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 brid Egg Friday Egg, the dreaded Frida Egg, Friday, Frida Egg, Brian Egg, Frida Egg.
Bride Egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off.
Of the humped.
Hello and welcome to the Frida Egg Podcast. My name is Garrett Morrison. I'm here today with Andy Johnson. Andy, how has your day been so far?
It's been delightful. Excited to talk with you about Southern Hills.
Yeah, we're diving into Southern Hills Country Club today, host of the twenty twenty two PGA Championship. It is three weeks until the PGA Championship, so we are officially ahead of schedule.
Here, Yeah, way ahead.
But it's good to get this out, give people some time to digest and and get ready for the PGA. I mean, it's a it's it's gonna be a really cool event and a really cool course and I think, you know, if the conditions play right this this could end up being the start of the show.
I think, a start of the year.
You know, whether or not the weather works it's a it's a really noteworthy course to look at. But if the weather works out and uh it's firm, this this place could be really really fun to uh to watch tournament golf at.
This is May in Tulsa, Oklahoma. So I'm not exactly sure what to expect.
That's that's the thing about May and Tulsa is that it's the weather. It's pretty temperamental and unpredictable. I think we see it every year. You know, Dallas isn't close, but it's not that far away, and we see it every year with a with the tour in May in Dallas. Is you know that the weather could be really great and it could be like a rocket ship out there, firm and fast, or it could be really rainy and you could get severe storms. But you know, if it's
the firm and nice weather, that's the thing. And either way, the architecture is really good here and it's going to be fun to watch regardless of whether it's softer firm.
It'll be fun to look at no matter what. And I think that people who remember Southern Hills from the two thousand and seven PGA Championship and from the two thousand and one US Open are going to be surprised at how different this course looks now, and so we'll get into all that stuff in this podcast. We've got
a clip from an interview with Gil Hants. We did a big interview with Gil Hans, about an hour and a half and we devoted around fifteen to twenty minutes of that interview to Southern Hills and we'll play that portion of that interview in this episode. But first we're just going to kind of generally introduce the course. So it was designed by Perry Maxwell. It opened in nineteen thirty six. It was renovated opened doctor style by Robert Trent Jones in nineteen fifty eight. Since then, it has
hosted three US Opens and four PGA Championships. This will be its fifth PGA championship this year, and over the past twenty years it has undergone various renovations and restorations. First, Keith Foster did some work between the two thousand and one US Open in the two thousand and seven PGA,
and what he did was really significant. You know, there was quite a bit of tree removal, there was some widening of fairways, there was some restoration of short grass, and so that was important stuff and we shouldn't forget that. But I think most significant was what happened in the past few years at that course when Gil Hans and
his team did what Hans calls a historical renovations. So he did bunker work, greenwork, tree removal, but at the same time he made some updates, some changes in order to prepare the course for this for a major championship. It wasn't known when he did this work that it would get the PGA Championship because, of course, Southern Hills was a kind of last minute sub when Trump Bedminster was no longer a place that the PGA of America wanted to go. So Southern Hills has subbed in, and
it should be it should be ready for prime time. So, just as a general appetizer before we get to the Gill tape here, why do you think people should be excited for Southern Hills as a PGA Championship venue? What's special about this course?
So when you cover the professional game and the modern game, really you start to realize what are the courses that stand out that really test players and are really fun to watch. And obviously you know at the top of the is Augusta National. And what are the ingredients that go into Augusta National that make it so compelling to watch? Obviously everybody's so familiar with the golf course. But you've got topography, severe topography that creates a lot of uneven
lies and fairways. You've got immense short grass at Augusta National, You've got undulating greens, small targets. And now if you if you think about Augusta, another really really fun major course to watch is Shinnacock.
And what's Shinnakok have.
It's got short grass, it's got it's got terrain that creates uneven lies and uphill and dramatic uphill and downhill shots. It's got small, undulating greens and difficult targets to hit, especially from uneven lies that are you're when you're hitting uphill or downhill from them. And and Shinnacock is always firm. That's the thing that it has that has really vexed players.
One other thing that neither of those courses that has that, but we see on the PGA tour regularly that really Flummox's players is Bermuda Rough and uh Southern Hills has Bermuda Rough and it it. You know, the thing about bermuda rough is it doesn't need to be your eight inch bent or rye or bent grass rough to be really tough. Short bermuda rof is extraordinarily unpredictable and it has, you.
Know, the ability you.
It really plays mind games with players because it's hard to figure out what the lie is gonna do. And when you when you add that into Southern Hills, which has all the other aforementioned ingredients that we love. It's got topography, it's got movement. You know, it's not Augustin National It's it doesn't have that much, but it has a lot of topography. You know, nobody really has august Nationals topography. It's got small targets. It's got these greens.
They're surrounded with short grass and they're undulating in pockets and they create those micro targets. Everybody likes to talk about how Augusta is this second shot course, it's because the greens have these small little pockets that you want to get to, and if you get there, you have really makeable putts. And that's the same thing you're going to see at Southern Hills from undulating lies. But then you also throw in that Bermuda rough and we're gonna
see great recovery shots from the Bermuda rough. That's the thing that's great about it is it allows you to recover, but it also can make you look like an idiot because you can catch a flyer when you don't expect a flyer, and you might end up twenty yards over the ball. Might you might expect a ball to jump and it might come out dead and you end up fifteen yards short and you're running trundling down one of those great false fronts at Southern Hills.
So I think.
If the weather permits it to be firm, this whole recipe could make it really one of the most fun championship courses we've seen in a long time because of everything that Gil and Jim Wagner have brought out in this restoration, which is, you know, getting the fairways out to where they're thirty five forty yards wide, getting the trees back and unpeeling some more of the great creeks that run through the golf course, and then the short grass around the greens that is going to lead to
balls repelling away and running away. And you know, anybody that watched that US Open at Shinnacok. You remember just the fear that it put into players right off the bat, where they knew if they missed the first green or the tenth green, the first green long or the tenth green short, that that ball was going to run away into very undesirable. All of a sudden, it just messes with targets. It makes it a little bit more difficult
to really get into those small pockets. It's because you have fear about where that ball is going to go if you miss just a little bit of ways, as opposed to long grass around the greens that's velcrow. You know, the idea of that ball getting away, you know, missing a shot by two yards and not staying two yards off the green it could run twenty yards away is
a real big deterrent in these guys. So I think if it's firm and that really presents that situation, that's where this could be the tournament of the year and the golf course of the year.
And we're talking about it.
It's up against the old course and you know it was a great Masters and you know this country club, Yeah, the country Club Brookline is going to be really visually stunning.
This can be this can be the tournament of the year.
Yeah, I mean that's a big statement, but I think it's true. I think it'll certainly be the most surprising course of the year for people. And you know, just one thing to add to what you're saying about how there's going to be a real emphasis on getting to the right section of the green and if you're in one of these weird lies in the rough or an uneven lie in the fair way, things could go sideways
pretty quickly. One factor that's really going to enhance that is the fact that Gil Hans and Jim Wagner leveled off the edges of the greens which had built up over time they had, you know, as as greens often do. We talked about this in the Pasa Tiempo podcast recently, where just through sand splash and through top dressing, the edges of greens tend to rise up, tend to bulge up, and it creates this kind of bowl like effect where balls will kind of collect to the middle, they won't
run off the edges as much. Well, in their historical renovation, Hans and Wagner leveled those edges off, and so now what you have at Southern Hills are a lot of crowned greens of the type that people associate with Pinehurst number two now, and that's just going to kind of exacerbate the effect of misses. You know, balls are really going to shoot off greens to far away places if
players miss on their approaches. So I think a couple of things that are going to be really emphasized in this PGA Championship are approach play, you know, from variable lies, players who can really hit golf shots and not just hit driving range shots, and then players who can recover, who can lag put really well, and who can hit great chip shots.
Yeah, I think it will mirror Masters.
Is kind of what we look at with Masters, and it's not as wide as Augusta, so you know, it might you might need to be a little bit more accurate driver of the golf ball. But when you talk about the number one player in the world, Scottie Scheffler, and what the skills we saw on display at Augusta and why he you know, and he's on the record saying Southern Hills is his favorite golf course anywhere. There's a reason, and it is because it places a big emphasis on approach play.
You have to drive the.
Ball reasonably well, but then you're going to miss some greens and you're going to get into some precarious places because of the nature of the golf course. And then it becomes you know at Southern Hills with the short grass expansion. You know what I love about it is you're hitting shots and Mike Clayton, I think has used this expression and where I picked it up. You're hitting extraordinarily difficult shots from perfect lives. And what it does is it opens up what we're going to get to
see is what's in everybody's back. We're going to see a wide range of shots. We're a array of shots. We're going to see those types of shots, like the most thrilling shot we saw at the last Masters, which was Scottie Scheffler's bump and run up a significant hill where he chose to just line it into that slope
and bump it up when he had a hole. Yeah, he had a bunch of different shots he makes it, but he hit a real daring and different shot than we typically see week in week out on tour, which is generally auto lob wedge, opened the face and hit something high and lofted, which was immediately after him what cam Smith did, which was a safer shot.
In that situation.
So what is going to do is it really in across the golf course with what you said with the uneven lines, this is not driving range golf. It's going to be about who's got the most shots, especially if it's firm. You know, if it's soft, it's going to mute some of that, but if it's firm, it's really going to be about golf shots.
All right, let's go to the gil Hans tape and he's gonna mention some of the things that we talked about here, but really what we focused on was some some things that he brought out in the work that he did at the course over the past few years. And then we're going to go through a kind of tour of a lot of the back nine and Gill's going to give his thoughts on the course. So let's go to that tape and we'll come back in on the other side.
So Southern Hills, Uh, it's gonna make its return to Majrix Golf this year. You completed a restoration I don't really know what to call restorations, and renovations exactly.
We've got a new term. What is it.
We call it historic renovations.
Historic renovation.
I love that that gets you. It covers all the bases. It's basically if if the impetus for changes. And we started talking about that after we moved the Sahara on the seventeenth hole at Baltus Roll on the lower course, which we didn't restore it because we didn't put it back where it was. We moved it down range, but we did it in a historic fashion.
Has it been excited that restovation is just too stupid?
Yeah? Absolutely, I hate that work.
Yeah, that makes friends whenever I see and sympathetic renovation, Sympathetic restoration or sympathet renovation has been around for a while.
Sympathy.
I think Brian Silva coined the sympathetic restoration turn back in the late eighties early nineties. I guess the first time I've heard that, that's when you guys are still in middle school.
Yeah.
I was just getting born and Cameron was in Yeah, he wasn't even around. Historic renovation is kind of what we're and I think that's probably applicable for southern hills.
Yeah, what about southern hills makes it such a stern test of a golfer's ability.
I think ultimately it's going to come down to the greens. I mean those small targets, and in the restoration of the green complexes that Jim and I did there, it was definitely we found there was a lot of build up on the edges. So the old bunkers had, you know, the sand build up had occurred, and then through construction methodologies they had converted them to USGA greens a while ago.
There was a lot of sort of.
Shelf kind of building along the edge of them, and so we pulled all that back away and based on all the old photographs that we had seen, and so I think now you have to be incredibly respectful of the edges of the greens because balls are just going to run away, and the short of the restoration of
the short grass around there. So I think it's ultimately going to come down to the greens, and hopefully the weather cooperates and we get them pretty firm, because then I think it's going to be a true test of really ball striking ability because the targets are tiny to access or get close to a whole locations.
So you know Robert Trent Jones's idea of a championship test, and Robert tren Jones, of course famously renovated the course in the fifties to prepare it for a US Open. His idea of a championship test was, you know, long holes, heavily guarded landing zones for the drive and the approach, and there was a demand for an aerial attack and
that's sort of what Southern Hills became broadly. How do you think think the test is different now, Is that it's more at the greens or how would you characterize the difference between the RTJ test and the test that exists there and will greet players at the PGA Championship.
Yeah.
I think the thing that Jim and I have worked
really hard at is just trusting the original architects. You know, It's not like there was a period in time and Robert tren Jones was a practitioner of that where they felt like they needed to make changes to the originally designed to toughen it for But we believe that, yeah, we need appropriately to have length on the tees and the bunkers if they can be put in position to challenge those guys will do it, but from the standpoint of just trust that Maxwell got it right there or
the tilling has got it right, and just go with what they're original. So when you're talking about originally, you're talking about similar playing corridors, removing trees, expanding fairways, allowing the slope and the contour of the ground to actually feedballs in different areas, and have to be more thoughtful about placement. Even though the fairways are wider, they may not effectively be wider because where we've expanded may have gone into areas that really slope off and will feed
balls to the rough. I think a re emphasis on the little creeks that run through Southern Hills has been an important part of the restoration that we did there. I think from that standpoint, you're going to see, especially on the holes like ten creeks are going to come much more in Play eighteen with the fairway being restored to come back down the creek going all the way
across the fairway as it originally did. So I think opening and restoring a lot of those features will provide a more interesting test off of the tea.
And I think.
I mean members always inappropriately, so I mean, they're proud of their golf course and they get worried about the score, right, And I think that one of the things that Jim and I have come to understand more is just its ultimately comes down to that week. You know, it's not an indictment of the architecture of the golf course. If the guys shoot ten, twelve, fourteen under. If it's soft, you know, everybody talks, well, if it's soft, it's going
to play longer, longer. It doesn't matter for those guys, it really doesn't. And so I think it ultimately comes down to firmness and having the golf course allowed to maximize all those features that Maxwell would have put into it, or the tilling hats would have put into a baltis Rol, etcetera, and just allowing those things to play again the way they had intended to. But if it rains all week,
then we know that's out the window. And it's, not, as I said, an indictment on the golf course or anything. It's just happens to be. That's the way it is.
You know.
I don't think the general public, or even people who think about architecture though that much think about the realities of that it boils down to those four days, right, and or boils down to the three days before the tournament, et cetera, et cetera. And I think that's why you're starting to see an investment in a lot of the infrastructure that these clubs are putting in. Is what can they do to try to help control or at least have a more predictable come if they get bad weather conditions?
You know, what can they do to get the golf course back quicker? And I think that that's something that the governing bodies really like the potential for that to happen. You know, everybody goes into a championship week with a mindset. Carrie hag goes in with the mindset. John Bodenhammer goes in with the mindset, and then you know, it's the old Mike Tyson, right. Everybody's got a plan until they get punched in the face and you just have to
react to what you've got there. And if this infrastructural up if the infrastructural upgrades allow you to get closer to what you want as you go into the week, then I think that's what they're what they're seeking.
Sorry, I went away off on a tangent.
As you guys expanded fairways, remove trees. What were the things that you kind of uncovered that even surprised you about Southern health.
I think the thing that about Southern Hills that I had no idea right the first time I went. Or It's one of those courses that you look at on you know, we all we all geek out when we look on Google Earth and we go, Okay, lots of trees, green grass, white bunkers.
You know, doesn't look that great from the air.
I never understood the topography, and I think that the scale of the site. I think Maxwell did an amazing job with the routing there. I think it's probably about as good as you could do on that piece of ground. Just the variety that he had, how everything flows through it, you know, starting and stopping up on the hill. It really I think he maximized the potential of the site. And by restoring the scale of the fairways and opening back the vistas and allowing the scale of the topography
to shine, I think that's really what we uncovered. It was a much better piece of ground than I ever originally thought.
What are a couple of holes that you think embody what Southern Hills offers.
Well, I think you know, you're probably going to look at whole like eighteen is. You know, it's a tough test. I mean, it's a killer finish, you know, and it's I think when you're talking about major championships, do you want you know that hole you're it's not the It's not like eighteen in Saint Andrew's where you're trying to make birdie or eagle. It's like you're holding on for dear life there and if you've got a one shot lead,
there's nothing guaranteed on that. So I think the difficulty of that test probably resonates more through through the property. But the hole that I'm always intrigued by its ten. I think ten is just going to be such a cool hole to watch. That's probably where I would camp out and watch. It's just you know, obviously a short part four. What do they do off the tee? Do they try and push it down to get the better angle in which is way down to the left because
of the slope of the green. You know, if they put any spin on a shot into it, and they're going to be hitting short irons into it. If they pull the string on it, it could potentially come off that left side and go, you know, they could be thirty feet below the green looking back up at.
That sort of recovery.
So I think it's going to require, you know, thoughtful approach off of the tee and then a thoughtful shot into the green, and then the green itself is pretty it is pretty severe. I think it embodies all of the more thoughtful challenges that I think exist on a lot of shots around southern hills. But I think probably the hole that stick in most people's minds.
Is eighteen with the you know you talked about.
You know, the big thing is getting that those edges unraised and then also imparting the short grass. What short does short grass? You know, as an architect allow you a little bit more freedom, knowing, you know, in a way to exact a test on really good players because of you know, the subliminal idea of the ball rolling fifty yards down a hill.
I think so, I think, yeah, I think it's more of a if they I mean, the thing that we love about short grass, and I think all of us included, is it just it opens up an entire range of possibilities. Versus you know, and it could even be in that mental shot. Okay, I know that if I miss at five feet left of my target, that ball's going thirty yards down as opposed to go and rolling off the green and hanging up in the rough. And then the recovery from the rough is pretty much a predictable shot.
You know what you're gonna have to hit to chop it back out, versus that rolls down that hill or it rolls anywhere on any of the greens. And now you've got all these different options of how to play it. So I think it gets not only in your head as for the approach shot, but then the recovery shots are so much more interesting. So I think it offers a lot more, much more, many more options as it relates to how shots can be played. But I think you're right in saying, hey, it doesn't just start with
the recovery shot. It starts with the you know when you're looking in on that green.
And also I think it adds a level of randomness and also adds a significant amount of preparation that's needed for players like people that understand the golf course and where balls are going to go will actually probably have a big.
Advantage, right, Yeah, And how you can how you handle those breaks, right, I Mean that's the part of the game that's always intriguing to us as architects is it's difficult to challenge them on a physical level, But what can you do mentally If a guy if a ball gets close to an edge and he feels like he's hit a good shot and it goes rolls off to the side, Now is he hot?
Is he going to hit a good recovery? Is he checked out?
Those types of things I think are incredibly interesting. You know, the thing that makes tour players and the top amateur is so good as they work their whole lives to ultimately, and I've said this before, you have a predictable outcome, right They want.
To know that.
Okay, if I swing and I do this over and over and over, the outcome is going to be predictable. I know, when I need to hit it one seventy one, it's this. If I need to hit it one sixty five, it's this. The shortcress doesn't give them a predictable outcome, right. It frequently you just you're not sure where it's going to go. Where is it going to stop and then
ultimately what am I going to be left with? And so that can start to get into players' heads as well, which I think really is much more interesting then the traditional just okay, chop it out of the.
Rough, tell us about the holes ten through twelve in the land they occupy and how Maxwell used them use it.
Yeah, it's I mean, it's interesting because obviously they selected the clubhouse site to be up on the on the hill and then playing off of it. So with the returning nines, you're elevated t shot and then down to kind of a very very strong cross from right to left slope, and then you've got the hill, then the valley with the creek running over it, and then back up onto the ridge and it's you know, it's a
bit of a reverse it's not a bit. It is a reverse camber hole where everything's kicking you dog leg dog legs right, but everything's kicking you left. But the
flat is down on the left. And then he tilted the green so that when you're playing into it from the left it's actually much more supportive than coming from the right, which is the shorter line to play into with everything sort of feeding away from you, and I think that there's the potential and I don't know whether Carry's going to do this or not, but there's a potential to set that up where the guys might try.
And drive it.
I mean, you can take it over those trees and land it up in the approach, which within kick is very narrow opening. But for those guys, they probably wouldn't mind being in a green side bunker and take their chances of getting up and down.
So I think.
You know, you've got off the ridge down to the flat, back up to the ridge, and then eleven you're teeing off on top of the ridge as well, playing down to a green that's tucked into the valley which comes
from off property, beautiful little golf hole. And you know the restoration of the creek that runs between eleven and green and twelve t was part of the original design that had been filled in over time, so I think bringing that back in and the way everything kicks and feeds off to the left again, it's it's an interesting and I just thought about this now. I don't know whether it's applicable through the entire course, but you know, the ground's going like this and the green slopes go
like that. They basically feed and tie into the way the ground is falling. You know, another decent sized green on eleven, but you've got to hit the right half of it, you know, not the not the proper meaning right, but literally right hand half of it, otherwise everything's going to really slide in funnel off, so very exacting target. And then twelve, you know, just a beautiful sort of
big bending hole playing through the valley. So he used the ridges play off of down and then here you're starting low and you're hitting up onto the side slope on twelve, and then it just sweeps and feeds its way down and then the green nestled in the valley. So it's just they're perfectly three perfectly natural holes that play around a valley. And then you know they range from high to low and then low to high, and they really I think the variety is terrific. That green site.
I never saw the tree, but apparently there used to be a huge tree that overhung it on the right hand side, and that really was part of the challenge to it.
But it died. It was it wasn't taken out.
By our hand, but it took it's gone so I think that would have been that's you hear a lot about that tree, and it was an interest saying exercise with the fairway bunker instead of you know, moving it further down the range around the corner of the dog leg, we actually took the bunker in order to make it relevant for today and pushed it out, so we extended the dog leg further out, so it's a little bit sharper dog leg, and we used the bunker to push this way as opposed to picking it up and moving
it there and keeping the dog leg where it was. So we've effectively lengthened the hole by making them go that way, although I think there's a chance that probably can still get over the top of.
It, take us through the closing stretched Southern hills, and the kind of action it might produce at the PGA.
Yeah, I think the you know, the the underrated green on the golf course and nobody really talks about fifteen.
I mean that green is nightmarish. As far as we flatten some areas on the back to try and create some more whole locations, because I think for the in the past, they pretty much relied on that lower bowl front left, so I think that's really where the action starts is you know how you handle the fifteenth green and ultimately how you're putting on that, and then you transition into sixteen, which the members play is a par five, but they'll play as a long part four, great topography,
small green to play into four for a long force. I mean that's just a kind of hold on and get through that golf hole. And then seventeen is your chance really to as a short part four to decide how aggressive do you want to be. And again I'll be interested to see how Carrie sets that up, whether he gives them the chance to. In the Senior PGA, they played it up I think a couple of days,
maybe even three of the four days. So you've got the creeks, run to the creek running down the right hand side, and then when you restore to put back in the creek that crosses the hole that have been filled in.
So now just lots of different options ways to play it.
Drive it, hit it up on the shelf on the get yourself a level lie on the left hand side, or hit it down closer to the creek, and you know risk obviously being in the creek, but also having a little bit you know, ball below your feet playing into there. So I think seventeens are a really good sort of option hole for those guys to decide how aggressive.
They want to be.
And then eighteen is, you know, that quintessential difficult parkland, as Jim Finnigan once described those kinds of holes, the quintessential American Championship finishing hole. And I think, again lots of options that we've put it back to you there, so you know, the guys will really have to probably going to have to hit driver to get down close enough, and they've got that kicker slope which we restored brought the creek back across, so they're.
Going to have to be thoughtful about the t shot.
And then you know that hole just doesn't let up, you know, long shot into the green, and then the green itself is really challenging. So I think you've got shortish part four, but really diabolical green on fifteen, long par four get through. It's seventeens really where I think a lot of the decision making happens, and then eighteen you've just really got to play good golf.
Seventeen's a really interesting hole because the layup options aren't that desirable. You look at them and you don't really want to hit that an uneven live wedge into tiny little target. And the green's super interesting because of the dynamics of where the pins are and how that might change where you want to be.
Right, Absolutely, it does. Yeah, the preferred spot, and it's not easy to get to. We took a bunch of trees down to restore it is that shelf down there on the left, but if you go a little too far left, you're in the trees. If you're a little strong, then that's probably the closest point of the creek that crosses the hole. So it's the most desirable, desirable spot to get to, but it's hard to get to it for sure.
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One thing I think about holistically with the front nine, and I think the back nine is pretty neutral, but the front nine has quite a few holes where a draw is a preferred shot shape. So you think about one, two, even three, Then you get to five. The par five is a draw is really important there, and the par three is six and eight are both draw holes, and really you could make a case that that seven is a little bit of a draw hole with just the way the fairway and the whole hole slopes too.
To hold it into the slope, you would need a draw.
So, you know, one of the things that I think about, just in general about the Front nine and in the golf course in general, is that it may favor a draw a little bit. And we see, you know, I hate to keep bringing up the Masters, but we see how much trouble hitting a draw gives this generation of golfers because of a combination of golf swings and how golf swings and equipment has been optimized to hit that
kind of knuckle fade. So I think that's one of the things, just as a whole the Front Nine presents is that it is a you know, I think this is on the margins, but winning a major championship is about playing well on the margins and getting the most out of little things. But I think being able to hit a right to left shot is a big advantage here, and I think that with the Front nine in general as a whole, is just something that you want to have in your arsenal out here.
Yeah, And it's another way that Southern Hills is working against the driving range of mentality. Right. Gil talked about this when we were discussing short grass. He says, you know, these guys work their whole lives to hit a certain kind of shot a certain way, and they're really good at it. And what short grass does is it introduces an element of unpredictability that nobody can out for in
any track man range session. And I think that also hitting a draw is kind of in that category, because what a lot of the top players are trained to do now is just hit this knuckle fade. That is the most controllable way to leverage modern equipment to hit a long drive. So when you come to a course where a draw is kind of preferred, all of a sudden, the players who can really play golf, who aren't just range rats, all of a sudden, those players are going to rise to the top a bit more.
So.
I guess that's sort of the general theme at Southern Hills is that this is a golfer's golf course. This is not a course where you can just bash away using the modern driving range methods. You have to hit a variety of shots, you have to have a deep.
Bag, and the other thing, obviously, with the front nine, we talked with Gil at length about the back nine, and there's I think that's going to get a lot of the attention. But I think some thing that sticks with me is that we played Southern Hills with three four years ago.
Now it was in it was in twenty nineteen, like late summer twenty nineteen.
Yeah, so you know, something a while back and something that sticks. I remember every single shot on the front nine as well. I remember every hole vividly, and we spent a day out there, a full day, actually a day and a half. But you know, for something somewhere to stick with you that long, is it shows that there's a lot of great holes on that front nine and in the back night it's going to get a lot of run.
But the front nine is very worth a study.
Obviously, you've done something on the first hole that's a great start to the round and just such a dramatic entrance into the arena.
Yeah. I did a video on the first hole that was basically about how the first hole establishes the themes for the entire course. You know, you basically tee off from this hill bill that the clubhouse sits on, and this hill is really important at Southern Hills. A lot of holes play into it and off of it. Perry Maxwell really made the most of this hill. So the first hole teas off from that hill in the shadow
of the clubhouse. It's one of those really intimidating, you know, first tee shots where the tea is really close to the clubhouse and you play out into the center of
the course. It's a long par four that bends to the left, and the green sits on another of the main features of the Southern Hills property, which is this gully that sometimes has water in it and sometimes doesn't, and a bunch of greens sit along the edges of this gully so that they're a little bit pushed up and water kind of can drain off of them into
this water course. And so you get the first that you get the main two landforms both in this first hole, and then you know, you're just kind of going through the center of the course and you can see out to the edges of the property because of the tree removal that has been done, and so you get a preview of the entire rest of the course. So just from an emotional standpoint, from you know, an artistic standpoint, the first hole is really great because it establishes what
this course is about. And then beyond that, it's just a really strong hole that uses the land in a very clever way. You know, the fairway tilts from right to left, and the green also tilts the same way. It moves with the flow of the land, and so you really want to be on the left side of this fairway. But one of the things that gil Hans's team introduced is a couple of bunkers along the left side of the fairway, and so the closer that you play to those, the better the angle you have into
this green. The more you stray away from them. And I'm sure a lot of players are going to stray away from them. The problem is you're going to be faced with an uphill lie and a green that kind of runs away from you from that angle and is very unreceptive to a draw shot shape, which is often what's going to be produced off of that lie in
the fairway. So right away, you know, from a strategic perspective you have a lot of what Southern Hills is about, which is, you know, you're constantly fighting the land.
One other thing about it is that it introduces the fear of of miss, Like you talked about, if you if you miss, if you hit the If you stray away from the bunker off the tee, which most players are going to do, you know, it just puts It delays your penalty, right, it delays you have to confront a hazard at some point. And the hazard that you have to confront because you stray away is the back
of the green, because it's a shallow green. To hit from the right side of the fairway, it's a lie that produces a draw that might have the ball go a little bit further than you expect, and then the back of the green is shaved off and it will tumble tumble down far.
Into a bad place.
And that's I think it introduces that approach into the green so well. The other neat thing about that first green is you talked about it. It gets you right to the central part of the property. And from that first green, you see the third green is right there, the second t is right off it, obviously, but also the seventh green, the eighth hole is right there, the ninth t, the fourth hole runs parallel to the first hole.
The seventeenth green isn't far away either exactly.
And all of a sudden, the other thing it's going to do similarly, you know to some of our great major venues. Is this is a concentration of energy right off the bat. You're not going to just some corner of the property. You know, you're not playing out to tunnel. There's going to be just an infectious amount of major energy. We see what happens with major championships when we go to these not necessarily big cities, but these middle markets. This is the biggest of event that Tulsa has this year.
People are going to be out in droves and it's going to put players right into the major cauldron right off the bat, more so than the tenth hole. Right that first hole, you get right into the energy. And it's going to be an under talked about dynamic of the start at Southern Hills, especially on the weekend, is that when those guys are you know, maybe it's a new player that's never really been there on a weekend
of a major. Is that the first hole at Southern Hills throws you right into the thick of that atmosphere right off the bat, and I think it keeps that momentum going. And you talked a little bit about the waterways, but the second hole is in your face. If you didn't notice the waterway on the first which you can not notice it.
It's kind of a tucked away a little bit.
The second hole and the third hole bring the creaks, and this is a key theme to the golf course. Bring the creaks into full realizight, like you know, you will not miss the creeks at this point. And the second hole is one of the holes that has changed the most thanks to tree removal.
It has now.
Got a right and left path. The right path is going to be the predominant and it's going to be this lone tree. And it's a real juxtaposition when you look at the old hole in comparison to the new hole with what tree removal did. It showcases this beautiful creek that runs through and then around the back of the hole. And again it's a green that's got that short grass around it, and the ball runs all different directions. So if you don't hit the fair away, this is
a great example. If you don't hit the fairway, you have to be really careful about your next shot. And that's what this golf course becomes. It becomes a game of chess. Right if you're in the right position, you can play aggressively. You can move aggressively across the chess board and not, but if you're out of position, that's when you have to get really thoughtful about how am I going to get out of this kind of situation that I've put myself in.
I think the second holes is a great before and after example. If you look at what that hole became by the nineties, by the two thousand and one US Open, it had really no distinctive features about it. You look at it now and it's very dramatic and very cool. All right. So the other hole that I wanted to talk about on the front nine is a new hole.
I wanted to talk about this too.
Number seven. This hole has had a complicated history. It used to be a kind of shortish par four. Perry Maxwell designed it as a shortish par four that played up to the left. That was a severe dog leg to the left with a green right along basically the fence line.
You can still see I think you can still see the green on Google Earth like you can see the landforms if you look closely, and for anybody that's really interesting interested in this, you can you know there's a tree clearing on the left side of this hole if you find it on Google or Earth, and you can see kind of a distinct little landform that probably was the green, and it's about seventy yards short and left and way left on the fence line, as Garrett talked about,
if you want to look and get a visual idea of where that green is, because the trees are cleared in that area because the green was once there.
And it was moved away from there for I think a variety of reasons. I've heard drainage mentioned, but probably the main reason is that it was right along the property line and a big city grew up around Southern Hills.
I think there's some championship golf aspect of it too.
I think that, yeah, the length of it.
The length, the length, and the idea of it not being hard enough was a part of this, because you see that type of hole at a lot of other Perry Baxwell courses where he has these kind of dog legs that in their shortest holes, and and if you've been there, there's significant right to left tilt on that hole, and the idea is playing up towards the property lined a hole, I mean left to right till left to right tilt. It's like a reverse camber.
It's a reverse it was a reverse camber dog.
Leg, Yeah, up to a raise green. And you see that at other Perry Maxwell courses.
Yeah, I mean the basic idea is if you let your ball run down the hill, you just have that longer approach.
And more uphill.
Yeah, and these are not difficulties that really bother the modern professional. Now we keep talking about how this course plays for the pros, not just because we have the PGA Championship coming up, but because Southern Hills was always intended to be a championship level course. That's what it was designed to be in a way that Prairie Dunes was not necessarily in a way that Old Town Club, another Perry Maxwell course wasn't necessarily intended to be a
big championship course, Southern Hills was. And so from that perspective, you know the change, you can understand it, even if that old hole was probably pretty cool. So you know, a few decades ago they move the green down to the right so that it basically turned into this straightaway par four pretty dull. All right, Gil Hans comes in and moves the green farther down range and pushes it down to the right against the creek. The green now
sits flush against that creek. The creek runs along the right side of the green, and the green tilts heavily toward the creek. And so what you now have is a pretty long par four that runs along a left to right slope with a left to right sloping green. And that's the challenge. Okay, so how do you play this hole? I'm going to be interested to see how they do play this hole because I don't really know.
Yeah, yeah, you could play it up on top of the hill and get the flat lie, but you have the longer approach.
You could push it down.
And it's a worse angle from up there, wouldn't you say?
Yeah, Well, it depends on how far right you get.
It's all right, And this is what we kind of talked about with This is a basic strategy. Right, play close to the creek and you get the benefit. The slope's gonna help you. The green opens up and is much more approachable and along with the slopes. But you know, it'd be really easy if you're trying to push it
over there. To get it over there, And I think this is where you know whether obviously, like if it's firm, it's gonna be a really hard shot from the left side of that fairway into that green because it's narrow, everything slopes to the water, and it's just it will be a challenging shot, my guess. You know, one of the underrated things about the whole is the blindness and
the uncomfortable t shot. You know, you're hitting up over a hill and it's hard to pick your line and commit to your line, and obviously things are only blind once. But no matter what, it's still in the back of these guys' heads. I think we're going to see a lot of guys hit driver left and just deal with the second shot here.
Yeah, play away from the hazard. I mean that that is kind of the modern way if if you have a penalty hazard, you got to get as far away from it as possible. But it is going to be a tricky approach from up there. No doubt the ball's really gonna move on that green. And so you know, I'm not sure what kind of irons they are going to be playing in. Probably shorter irons that I'm imagining right now, but.
It's always short, so it always a shorter iron than you imagine.
Garrett, it's probably going to be like a sandwich or something. But anyway, that's that's too depressing to think about. So well, why don't we talk quickly about number five? What do you what do you think is cool? I think there are some fun angles there.
Yeah, exactly, Well, it starts with the t shot. It doglegs left and you really in the in the whole entire fairway slopes away from you in the in a left to right manner, so you really there's bunkers on the right side. You got to turn the ball right to left with the way these guys hit it, and it's a really hard shot to get yourself to do that. It's just a you know, it's a hard shot to
hit with modern equipment. So you know, if you hit that draw, you're going to be set up with a really good chance at.
Making a birdie or maybe even an eagle.
But if you don't, then you know, you have a kind of a tricky layup with all the bunkers. There's a I don't know exactly how many bunkers, there's a lot of bunkers. There's a creek that cuts in on the right side and kind of runs along the right side, and it's not an easy layup like where you want to push your ball up to lay up where these guys want to get to, which is in that short wedge category. You know, they want to get it inside
one hundred yards. The statistics prove out that the closer you are, especially inside one hundred yards, is where you're gaining the most strokes. When you push that up that far, there's an immense amount of trouble. So it almost acts similarly to fifteen in Augusta is a good example of this. The layup is really undesirable, and here it's not as it's not as difficult of a web shot.
The wedge isn't as hard. It's just a tough layup to You could get in a lot of trouble on the.
Layup when you push up, and it's not obvious it's not a pond, so we might see guys push up more or try to and end up in bad spots.
Right two bunkers guard the layup zone there, and then there's a bunch of bunkers up by the green. There's an opening to the green on the left and so that's the most comfortable place to hit a webshot from from the left, but it is tough to get that layup left. There's a bunker over there and you kind of have to be in the right position in the fair way. It is. Yeah, it is a dicey, uncomfortable layup for sure, and a pretty severe green.
Yeah, and it kind of fits a Maxwell theme, which is these ridged a ridge holes. So there you're teeing off the very edge of the clubhouse ridge and then you end up at this kind of high ridge. The green sits up and it's kind of above the second green. It's on another ridge, And that's just a Maxwell. You know,
you're gonna hear a lot about Perry Maxwell. Perry Maxwell loved ridged ridge holes where you play kind of off a ridge down and then back up to a ridge and for a par five, it's great because it makes that second shot really exacting if you're going for it.
And he loved those holes, you know, probably for a number of reasons, but one big reason was drainage efficiency. He was building courses during the Great Depression, building them in a cheaper way than they had been built in the nineteen twenties, and so he was looking for maximum efficiency and cost savings, and one way to do that is to build your t's and your greens on ridges. Now, the problem with that routing method is that it can
sometimes result in repetitive courses. But the genius of Perry Maxwell is that he was able to find routings that played ridge to ridge but never felt repetitive in the way that they did that. And I think that's what's really special about Southern Hills that's not going to necessarily come through on TV. The way the routing uses a land in a variety of ways, but puts those teas and greens in pretty similar places over and over. You just don't feel like that's what's happening.
Well, I think the key to that is they're playing ridge to ridge, but what's happening in between is the natural topography and the and the randomness that when you don't move dirt to make things flat and different things, and you let the topography just be its natural state, it's it feels seemingly random because you're never confronting the ridges from the same angles or across the same ground.
All Right. So, something I wanted to talk about in general, a thing about Southern Hills that his maybe bothered me a little bit has to do with the greens. I think there are some really cool green designs here, but when I compare them to the greens at Old Town Club and Prairie Dunes, they just fall short. I think you see similar green designs at Southern Hills. You see some of those Perry Maxwell rolls, the way he built up features in the middle of the green instead of
just on the edges. So they're recognizably his designs, but they're just a lot more subdued. And maybe that's okay because the land is pretty dramatic. But you also have pretty dramatic land at Old Town Club in Prairie Dunes, But the greens there are just a bit more interesting to me because they're bolder. And so I wonder what you think of the greens at Southern Hills.
Yeah, I think they don't have those like eye popping Maxwell rolls like Prairie Dunes or Old Town Club have, And I think, you know, I think Dornic Hills doesn't have those either. Another Oklahoma Perry Maxwell course, and that was an early that was obviously his first one. You know, I think some of this is probably the impact that major championship golf has over the years is that you know, these have been restored, but what were they restored to?
Right?
What kind of what was done with the slopes?
Right?
And I saw Derek Duncan had an article with Russ Myers on Golf Digests where Russ talked about how the greens weren't going to be thirteen or fourteen. They're going to be eleven or twelve for the PGA, so they don't lose a lot of cool pins.
And I think that's the thing.
How do you have really slope greens, you know, and not run them like an Open championship runs them? You think about another course that Maxwell was involved with is Crystal Downs with Mackenzie and could you have a major championship speed greens at Crystal Downs? No? You know, And I think this is one of the things that happens when you make when you host major championships, is that no matter what, you know, those greens aren't going to
have the slope that they once had. You know, I'm not fully aware of the inner workings, and you know, I don't know what the slopes were originally, but I agree with you that they do not feel as daunting as a lot of his other work around the area and around that time. You know, I think, like I said, one thing I learned about Maxwell was that, you know, Dean Woods, his construction foreman, was when he started working with Perry Maxwell, That's when the greens started to really
ramp up. And that's why one of the reasons that Dorna Kills greens are a little bit more a dude than other ones was that Dean Woods wasn't working with them then interesting, and I think that's what Blake Conant, who obviously was heavily involved with Tom Doaks's restoration of Doric Hills, told.
Me, Yeah, that's very possible because so much of our idea of the Maxwell rolls and of Perry Maxwell's approach to green design comes from Prairie Dunes, an old town club.
And those were at the very end of his portfolio, and.
So those might be the outliers as opposed to the representative examples. I don't know, It's just something that I thought about as we were playing it. I was like, I'm not as tempted to go around these greens and just hit putts, you know, like I am at Prairie Dunes. Or Old Town Club, where there's just so many fun little areas of the green and you just want to
see how they work. You don't get that same sense of play at Southern Hills, and I think that that's for me, what makes it fall a little bit short of Old Town Club and what makes it fall short of Prairie Dunes. I mean, Prairie Dunes obviously has the amazing location as well, but that's why on my personal list it would be ranked a little bit lower. But at the same time, it's going for a different thing. I mean, we have to remember that this is a
major championship hosting course. That is what it's going for. That's part of its purpose. That's not part of the purpose of the other Perry Maxwell courses that we've talked about. And so this all comes back to that compromise that you have to make between classic Golden Age architecture and modern major championship preparation. There are other aspects of Southern Hills that are also very modernized. The greens have precision air systems under them. I mean, that's obviously not a
Golden Age thing. All the kind of agronomic infrastructure is very modern.
That's something to talk about, like without that, I don't know if they could host a major championship in May given the weather and have conditions that you know, I mean, they got one of the best in the business, Russ Myers as they're superintendent there, and I think that you know, they get a they Tulsa has one of the widest spreads of weather. You know, when you look at how cold it can get and how hot it gets in
the summer. You know, you're talking about, you know, maintaining turf in one of the areas of the country that deals with the most types of weather. So, you know, one of the things that makes this may date possible. And and I think this is another thing about it is like we've never seen Tulsa not in like the inferno summer months.
Yeah, yeah, Tulsa and August is what we've gotten a lot.
Yeah, yeah, June and June.
And June for the US Open.
Yeah, so we get it a couple of weeks earlier when when it's really you know, it can be a really idyllic time to be there. Obviously the fall is a great time to be in Tulsa, but unfortunately there's no major championship golf.
Then, I mean, maintaining turf in Tulsa, Oklahoma is a big challenge. That's why they have this infrastructure. And as you say, Russ Myers doesn't credible job. This is a beautifully maintained course, but yeah it does. It does feel modern in the in the ways that it's maintained, and it's that way because it has it wants to host major championships. It can't be like Essex County Club where they have a more old fashioned approach to presenting that course.
It just can't do that because PGA Championships and US Opens wouldn't come there if they were doing that.
Yeah, it's sad, but you know, PGA tour players expect certain things, and uh expect a lot of uniformity and course maintenance.
But they'll also they'll also maybe be bothered a little bit by some of the things that happened to them at Southern Hills.
I would imagine.
Yeah, especially Yeah, if you get wind and firmness out there, it could be it could be really really It's I think the thing about it, I'm not sure where the scores are going to land, and I think that's super weather dependent. But I think the one thing it will do if it's allowed to with with the with the conditions is that it will do a really good job of separating great play from average play and average play
from bad play. And I think we could see a really nice, nice tournament where you know, it's very clear who the best players in a given week are, which sometimes doesn't happen. Sometimes you watched a tournament and you're like, I don't know who who really played best. At Augusta this year, it was very clear that Scottie Scheffler was the best player in the field.
This episode of the Frida Egg Podcast was edited by me and Meg Atkins. One quick note, if you haven't been to the Frida Egg pro shop in a while, you should definitely check it out. We have totally reworked the design and it's a lot easier to navigate. You can find headwear, apparel, accessories, photography, shotgun start, more merchandise, things of that nature, all at proshop dot the fried egg dot com. All right, thanks for listening.