, you know, this place is amazing.
I think the other thing that needs to be said about Pinehurst number two versus the courses that are around it, is what goes into presenting a golf course when you literally have like I don't know exactly the rounds that are played at Pinehurst number two, but it's probably fifty thousand rounds a year, or roughly forty. Maybe it's forty.
I mean right now, while I'm at this resort, I think they're doing double t starts starting at like seven thirty in the morning on Pineer's number two, So they tee off one to ten in the morning and afternoon so they can get the maximum number of people out on the golf course. So you just think about, like what goes into presenting that golf course versus you know, Chicago golf that maybe gets eight thousand rounds a year.
It's not the same. It's like and I always think about like, and I'm not saying that I want this to happen. I don't want this to happen Pineherst number two being available and open to the public. But I also think, like, what would Pineher's number two look like if it had eight thousand rounds played instead of forty eight thousand rounds played a year. It would be dramatically differently presented.
It would be differently received too, by top one hundred panels. Oh yeah, I don't think even in our even in our era, even after all the work that everybody has done to to highlight the virtues of public courses, that there is still a public course penalty in these in these rankings.
This big of me to go after one of the few public courses on the corn.
Yeah, we should. We should start insulting Beth Page Black too, all right now before.
That could be one of the biggest sleepers.
It's probably it's probably a little too high on this list, but there are a lot of public courses that just don't make this list at all that that probably deserve to be on there. In any case, let's talk about red rooster golf clubs before we get to our golf architecture male bag questions. Listen, I don't have the smooth segues like Brendan has I. You know, I'm I'm not I'm not professional.
Here's how you here's how you could have done it. You could have said. Okay, now that we've gotten a grip on the golf dot Com rankings, let's talk about what you're using for your grips.
And speaking of speaking of aggressive advertising, that's just really in your face. Let's let's move from the golf dot Com discussion to red rooster golf clubs. PJ is sitting in his booth right now, just waving and thumbs downing all of these things that we're saying right now. So let's just let's just get to the eye copy. So it is black Friday all month long at Red Rooster Golf.
This is a great company that makes awesome golf gloves that you and I use, Andy, so we can we can personally testify to you.
I want to say, how long till November is just Black Friday? You know how long til Black? Just known? Yeah? But anyways, these gloves. So the club TFE member gift was a Red Rooster glove with a Friday glogo on it, and I got so many texts from people like very good players, people that I know from competitive golf that were like, can I buy like a whole pack of these? These gloves are incredible, They're great gloves. I were my Red Rooster today. I only have one. I don't really
go through club gloves very quick. I need to get more. I need to order more.
Yeah, nobody, nobody wants to be next to the guy with the sweaty, crackly gloves exact. But the thing about Red Roaster gloves is that they're really soft.
I don't wear out gloves. I'm I don't grip. I don't. My hand doesn't sweat very much and I don't grip the club tightly, so I don't. I don't burn through gloves. Like a lot of people, I have good glove. I have good glove at aquid. It's not like they're stinky and smelly, but they are they Anyways, this Red Rooster glove's great. They're really high performance gloves. It's I like, one of the things I appreciate is like entrepreneurs that go out to solve an issue and they wanted to
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All right, want to get to some golf architecture mail bag questions?
Andy, Oh yeah, can't wait.
Okay, let me start you.
With this one.
This is from Matt mcgloff, Matt Matt McLoughlin on Blue Sky. This is this is a question from Blue Sky. Who is the Matt Iberflus golf course architecture?
I think I think like Matt Eberfluss runs a pretty good defense, so he's like got half. He's somebody that gets like halfway there, but it has like pure incompetence in the other half has no game management skills, so you know, overall management not good. Maybe has like a few good good characteristics. I would maybe go generally aloof I would maybe go with maybe Dick Wilson. Now that's that's too too being to Dick Wilson. Honestly, I think.
Dick Wilson built some good golf courses, but he did have his limitations, right.
Yeah, No, that's the thing. Like it's kind of like Maddy Verfluse runs like his cover two. Dick Wilson's like very much like a lot of bunkers, Like it was just kind of throw bunkers at it. I think Dick Wilson is pretty decent. Maybe Joe Lee, Maybe I go with Dick Wilson's un rolling Joe Lee, who he destroyed a lot of good golf courses in Chicago too, So that fits. Matdiflus has destroyed bear fans hearts for now three years running. So yeah, I'll do that. I'll do that, all right.
How about Tom tom Weiscoff. Tom Weiscoff is my thought r I P. By the way, you know, we're very sorry about his his passing. But Tom Weiscoff, I feel is a very good architect in a lot of ways. But his courses just did have some kind of key limitations when it came to some cookie cutter shaping and things like that. So that's what comes to mind from your description of Matt Eberflus, though I think Tom Weiskoff may have been a better golf architect than Matt. Eberflus is a football coach.
All right, putterfly asks you what design issues do PAR three courses have over traditional courses?
So is this question more like, what what design problems do PAR three courses have as opposed to traditional courses?
I don't know. Is I think you should just the state of PAR three courses?
PAR three courses. Sure, par three courses. I guess they're kind of having a moment in terms of, not necessarily in terms of a lot of them getting built, but in terms of how much people say they want them. But I would say that the issue with building a PAR three course, the thing that's challenging about building a short course is finding true variety. You have just one part three after another. You need to work really hard to find that hole to whole variety and to make
sure that each hole is memorable after the round. That's a really tall task when you're only working with one kind of hole well, and I think the courses, well, the short courses that do it well are amazing.
The other aspect of it is that you're dealing with small pieces of land that don't have diversity in landscapes. Yeah, right, Like one of the things is like a big eighteen hole golf course navigates, you know, just to say two hundred acres, especially new bills two hundred acres plus of property.
So you you go into like all these different places and there's space to have big landforms like PAR three courses situate you know, sub forty acres, and a lot of times they're kind of like built off to the side on like, hey, this land we can't use for anything else, go build. It's kind of like I think there's like a great design renaissance with PAR three courses,
but I do think it still is. I remember Bill Corr talking about how like PAR three courses and when he was growing up were known as executive courses, and they were they're not like you know, they weren't thought of a real golf courses. I still think that we're at the stage where developers do not consider PAR three courses a great use of great land. They're just like, okay, prioritize it. Yeah, we can't put a built a full course here, So here you go. You could use this
as your PAR three course. And I think that puts a huge emphasis on just green design. If you don't have diverse land features, I think like.
And skill in green design, like sure skill, because like any architect can make nine green, say if it's a nine hole par three course, can make nine grains really different from each other, but some of them are going to be ridiculous looking or just kind of stupid. To build a bunch of part three grains that really work and are also really different from each other takes a lot of skill.
Yeah, And I think like one of the things that I don't think par three courses in general, I'd rather see less holes and more variety in yardage then the current I feel like the current thing is just like, hey, just build a bunch of one hundred and twenty sub one hundred and twenty yard holes, and I think that's kind of boring. It's just like, oh, I'm just gonna go hit a little wedge over and over and over
and over again for however many holes you've created. And now the new things don't make it nine or eighteen, so you know, whatever number between nine and why don't we just why don't Like A question I always have is like why don't we have like a four hole course, a short four whole short course that's like one hundred and twenty yard hole one hundred and seventy yard hole one two twenty. I'd play that. I'd love to play it. And you know, does the business models just not work?
Yeah? Maybe maybe if the resorts that have a lot of these courses are charging what they charge for around it, like Bandon Shorties or Bandon preserve that if it's a five hole course, then they just can't make that be efficient. But I don't know. It just seems like a lot of the destination resorts that are building the most exciting par three courses are building them as amenities, not as cornerstones of profitability, right, And so if you're building it, hold on presumably.
I think it's a cornerstone of their profitability because they've realized it's like the perfect afternoon place that people that can't they get. They get a charge of greens, fee of sixty or whatever, and then they know people are going there and it's like half golf, half bar.
Yeah, you're right, they can I think a drinks.
I think it's a profit center. And it's on a piece of land that is like otherwise unused. I'm more talking about like why is it? Why is it anybody ever built like a four hole course on a tiny piece of land.
Yeah, that would be like a an independent course.
Is it like completely It could be that I haven't ever thought about like trying to make the business work. But is that like completely unfeasible to have a golf course that you could play in thirty minutes?
Like? Why?
I think, why is there not a storm of golf that you could play in thirty minutes?
Believe me, Andy, I wish there were. I just think it's it's yeah, I think it's the business part of it. And I think that that's in general an issue with short courses that are independent of resorts, you know, where you just have a PAR three course that is on its own and has to generate its popularity in and of itself. Right, That's kind of what I meant when I said that these par three courses are amenities at
these resorts. If these resorts didn't have their eighteen whole regulation courses, then the PAR three courses wouldn't be nearly as successful or nearly as easy to make work. But if you have just a short course on its own, it's just a little bit harder to make the business work because people have proven over and over that they're just more likely to go pay for a full round at a par seventy two eighteen whole course.
Absolutely, I do think a neighborhood four whole course course could work.
It would be amazing. I mean I'd love it. I'd love it. There are like no golf courses and in my town essentially, but there are little pieces of land with space for four golf holes. So trust me, would love this to be the case. Related question here from Stephen.
Proctor, because you could just mow the greens out.
Yeah, no, I agree, I agree. Can I give you this question from Stephen Proctor because I think it relates to what we're talking about? He asks, what prospect do you see of more short sporty courses of the par sixty eight variety being built in the years ahead? So I wanted to throw that into the mix too, because I've heard you talk about these like second courses that clubs in Ireland and Great Britain have, you know, like at Royal County Down and Royal Port Rush kind of
the second rush at the club. Yeah, and it might have been considered in an earlier age, the young people's course or the ladies course. In fact, there are a couple of you know, like formby Ladies Course in England. I feel like these are such fascinating courses and so cool. Such Valley is maybe a little bit in that mold or kind of pushing toward that end of the spectrum that the shorter, sportier course that can have a par
under seventy. Do you I mean, do you feel like there's a possibility that these could become more popular and more viable as as golf courses.
Well, I think that they should be just in general, because the idea of par fives really existing is like a farce in general, you know, like due part du par fives actually exist at like higher levels of the game. Sure they exist for the average player, but they always long part that was a long part four back like in the early nineteen hundred, it's a long part four. Like almost every par five is reachable in two by
a scratch a better than scratch player. So like at that point, I'm asking, like what is a par five? Is it actually a part? Like the long part four used to be a three shot hole for your fifteen handicap. They just raise the par to five to make you feel better, you know, and.
Can we keep working these holes into routings when they have to be like seven hundred yards long from the back seas in order to be legitimate par fives. You know, can we keep finding space for these holes, it just becomes harder and harder.
Exactly exactly. So, like to me, if you just take out the fact that, like par fives don't really exist, they're just they're just birdie holes for really good players, and they're still hard for the average player. If you take away that, like par fives for for a percentage of golfers do not exist, then like what if, like that makes the golf holes harder for good players. A par sixty eight like is really hard because you're birdie opportunities. You have to hit really good shots to make birdies.
Like it's really hard to make birdies when you even when you have a dyard wedgend, it's not that hard to make birdies when you hit driver threewood around the green or driver long iron around the green and you get up and down. You know. So when you think about it, pars more courses should be have a lower part at the highest level of the game. I think what's interesting about parse sixty eight and sixty nine courses is. I think it brings skill together in the way that
sedg Valley did. Like it's like a golf course that makes good players think they have to hit really good shots. But like when you make the hole shorter, all of a sudden, more people when the golf course is shorter, more types of players have the ability to hang around like power players. It brings like an element of skill.
I'll never forget. I played a match once at Prairie Dunes and the match was set up where if whichever team won the last hole got to pick the t and I was playing a younger guy and an older guy, and the older guy was like a four handicap that clearly, earlier in his life was like a plus two. And when we won a hole, we moved all the way back, and when they won a hole, they moved all the
way up. And it was terrifying because like, all of a sudden, this guy, who like clearly was a great wedge player and still was a great wedge player, was playing all the way up and he was getting wedges in his hand and like, sure, I could drive it up by the green, but this guy was hitting like eighty yr wedges and he was like a great wedge player. So like to me, when you make the golf course shorter, it all of a sudden introduces more varieties of skill
that can succeed. So, yes, there should be more sporty golf courses, but I doubt that it's going to go that direction.
Well, Michael Kaiser is one of the most influential developers in golf right now, Michael Kaiser being Mike Kaiser's son, right, and Michael and his brother Chris are behind a lot
of the kind of new dream golf developments. I know Michael Kaiser to be obsessed with the idea of the short, sporty golf course, and so if anybody can have an influence on the general trends of the golf industry, it would have to be him, right, And so I hope that there is some kind of I don't know, trickle down or trickle Sideway's effect from Sedge Valley and some of these other par sixty something courses that I think Michael Kaiser wants to build.
I think that their next course, the Commons up there, is going to be pushing in that direction. Yeah, A lot of people probably who visited saw the grassing of it happening and coming to life this summer. But I think, like I do. Like one of the things that excites me about Michael is he he wants to build different stuff. Like they're building a lot of new courses and it's not just a we're just gonna roll out the ball and do the same thing, Like he wants to have
ideas around how each course differentiates itself. Yeah.
Sand Valley's kind of a laboratory right now. It's such an interesting site of golf course design at the moment. You know, the Leado and such Valley coming out recently, and this Commons course is coming soon. So yeah, if you want to get some sense of where things could go next, it wouldn't be a bad idea to look at some of the things that they're doing at Sand Valley because it's pretty smart. All right, do you have another question for me or do you want me to toss one at you?
I got one for you. Let's ask this is from Stroke and Distance. What in progress or up and coming projects do you feel will become game changers for the for the industry.
Oh man, I saw this question and I was like, this is going to be really hard answer because I don't really know. You know some projects that are really different that are coming down the pipeline right now that maybe could end up being influential. I would look out for what Tom Doak and his team are doing at Sandglass now. As for the project being influential, that might be hard because the course is not going to be that available to that many people. It's going to be
a very private golf course. But the method that Tom Doak's team is using there kind of marshaling light our data to a different end than it was used in the Lido project. Kind of using templates from other courses, like scans from other courses is a starting point and then massaging them into something slightly different is a really interesting method and might end up being influential. Who knows. As this kind of technology starts to enter golf design more,
maybe that will end up being influential. There are some projects that I would hope would be influential. We're we're seeing some public courses, some municipal courses get get some needed work, like at Miami Lake's in Florida. We recently had a feature on this and in Design Notebook that's getting a renovation. Hooper Golf course, public golf course got a got a nice restoration. This is a new Hampshire. Wayne Styles course would be a cool one. So maybe
these will be influential, But I don't know. They're just different at this moment.
I'm also Jay Blossie's redesigning Poppy Rip in liver in Livermore, I'm kind of He's invited me out a bunch of times. I feel bad. You know, when you when you can't do something so many times that they stop inviting you. I think I've reached that point with them.
I've like, yeah, yeah, when they when you when you don't respond to enough emails, they start thinking maybe this guy doesn't like me.
Or it's just like when you're when your friends ask you to do something and you just get caught in too many, too many situations where you just like you're doing something else, they just stop inviting you. Is you never want to fall in for that. I think Jay has put me in that bucket. I'm no longer getting invited.
Official apology to Jay Blasi. He is doing exciting workout there at Poppy Ridge. I'm looking forward to seeing it very much.
Yeah, I think I think that's like the exciting thing I if and I and and who knows what's going to happen with the economy. It seems like people are pretty bullish on it. If if, if the economy continues to be good, like it's it's amazing, is that golf will be in an amazing place if the you know, I think people have had this like doomsday feeling about the industry and are we going to go into bubble? But if it, you know, if the economy is strong,
I mean, golf is going to continue to flourish. Like I think, like I've had this realization over the last like year or two, is just like how much great work is being done. And I think like a lot of this goes with like the Interlock and and Medina stuff.
It's just like it's amazing, how much good And then I mean you the new courses that are being built, Like Broomsedge is a super super cool golf course, the new Broomsedge old Barnwell Tree Farm, Like I mean, like those three golf courses all in like a pretty small vicinity are awesome golf courses. Like if you had you know, we're leaving a time where if like one of those
got built in ten years you'd be happy. And it's like, oh, here's like three awesome golf courses in in the you know, uh in kind of the sandhills of South Carolina that get built in a matter of three years.
You know, Well, let me let me raise a countervailing opinion that I've seen out there in response to all this work that we've seen recently. It seems like a lot of the questions that we got to this call for questions and past recent ones have had as a premise that a lot of the golf architecture we've seen recently has been similar, right, has had similarities to each other.
That we're seeing too much of the same kind of work, too much of the Corn Crunshaw, Tom Doak Gilhant's style, and people are just repeating the same things over and over again, and when are we going to get something different? A lot of the questions are like, what's going to be different, what's going to be the new thing that just you know, kind of defies all of the current trends, And what would be your response to that?
General feeling people are looking way too much at the bunkers and not enough at the property because like what this Eraro design is doing is it's valuing the the individual nature of a piece of property and the reality that if you rout holes along a property, they're going to be unique because it's going to be its own property. Like a great example is the ninth hole at Broomsedge. Is this par five and it's a short par five,
pretty big fair away, and I played. I played it one time and I hit an iron and I thought I hit it to like two feet and it just rocketed off the back. And I got up there and I was like, oh my god, this green runs away like crazy, and it's like the whole fall the property goes that way. And it's like, sure, maybe the bunker style might look similar to another course and the green the way the greens are shaped, but literally, you know,
the the way that the ball just runs away. I like, I've been thinking about that shot since I hit it, and it's like I can't wait to play it again because I'm going to have to I'm going to have to land this shot. Like do I land it ten yards short? I landed this one five yards short? Do I land at ten yard short? Do I land at fifteen? Do I land at twenty? Like And it is just
all with the fall of the property. So I think, like people need to look at the property because that's what's going to Like a lot of these golf courses, if you just had the greens, no bunkers, and the property, it'd be fascinating golf to play, and then people would be like, Wow, that was a lot different than this, Like a broom, sedges and old barnwell and tree farms properties are wildly different. If you took away all the bunkers,
people would think they were way different golf courses. But they latch onto like the bunkers kind of look the same, so it all looks the same.
Yeah, I agree, And I think that the rise of golf photography and its wide distribution has definitely had an influence on this, because what do you key in on when you're looking at a golf photograph. What a photographer's key.
In on for that matter, bunkers.
It's the bunkers. Yeah, that's the thing that shows up the best, that color contrast between the white or tan sand and the green turf around it. That's always going to be the thing that the photography focuses on, and our photography focuses on, Like everybody does this, But yeah, it's useful to keep in mind that the experience of
these courses on the ground is always very different. This is always my response to people who ask whether, say Corey Crenshaw are doing the same thing over and over again. It's like, do they have a style, Yes, they have a style, but that style is to honor the particular piece of land. And so if you go to these particular pieces of land and experience them, then the courses become really distinct in your mind. If you look at photographs,
then they become hard to differentiate from each other. At the same time, I will say that that story about Pete Die building Harbor Town, going across the island and seeing what Robert Trent Jones was doing and just saying to himself, I'm going to do the opposite of that. I'm just going to do something that is in every way different from what Jones is doing on the other side of this island. That's an interesting impulse that contrarianism. And Tom Doak has some of this about him too.
He wants to he wants to keep pushing, he wants to do things that are different from what other people are doing. But maybe some of that would be useful to current golf architecture where maybe there's just somebody out there who's a really strong, smart architect just says I'm just going to try to do everything the opposite to what I'm seeing, you know, that would be that would be interesting to see, and we we might be missing that a little bit right now with this this newer
generation of architects who are pushing in different directions. I think Kyle Franz and Schneider and Conan are all doing kind of.
Interesting Tyler ray or different or what draft different, you know, and I think it will be exciting.
We need to appreciate. Yeah, but but there's but there's not really anybody who's really putting themselves down as the opposite of everything, and maybe that's just maybe that's the thing, right exactly.
Well.
Yeah, and also people should keep in mind Nicholas Designs still building a lot of golf courses, Greg Norman still building a lot of golf courses. Fasio is still Discovery Land's guy. I mean, all of these architects haven't disappeared, right, They're just not not dominant anymore.
Yeah, I would agree with that.
Okay, do we want to do any other questions is there.
I say we break, we do part two and we will do police Part two.
Yeah, okay, that sounds like a good plan. Does that sound like a good plan, PJ give me a thumbs up. All right, thanks for coming on the pod, Andy, I'll talk to you later. This episode of the Friday Golf Podcast was produced by PJ Clark. Thank you, PJ. All Right, So Black Friday is coming up and Friday Golf is getting involved in that. So the biggest sale of the year begins for Club TFE members very soon. Shop today and use your regular code at checkout to receive twenty
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