Welcome back to another edition of the Frida Egg Podcast. I'm Garrett Morrison, Managing editor at the Frida Egg. Today we have part two of our deep dive into Frida Egg founder Andy Johnson's trip to the Carolinas. Part one was all about Kiowa, and this time we focus on municipal golf. But first, this episode is brought to you by the Fridagg Print Shop. You'll find it in our pro shop at proshop dot Thefrida Egg dot com. We have a newly redesigned print section, freshly stocked with beautiful
photography of great golf courses. The latest editions include photos of Wildhorse Golf Club in Nebraska and the Ocean Course at Kiowa. The light, by the way that Andy got at Kiowa is just sensational. So check it out proshop dot Thefrida Egg dot com and take a look at our prints. You can get them framed, mounted on metal, or you can just order the print itself. Great way to support what we do. All right, So we've got
a bit of a hybrid episode for you today. The first thirty minutes will actually be a conversation between Andy Johnson and Troy Miller. Troy Miller is the architect who recently did a SETH Rayner inspired renovation of Charleston Municipal golf course. It's really cool work, and we also have an article in a video about it. You can find those on the Friday dot com and on our YouTube page.
After the interview with Troy Miller, Andy and I will come in with some additional thoughts about Charleston muni and also about some public courses he saw in Asheville, North Carolina. And this discussion gives us a chance to touch on some bigger ideas about municipal golf in general and how it might find a way forward in the twenty first century. So, without further ado, here's Andy and Troy Miller. 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 frid Egg Friday egg then dreaded Frida egg Frida, egg Frida, egg egg Frida egg bride egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the.
Hump course game. Tell us a little bit about your path.
So I grew up here in Charleston, grew up in the golf industry, My father's a golf professional, and because of that I was exposed to some really great architects early on in life, most notably Pete Die when we
were building a the Ocean course. I was nine years old in nineteen eighty nine when that started, and so I got to spend a lot of time with Pete, and then over the course of the next decade growing up in Charleston, got to work on renovation projects with Fazio's group and Nicholas's group, and inevitably ended up landing with what was probably Pete's greatest giver of work over
his career, a Landmark Land Company. Pete did about forty golf courses for Landmark through the seventies and eighties, and when I came out of grad school at University of Georgia, I got picked up by Landmark Land Company as an in house architect, very similarly the way that that Smitt and Curly were back in the seventies and and so I was there for about ten years doing mostly international apes Hill and Barbados in Spain, Arcos gardens, and worked
in Ireland a bit and Lake Presidential and Maryland and so so yeah, I was with Landmark through twenty fifteen, the crash hit like a lot of real estate companies, and there's no question that Landmark was a was a golf centric resort residential developer. And when the crash hit No. Eight, it took its toll on Landmark and Jerry Barton, our CEO, passed away in twenty eighteen, and so it was it was kind of a closing of a chapter.
So when the crash happened, obviously everything halts. How did you pivot, you know, in your professional life? Yeah, I mean obviously everything at that to that point had been golf.
Yes, absolutely so starting out as a golf course architect with a with a real estate development company gives you a lot of opportunities to learn a lot of different parts of the business. Because as much as we would all as golf purists loves to believe that it's just pure golf all the time, there's a lot that goes
into it and around it. And so what I was able to do through two thousand and eight, nine, ten, eleven, all the way through the mid twenty teens was really pick up the development side and understand how to build a community and how to build the presence of a golf course and how that golf course really grows with the amenities that go along with it. And so I got more into the development side of things, marketing, real estate, construction, the whole nine yards, and so was really very fortunate
to be in that position at that time. And the thing that's really interesting, I think for a group of guys that came out of school in the mid two thousands, I always say that I saw the best and the worst that my industry will ever be in the first five years of my career, which I think is pretty valuable because it gives you a certain amount of perspective.
When things get a little too frothy or when things look like they're not very good, you always look back at those years and say it's been worse.
So, yeah, going through that kind of stuff, obviously like you've had to develop different skills. Yeah, obviously I imagine that you feel like you've developed just as a professional more and it probably is going to help you the next twenty years. The all the experience that you've gone through.
Oh sure, absolutely. I think that it really shows the importance of market and importance of what you're trying to achieve. That you know there are courses for horses, and there are there are sites for specific golf courses in specific projects. And in the mid two thousands, I think the thing that I learned the most about how hot the golf market was in the early two thousands was it was just free flowing capital and people were building golf courses
wherever they could find a spot to do it. And it was one of those things where there wasn't a lot of thought given to is this the right product for the right market at the right time. And so those are the first three questions I usually asked myself before I get involved with the project. Is it the right project for the right market at the right time.
Do you have any examples, maybe without naving names, w are that where you were like, well, this isn't.
Gonna work, but we're gonna do it anyway, you.
Know, I saw it. So I saw a lot of these, especially after two thousand and eight, because what happened was we actually started to kind of put together a list of all of these projects that were kind of in limbo. We called it the Zombie book. It was the walking Dead. All of these projects that had started, some of them had been completed, all the way to opening and then weren't able to really get over the hump because of the recession. And some of them were just wrong timing,
some of them were just the wrong product. And I can think of a few that were on sites that had no business being golf courses, where they may have spent you know, in the close to eight figure range blowing things up and still were nowhere near having a site for a golf course. That you just kind of sit back and you go, man, what are we doing here?
And so I think that's there's a lesson to be learned there, and taking the path of least resistance when it comes to design is always a good thing, but you have to look at it not just in the lay of the land, but also in the market and where it exists.
So with the obviously projects, the amount of them, sheer amount of them a lot different. How have just the projects that come across your desk that you get to look at or you know, evaluate, how have those changed from before the crash to after the crash?
Yeah, well, I think certainly there is there is a much greater emphasis on history today, and you know, I think that trying to look in there is such a big piece of this renovation restoration world that we're seeing so much of these days, and I think that people are really looking back at, you know, what has been
historically successful. I think one of the biggest things that's changed from a real estate perspective is the fact that that that monolithic, big single family lot golf development is completely archaic and as a dinosaur, and I don't think
we'll ever see it again. I might eat my words on that, but you know, I think that now trying to figure out the right way to to try to create a market and try to create a project with different types of real estate, and I think there's a lot of things that probably because of the coming of age of millennials and some of their habits and the way that things are, there's not as much desire to own the big mansion in the master planned golf course community.
You know. I think that's that's something that has changed significantly with the projects.
Talk about creating a market, you mentioned that, like what, you know, creating a market today versus the old model of real estate play pure real estate big houses, golf course, yeah, houses.
On it absolutely. You know. I think through the early two thousands, there was definitely formula out there. You know, you got a name architect, you got an equestrian center, you know, you had two or three you checked a few boxes, and you had a glossy picture and one of the good magazines or in a full page spread in one of the big national circulations, and then you lived off of that for the first couple of years of sales and created kind of created that monster that way.
And often we're targeting different places as second home, depending on where you were in the country and and their longtime habits of where people traveled. But today it is much more about trying to suit the market that exists. Trying to induce a market these days, I think is
a much more difficult road to hoe. And while there have been some great examples of it, and I think that a lot of the very remote golf destination stuff that's happened over the last twenty years is a great example of how you create a market and take people to places they've never been because of the quality of the sites. That's the one opportunity that we're going to continue to have is quality of remote sites to go
create a market. Otherwise, when you're talking about creating markets, you're really looking at what's there today, what's the player looking for, what's the missing piece in any given city or any given region that you think, hey, this has got an opportunity to survive and succeed. I'd say that's a good way of trying to think of think through a project on the forty thousand foot level.
I think that kind of lends well into the conversation of what you're doing here in Charleston. Obviously a lot of people have seen pictures, heard a little bit about your work at Charleston Muni, but then you also are working on some a few other developments. Talk about Charleston the golf market before you started.
Working at Muni. At the Muni and you know.
What, you kind of saw where the maybe strengths are in weaknesses and holes in the market where you're trying to create a market here.
Sure, yeah, I think that Charleston and I am completely a homer on this because as a born and raised Charlestonian, I feel very strongly about Charleston's placing golf and I'd be remiss if I didn't say that this was the birthplace of golf in North America. Back to seventeen thirty nine really prehistoric golf.
Everybody, everyone seems every every funny.
He's got a claim. I promise you nobody can go back to seventeen thirty nine. And I really consider that prehistoric because it's pre old Tom Morris. And so when we talk about Charleston Green and playing golf downtown Charleston what is now Colonial Lake in the seventeen hundreds, I think that's a much that I think that wins. And so my yeah, But with Charleston today, you know, it's interesting growing up around the resort at Kiowa and what has happened out there in the influence of Pete and
the ocean course. You know, we've got this this great destination golf course, and we have great Golden age golf here at the country Club at Charleston and Yamons Hall. But then we have a lot of also rans. We have a lot of golf here that never really created a golf destination out of Charleston. People came to Charleston to see the history, to see the city, and they
play golf while they were here. But we have a lot of golf courses in the city proper that are good enough to play while you're here, but none that
are really good enough to come play. And so my hope is that over the course of the next five to ten years, we'll actually elevate the Charleston market, save Kiowa and think about Ocean Course as one of those belt loop kind of places as a place to come visit and to play golf and to really have an experience of playing two or three golf courses and experience some really good golf.
Well. And that's the thing.
I think there's a tremendous you talk about markets and holes in markets. I always have said, is you know, urban golf For a golfer that is an older golfer that has a family or a partner that might not play golf, the ability to play golf in a city, go to cool city. I mean like Charleston, I think is most well known for its restaurants, it's nightlife, it's you know, the things you could do when you come
to Charleston. It's a great destination city. And if you just have you know, golf that people know, hey, I could go play here and see something pretty cool, it's going to attract people. Because Kiwa is a great place and it's very close to Charleston in relation to many destination courses.
But it is a hall.
To get out there, You're gonna have a long day out there, and then by the time it's a full day event, versus having something that is relatively close to the city and able to experience and be back by, you know, not missing much of the day, you know, with your family.
Oh yeah, absolutely, I think that's exactly right. And so Kyowa that's why I really say Kiwa is a separate thing, no different than Sea Island, being somewhat out from other major metropolitan areas. And so really the idea Charleston Municipal was being a nineteen twenty nine golf course being built at the same time as Yamen's Hall and the country Club, and being able to see if you squint it a little bit, you could see some of those classic features
of a rain or design. And so it really kind of fell to the bottom line of saying, let's really enhance this and give it an experience that the general public just doesn't have otherwise when it comes to this style of architecture. And so it was something that I felt like if we did and we did it right, and we really enhance the features that you would see on a rain or McDonald golf course. It would bring people that were visiting the city to experience golf in
the city. And we're talking five minutes from downtown Charleston,
and so this does really open up that opportunity. And what that does even more so is it allows the general public of the locals to continue to have a municipal golf course that they can be very proud of that they can play for a very low rate and be subsidized by guest play at a slightly higher rate, which is still below market for a public daily fee in Charleston, and that subsidy should allow the golf course to stay in the kind of shape it needs to stay in and should allow for it to continue to
really get enhanced.
Yeah, with your project, I think obviously so many people go to their local muni whether you know so many in urban areas, and they dream about the ability to be able to reimagine the golf course and update it and give it, put a little you know, TLC into it. Talk about the process of going through that and getting it through the city. Where did it start, how did it come about, and how did it get to where it is? Today with the finished product.
Sure.
Yeah.
So one of the things that it definitely takes is is a lot of passion from the people involved, from the people in leadership, And dating back to really twenty fifteen, was the first conversation that I had with the mayor who basically said, Hey, I want to do something about Charleston Muni. And I said, okay, well, let me take
a look at this. And I went at that point and started drawing conceptual plans and came back not only with a conceptual plan but also a pro forma as to why it made sense for the city and how it was going to create a return for the city. And so at that point we came back and decided to go ahead and put together a five ZHO one C three of the friends of the Muni that would be part of that charitable arm that would gain us
some of that fundraising arm. So the way that the project was originally intended was to basically have two thirds of the money come from the city and a third of the money come privately raised, and we've pretty much achieved that throughout the course of the last few years. The funding mechanism took several years because it had to go through a bond referendum that was part of another
recreation bond. And then the process itself is heavily scrutinized because it's a city project that has to go through city capital projects, and so the process is not that of a typical private development, and so it does take some effort and it takes some time. But I think if you get the right people involved, and really it's about the passion. And there were so many people people in Charleston that just loved that place. And my family
history dates back to the thirties there. My grandfather caddied there, My father's first jobbing golf was there in the late sixties, his first job as a professional, and so there were so many people along the way that just said, we care deeply about it, how can we help, how can we make this happen. Then it wasn't just monetarily, but it was also some political pressure that really got the project going.
With regards to the pro forma creating, you know, showing the value, because this I think this is where so many people like, how did you go about presenting the case that hey, if we do this, you know this is going to go from something that loses money for the city to something that's going to be something that brings in revenue for the city.
Yeah, And the biggest thing there is really looking at what is the market rate for a non resident to come play golf, and at the top top end of that, when it comes to municipal golf courses, you've got place like Tory Pines and Bethpage Black And while we're never trying to achieve those LIFs level, what it showed us was, hey, we've got market rate to come play golf as a as a visitor to Charleston. We've got a lot of
room for growth there. And so that was really the biggest change in the revenue line of being able to say, hey,
we can go achieve ten thousand rounds. We do sixty thousand rounds a year on MUNI and so if ten thousand of those were out of town play at a slightly higher rate, all of a sudden, that's going to subsidize this thing, allow us to spend the money we need to from a maintenance perspective to keep it up and not create any kind of problems in terms of accessibility for all of the local residents.
And I think this is where this project's a little bit different than a lot of product. You see munis go down this road where they put money into their golf course, but oftentimes it's money where they're putting a lot of money in, but they aren't getting a drastically different product from what they had. How did you play the architecture into this? And I imagine, you know, just thinking common sensely that had a lot to do to say,
this is how we attract money. Yes, you know, how we attract out of town money is with this right.
Yes, absolutely, I think that the whole idea, and we've taught a lot. Charleston is a very historic town and we've got a role to play in the history of the history of America and the history of golf and the history of the Golden Age and Rayner McDonald's style architecture. What Rainer did in this town, you know, is such a great, great example of his work and exactly how and it's why it fits so well in the low country, the ability to really enhance the features of the golf
course on relatively flat property. And so the idea when it was pitched was really about listen, we're a historic town, We're a sophisticated town. We deserve a historic, sophisticated golf
course to call our own. And so when we really dug down into it and started talking about the history of Rayner and the experience in the low Country, it was an easy pitch to get people behind the idea of bringing these template holes to the table, really trying to create that experience for the public daily fee player.
Yeah, and I think obviously they're getting a drastically different experience than what they had. Talk about how much of the how much new stuff is out there, what are the biggest, let's say, defining characteristics of beauty today versus what was Yeah.
Sure, So the greens themselves were all completely rebuilt and are roughly about fifty percent bigger, fifty to sixty percent bigger than they were before, much bolder contouring and essentially and like I said, because that golf course was built in the twenties and we had that you know, we had that influence. It wasn't a rainer, as many people
might have said over the course of the years. But in nineteen twenty nine, a lot of the same laborers that built the country club and built Yamans Hall were going there and these were the only two examples of golf in Charleston, so you know, they'd go across town, take a look, and say, okay, let's go build that. And it was a bad game of telephone is what it came. But you still got a lot of the
same features. And so there was a lot of those big rectangular pads that were there that we were able to take these you know, satellite dish greens that had just atrophied over the years and expand them back out into those corners and then accelerate just by sharpening the edges a little bit, elevating really no more than six inches to a foot in most green complexes, but creating
some bolder contours. And one of the great things about working on a municipal golf course where you know that the limits are never going to be pushed in terms of green speed, was the freedom of being able to create some bold contouring in the greens. I can tell you you know, opening day, those greens were running nine and a half and I was listening to people walk off that golf course saying, they can't keep these greens at twelve like this, It's just going to be too much.
And so it's really good to create some perceived green speed rather than actual green speed, because it takes a lot of pressure off of your maintenance, you know, in terms of the architecture. And I lost my train of thought. Andy, tell me what what? What was your question?
I can't remember.
I can't either, you know, I don't even remember, but you know what you know?
So let's you talked about the defining features.
They're defining features. So let me say first, So there's there's twelve template holes out there. There's eleven at the Country Club of Charleston, and then there's thirteen at Yamon's Hall. And of those templates, I think the ones that will stand out the most of people. And where the biggest physical change to the property came was the corner of
the golf course. That's eleven, twelve, thirteen, and fourteen. At that point you kind of leave kind of the parkland style of the golf course, crossed the road and head down towards the river into something that feels much more lynxy, and all of a sudden, now you've got your playing
redan cape, road and short in that order. And so I think having that corner of the golf course with those very recognizable template holes and the views that were created simply by we we eliminated about two and a half acres of new growth forests that was kind of blocking the view of the river, and in its place, we dug a rether large lake that's in between golf holes, primarily for storm water and also to create generate the material to elevate some of these holes that were sitting
in the floodplain. So there was a lot of functionality to what we did, and then the architecture just became the fun part.
Yeah, and obviously talk about the functionality. I think I visited it was probably a perfect day to visit because I saw, you know, all of all of the existing courses and original courses issues, and I think that's beyond you know, the increase in design. Talk about just the functional design things that you did to make it a better golf course day and day.
Sure, so drainage, obviously being in a low country and being at a very low elevation as Immuni is, you know, the biggest thing that we did was create better drainage and elevated some of those holes that were along the flood in the floodplain along the river. Some holes were elevated as much as five to seven feet from where they were before. Others just six to twelve inches is
all it really took. But you mentioned, you know, you came on a day when we had a king tide, which is basically a seven and a half or eight foot tide. And I can remember being out there days and watching the tide come in across the fifteenth fairway and literally reached the far end of the fairway and just thinking, my god, how are we going to do this?
And the way we were able to do it was actually by creating digging out a pond, creating a better dyke system that had been there, and just elevating that to kind of combat what is these rising tide levels that we're seeing in the low country and all of a sudden, now what we have as a firm and fast golf course that should stay that way, that's got the appropriate drainage. And a big thing in Charleston too, is we talk about living with water because you ain't
gonna get rid of it. We're we're at sea level and it's not going anywhere. And so the biggest part of it was moving the water out of the areas of play, getting it off to the edges, into ditches, into new ponds, things that didn't come into play and didn't become more penal in terms of the design and the way the golf course played, but functionality wise, provide a place for the water to get off to so that you can keep those fairways in those center lines firm.
Yeah.
I think anybody that's worked or has intimate knowledge about, you know, working in a municipal project or just any project in general, worst of the biggest challenges of the project over the course of the of the year and a half.
You know, I think that certainly working in a municipal setting, in a government setting, there there's always there's always a maybe not the sense of urgency that you know that you need to have as a golf course builder and as a golf course architect, knowing, hey, that the clock's ticking. We got to grow in to hit I can't wait for your seventh person to sign off on this so that I can get pipe in the ground, so that
I can plant grass. Trying to educate people on that perspective and kind of with that that mentality is a tough thing, and so I think that's part of the reason why a lot of these municipal projects don't get done in this kind of unique manner where it truly was a city led project. I think the vast majority of what we've seen with these municipal projects around the country recently have been the takeovers where you get a foundation that comes in and says, hey, we're going to
take it. We're just gonna lease it from you. You guys are completely hands off, And honestly, I'm kind of proud of the fact that that's not one of these I think that the fact that the city is going to still run it, that it is still the city is wholly in, one hundred percent, and it's something for them to be proud of. We have got a great park system in the city of Charleston, and this should
be the crowning jewel of that. And so, you know, I'm actually quite pleased that we didn't have to go to the level of privatizing to get action.
Do you think also with that there's an enhanced sense of pride, not just with you know, the city as a whole, all the way down through the maintenance steam that worked on the project, Like, do you think that is going to lead to where we've abc less atrophy, you know, on the golf course in the future. You know what that sad tale that so many municipalities see
is where green shrink, fairway shrink. Do you think because you know the city went through it with you and your team, that you'll see a longer lasting product than typically.
I sure hope. So. I think that there's so many people who care deeply about it, and a lot of those people are the people who are working there and that have been there for decades in some cases, And so I really do think that'll be the case in the community involvement on this project as well. I mean, we had volunteer days. We had volunteers planting the landscaping on that on a beautiful November day, And to hear guys now going out there and playing and say, hey, I planted that dogwood.
You know.
I think that there is a sense of pride that comes with it that I hope will translate into better course care, that will translate into long term conditioning, and a sense of pride that I hope everybody in Charleston and have in.
It so quickly before we get out of here, we'd be remiss to not talk about Patriots Point and your involvement there and potentially what could happen there in the future.
Sure. Yeah, So Patriots I think is an incredible site. We've got a ton of frontage on Charleston Harbor.
Explain what Patriots Point is today.
So for folks that may not know, Patriots Point Links is an existing public, daily fee golf course that's situated on Charleston Harbor, just across the harbor from downtown Charleston, right in Mount Pleasant and so and it was actually an old, dread site, not dissimilar to Toledo as we've talked a little bit about. And so the you know, it's one that the site visually is incredibly stunning and
the golf course is very mediocre. And the idea is it is really a great opportunity to create something fully from scratch there that hopefully will be, like we talked in the beginning, a golf course it's good enough to come play, not just one that's good enough to play while you're here. And where that in the market is, it'll continue to be public resort, upscale resort. It's kind
of where we're looking at. And I think there's enough room there to really create a golf course that can challenge the best players in the world, be very playable and visually stunning for any visitors. And one quick little cute note is the fact that you know our seventeenth and eighteenth holes, which will primarily stay the same there.
And I was standing on the seventeenth Green looking across at the historic lower peninsula of downtown Charleston, and I'm standing there looking across this big open marsh and you can kind of see a little bit of the harbor, and then all you see is the battery south of Broad neighborhood to all the church steeples, and I'm looking at that, going gosh, this looks really familiar to me.
And I started thinking back, and really I realized that from that tea, it's about the same distance from the far end of Saint Andrew's back into town as it is from from there to downtown Charleston. And the visual is quite similar in a lot of ways because of this old, historic town. And it just kind of as I was sitting there looking at it, it gave me a sense of responsibility for the site. I feel like it really is is a big opportunity.
With with that designing upscale where you're talking upscale resort versus what you did and Charleston and the muni what can you what more freedom does upscale upscale resort model give you than you know, a daily fee municipal or is the process pretty similar?
I would honestly say the process is pretty similar. I think for a long time, you know, when it was all about longer, harder is better, that may not have been the case. And I know I've I've heard and seen the instance where well, you can't do this, it's a resort course, it's not a private course, or you can't do this, it's a municipal course, not a not
a resort course or a private course. And in reality, you know, the golf course architecture that we've brought to Charleston Municipal that I intend on bringing to Patriots Point, which by the way, not look the same as Charleston Municipal, should be readily playable for everyone. The challenge, and as Pete always said, you can never challenge the best players in the world physically, you have to challenge them mentally.
And for me, probably as it is for many short grass is kind of that ultimate equalizer for people and so I'm big on short grass. I'm big on creating those areas that really creates an opportunity for the average guy to put it up in two putt and the good player to have to think. And when you've created that thinking and a good player, you've done your job. Because good players don't like to think. And when you've made them think and given them options, then you've challenged them.
And that's the goal that.
We all have. And now back to me and Andy picking up right in the midst of our conversation about Charleston MUNI.
You know, I think what I love about the project is it had a purpose, Like it had a vision. It wasn't like we're just gonna brush up our course and we're going to spend a bunch of money to fix our drainage while we're at it. We're gonna make something that's representative of our city, our historic city, in our in our golf community. Like it gives the public
an opportunity to see. You know, they aren't exactly like the templates that you see at country Club Charleston or Yemen's, but they give the average municipal golfer a wildly different golf experience than what you would get at almost every other municipal like another one that is similar as Mount Prospect in Chicago, which of course another town with two Rainer designs in Chicago, golf and short acres.
You know.
And what I kept thinking about was your podcast with Blake The School of Architecture where you talked about sense of place, like it gave it a real sense of place. And that's the thing I loved about the project, Like you know, as somebody that has seen a lot of the Rainer stuff has written about Rainer templets extensively. Like I could quibble with a few things out there, like in the execution of a few things, by the end of the day, I couldn't get over.
It was really fun. It's affordable.
It's twenty five dollars for a resident to play, and I think like one of the biggest things that it exposes, like the regular golfer to like a different style of architecture, which I think is so valuable.
Yeah, and it's not just It wasn't done just because Rayner is fashionable right now. It was done because there are courses in the Charleston area that you've mentioned, Yamen's Hall and Country Club of Charleston that are Seth Rayner golf courses that are on properties that are correct me if I'm wrong, but pretty similar yeah, to what Charleston Municipal occupies. Yamen's Hall goes out to a kind of
marsh side location on a few of its holes. Country Club of Charleston, of course, is a lot of the course sits along these tidal marshes that are so representative of this low country region. You know, that's a very distinctive landscape in that area. And Charleston Municipal has that property that is so valuable for a municipal course to have a property that is as tied to its place
as that one. And now they have introduced some architecture to the course that resembles these other courses that have been there that kind of define the golf culture in the city in the nineteen twenties, and they've brought that vibe to this municipal golf course that residents can play
for twenty five dollars. And so it should be clear that this is not a golf Twitter thing, This is not a golf podcast thing where they're like, oh, Seth Rainer's hip, now let's get in on that this is very much a Charleston thing.
Yeah, And most importantly the golf course doesn't flood at high tide or with a quarter inch of rain. That's the most important thing is that the back nine is able to be used every day.
Yeah.
So I think that the biggest win of all of it is it just straight up functions better.
So what are what are a couple of holes out there that you would like to highlight that you think are pretty cool.
I mean, the back nine is so cool when it gets down and you play ten, it's got a crazy green, and then you go to eleven, which is the radan. I think the dance slope is a little weird s right in the middle rather than up at the front.
It doesn't have that kicker.
So that but then that radan, it plays right down to the bridge and then the holes. There's a kpe hole that plays out. It's a funk hole, and then they've got the road that comes back and then a short hole. Short hole is wonderful. That green is really severe. The thumb print, like you can play some really fun
shots with the thumb print. The thumb prints almost in the middle of that is almost like a punch bowl, you know, in a way where you can really play them up off a bank and into it and anything you miss is going to be a really tough putt. And then you got a really neat maiden green, the you gotta hit really good shots on on the next all the fifteenth. Then there's some really I think some of it is more subdued greens, like the seventeenth is
a neat green and the ninth. Really loved the ninth green too, But it's a really it's a fun golf course and it shows like three million dollar complete renovation. It doesn't mean it has to be boring. They didn't spend a crazy amount of money when you think about you know, they had a nineteen twenty nine golf course that didn't have any money put into it for essentially almost one hundred years, and they put money into it.
And just because you put a small sum of money into it doesn't mean that the architecture has to be bland. Like interesting architecture doesn't cost any more money than bland architecture.
Yeah, you've been beating that drump for years, and I think the message is maybe starting to sink in. But there's a lot of people who don't quite believe it.
Well, you just see almost every municipality will just hire I don't want to bang on people, but like they'll hire somebody that's been doing work around the area for thirty years and they build just the same kind of stuff that was there. It's I think the neat thing about it, too, is the business models flipped there where now because they have something interesting, they're going to charge sixty bucks out of towners and they expect to make money. It's been a money loser for the city forever and
they now expect to make money. Their maintenance budget is more, but they because of that out of town revenue. You know, you're in three x essentially what you get for a resident, They're going to make money.
And that connects to one of my hobby horses, which is that city golf courses should be attractions. They should be not only facilities that serve the public. Obviously that's the first priority. Let's serve the local public here, but they should also be things that people come to town to see, just like people come and see other government facilities, like you know, the city hall building or whatever. They come to see government architecture because it's interesting it's cool
and it's well maintained. But somehow that logic does not always or rarely even does it extend to golf courses. Yeah, why don't cities treat their golf courses as these incredible assets that they can use to make their town a
center of culture and a center of tourism. So rarely are golf courses given that kind of attention and that kind of credit where a city is saying, this is a really interesting and worthy piece of architecture of art in its own right, and it's not just a golf course, you know, in the sense that people can go out there and hit a ball around. It has some history and it is well designed, and people should come see it. That's what I think Charleston has.
Now.
It's a course that people are going to see prest and they're gonna be like, huh, yeah, I don't want to go see that, you know, just like people see pictures of the Santa Barbara Courthouse. I grew up in Santa Barbara, California. Beautiful courthouse. Thousands of people go take tours of that courthouse every year. It's not just a
place where legal proceedings happen. It's a beautiful work of art, and for whatever reason, cities have not given that same kind of attention and credit to golf course architecture.
I think part of it, though, is golf culture in general of exclusion. And like I remember as a kid, the public golf course that I grew up playing, like Bluff, they were very strict about us just being around or anybody that wasn't a golfer being around. In this idea
that a golf course can only be for golfers. Yeah, is the thing that holds so much of this back is that there can't be mixed uses for this land, and this idea that an area could only be for golf is incredibly idiotic, and you know, I think it does golf no favors and you know, only help golf if you made it more open and accessible to people that might want to go for a walk, you know, and make areas that people can use, because if they're around the game, they're much more likely to pick up
the game. You know, if they're walking on a golf course, they're probably more likely to play golf eventually.
Yeah, I think that's so true that attitudes and perceptions need to change, both among people who don't necessarily play golf in communities and people who do play golf, they all need to realize that they're part of the same community.
Do you think that golf architecture could ever get to the point where people who don't play golf would be interested in seeing the architecture of a golf course, Because sometimes when I explain to people like my wife's friends that don't know anything, they ask me, oh, you cover golf, and I say, yeah, I do a lot of stuff on golf architecture.
They're like, what's that.
I'm like, well, you know, just like a building, a golf course is built by architects and they're these and they're like real, they like get interested in it.
Yeah, And there are different schools of it, and there's a whole history, and there are personalities involved. It's a fascinating subject. And that's exactly what I'm saying. Yes, absolutely, I think that there could potentially be people who don't play golf who would be interested in going and seeing golf course architecture. I think that there's no reason that shouldn't be the.
Make ye a small number.
Yeah, maybe maybe. But you know the other thing about it, though, that's attractive is that if we turn golf courses into mixed use spaces into welcoming spaces for non golfers somehow. Obviously, there are safety issues that this can't be done immediately everywhere, but there are places where that have worked this out. It's not only cool to go see the architecture if you're interested in that kind of thing, but it's also cool just to go take a walk in a nice, open,
naturalist setting. People love taking these walks around golf courses, as was proven when COVID shut down golf courses and all of a sudden people flooded out to take walks around them. They're like, Wow, this is beautiful out here. This is a really nice place to be.
Your buddy the desk furniture maker.
Yeah, yeah, my friend in San Francisco who said they should shut down Presidio golf course because he and his family had a nice picnic out there. Okay, he's an idiot, but basically what he was saying was I like this place, and I think that is the seed of a place where we could agree. Yes, I argued with him on Twitter.
I probably didn't handle that very well, but the seed of it was he went and saw this place that he hadn't been before because he doesn't play golf, and he thought it was a nice place to spend some time. And I think that that is not a threat to golfers. That really shouldn't be interpreted as a threat to golfers. It should be an opportunity where we're like, we can
get the public interested in these places. We can all kind of come together as a community and invest in golf courses to turn them into the versions of themselves, not only for the sake of golfers, but for the sake of the entire community, because municipal golf courses are part of their communities. They're not some separate thing. Anyway, That's that's my whole rant.
I agree, you're preaching to the choir.
Yeah, well, if anybody disagrees, please send us an email.
Maybe use golf facts.
Well yeah, use golf facts if you're listening. If you're listening, Justine, we'd love to hear your thoughts about golf course architecture of the municipal varieties and otherwise. Anyway, Well, one cool note.
I'd be remissed if I did not mention this. Troy is trying to do something cool in the pump house.
Troy Troy Miller, architect behind the renovation of Charleston Municipal.
Yeah, so he's trying to do something cool with a pump house, and he's trying to collect golf balls from municipal courses from all over the country and then like a fix them to the wall in the pump house, which is very visible on the golf course. It's like then between the sixteenth and the seventeenth hole. So he's trying to make something kind of unique there.
Cool.
So if you have, like if you have surplus of golf balls from municipal golf courses across the country side of Troy or the Charleston Mini golf course with a you know, attention Troy Miller.
Okay, cool. So that's Charleston Municipal. Now we've kind of gone backwards through your trip because you went to Charles, you were going south. You went to Charleston after you had already gone through Ashville, North Carolina. But we're going to go back to Asheville, North Carolina now and talk about some of the golf around there and some of the reasons to go there. It's not necessarily mentioned as
a golf destination. But there it's in North Carolina, so there's plenty of great golf courses, not only in the city but in the area around there. But just to start off, Ashville itself is I feel a highly underrated town. I've been there. I haven't played golf there. I went there for a wedding one time with my wife and kid, and it was fantastic. Now, obviously this was pre COVID and so you probably didn't get to see all the restaurants and stuff. And yeah, that's too bad.
I went into one of the fame breweries and got to go.
Beer, you know, which is good beer? Though, right, it was good beer.
It's a great brewery town. I forget what the names of the breweries are.
I you know, it is the one that just got bought. I went to Wicked.
Is it Wicked something?
Yeah, I think that's what it is. It's a good it's so cool, you know, one of the neat things. And I don't want too many people to find out about this because, like you know, I might want to move there someday.
I don't want people to drive up the prices.
But they had only nine days over ninety degrees in Ashville last.
Year, good lord, and then you know what, we were there.
It was the cooldest time of the year. Yeah, it was still golfable. Yes, it was forty five, like it snowed one day, but it was forty five, you know, And you could definitely play golf in the winter. You could play golf twelve months of the year. You get seasons and it's not too hot. I'm a big fan. And obviously we didn't get experience as much of the
food and beer scene or nightlife scene. But I'm looking forward to going back in different times a because there's a lot of golf courses that I didn't get to see that I want to see. And that's really the main impetus, you know, is I want to get back and see a ton of places. But we drove straight to Ashville, and I talked about how it took like three hours to get to northwest Indiana. It was like three in the morning when we were pulling into Ashville.
And we stayed in Black Mountain, which is a town just outside of Asheville, because we figured we're not going downtown, why, you know. And it was this beautiful little mountain town. It was so cool loved it. But we stayed there and my wife was reading the Black Mountain website and she's like, oh, are you going to see the Black Mountain golf Course? And I was like, I know, Like you do you mean Asheville Municipal, which is, you know, one of the courses on my list. And she's like, no,
the Black Mountain golf Course. And I'm like, why would I.
Go see that?
And she goes, well, it says here is designed by Donald Ross. So you know, Josie of course had no sympathy for us. Big up till three driving, so we're up at like six point thirty. The next day, I got a huge coffee and I went walk Black Mountain in the morning and it was interesting. So Front Nine, like so many courses, the Front nine is Donal Ross routed. It's been monkeyed with a little bit, but you can see some really cool holes like shared fair aways just
neat green sights, and it's as Black Mountain. It's in the foothills of the mountain, so it's got some good terrain, like not terrain you see every day. So the Front Nine, I'm walking, I'm like, hey, that's pretty cool.
You know.
If they did some stuff. It could be cooler.
You know, there's some underlying issues at some places. Obviously there's some drainage issues, which is a huge problem because there's houses being built all around, you know, on the mountain. So like you see the with a lot of mountain golf courses, old mountain golf courses, they have tons of drainage issues because the soil there's nowhere for the water to go, yeah, because the soil is very rocky, and then you've got development all around just throwing water onto
the golf course. So obviously some drainage issues. But the front nine very cool, and then you make the turn to the back and there's a sign that greets you that's like kind of it winds through a neighborhood and the sign says like this is strictly for golf activities. You know, it's very unsafe to walk here, which is a dovetail of what we were just talking about. You know, I'm on this back nine and I'm just like, well, that's not a very nice sign, you know, Like I'm
in like basically a swamp. The golf holes all of a sudden, just they don't make sense. They're fighting the terrain they're going into extraordinarily narrow corridors. There's just nowhere to hit the ball. You're seeing boxes right in landing areas of other holes for the next hole, and you're like, what the hell is going on? And it was just nine holes crammed into this tiny little space to build
a golf course. And one of the things on the website that my wife read is that, you know, it is famous for the Donald Ross nine and it's seventeenth hole, which was at one point the longest hole in the world, the par six, and it was one of the most defensive holes I've ever seen in my life. And this was after I was on the phone with Stephen Britain, because at this point I'm calling Stephen asking I have all these crackpot theories, which I'll be getting into later.
Stephen Britain, Superintendent.
Superintendent Chevy Chase.
I'm talking with him and I'm telling him about how awful the holes are. And I turn and I get onto the seventeenth and I'm like, oh my god, I'm telling this is the worst of all of them.
You know, describe it a little so par six, seventeenth hole.
Off and you hit the landing area it's like the side of a mountain. So it's had like a very severe grade just to the left of the fairway as a cart path, and to the left of that is a creek. So I went in the shop after and I asked him. I asked the guy about the seventeenth hole, and just like, hey, people like that seventeenth hole. He's like, well,
you know, it's a famous hole. I'm like yeah, I'm like, let me ask you in the summer, when it's you know, firm and kind of baked out, can you hold the ball in the fairway at all?
And he looks at me. He just shakes his head, just like.
And I go, so, then does it hit the cart path that going to the creek And he was like, yeah, happens a lot. But then the creek crosses like three more times. It plays up to like a raised green. But you know the holes before it that we're sharing, you know, you've got two holes in like a forty yard wide corridor playing opposite directions. I mean that's almost
as offensive. But anyways, I'm walking. I'm talking to Stephen because after about two holes, I realized, like, golf shouldn't be here, like traditional golf doesn't work on this site because there's not enough space for it and it's too severe and it doesn't drain. It's just and you just
think about it from the maintenance side. Is that maintenance team there, you know, the front nine's pretty cool and with a little work with drainage, you could make it really a really good nine, you know, and it would play really well. But then when I got on the back nine, I realized this is where they spend all their time. I walked in tennis shoes the front nine, My feet weren't wet. The back nine I'm walking through
just like mud. And you realize this is where all the problems are and where the maintenance team is just trying to make it playable, and it's a terrible nine holes that shouldn't even be in existence in its current form. And then it came back to that sign at the start of the back nine that's like, do not walk.
This is this is only for golf.
In reality, the oxymoron of it is that it should never have been for golf. And so I called Stephen, you know, midway through this, because I was curious, like in my head, like hey, if I told you I'm going to cut your golf course by nine holes. What's your maintenance budget going to be percentage wise just maintaining nine holes? You know, he was like sixty to seventy percent. Maybe if you have a really good super maybe fifty five percent to seventy percent.
And I started thinking about it.
It's like, you know, this is a golf course, it's a small community, it's a small mountain town, is clearly thriving, but it's only eighteen thousand people. Is like, with all the golf around, this would be better as a nine
hole golf course. And they don't have a driving range, So you could take some of that back nine that's allegedly a golf course, turn into a driving range, maybe a short course which is perfect for that severe land in small corridors, you know, or convert it to just a park, like make it open lands for this growing, thriving community that's adjacent to the golf course, and all of a sudden, then more people are around the golf course.
Yeah, and doing these kinds of things makes so much sense for eighteen whole courses that are struggling, and we all know them. There's a bunch of them in fact, that have Donald Ross Front Nines or purported Donald Ross Front Nines, and then a back nine that was added later that's not nearly as good because not every architect is Donald Ross, and so this describes a lot of golf courses certainly that might just function better as nine
whole courses. My only response to that, my only disagreement with that general idea is that it has to be and maybe it's not a disagreement, but it has to be extremely specific to each course.
Yes, yeah, it's not a blanket.
Sometimes you have courses where one nine is really good. We all know them, where one nine is really good and the other nine is not so good. Pacific Grove Golf Course, you know, one of my favorite player in the world near Monterey, California. Pacific Grove Municipal Golf Course has one nine that was built in the thirties that kind of goes through the neighborhoods inland and it was
designed by Chandler Egan. It was probably pretty cool at one time, but has been really compromised by the development around it and by some moving around of the holes that has happened to accommodate parking lots, clubhouses, all that kind of stuff, and so it's not particularly good right now. There are some pretty bad holes out there. There are some pretty good holes on that nine as well, and then the back nine is sublime. The back nine is in the dunes. It's just amazing. There are six amazing
holes on that back nine, maybe seven. And so a lot of people have said, why don't we just chop off the front nine make it a world class, you know, nine hole golf course. And my response to that is, not only does that front nine have a lot of history, in fact more history than the nine in the dunes, but people use it like that course is super successful. The community uses that go of course, and so who am I to come in and say it's not well designed enough for my tastes, we should shut it down.
If the community uses it and it's successful, then great, the course is sustainable. Great, But if you have a course where there are big problems financially, maintenance wise, environmentally, primarily because of one poorly built nine, then that's where you start exploring these solutions. I think, which is what you're talking about with Black Mountain.
And I think the course has done well with COVID. I like that and talking to the guy in the pro shop. But I you know, I did ask about the back time. I'm like, is it always wet back there, like, and he was like, oh, yeah, it's always wet.
They could do a lot better probably.
Maybe it's nine holes in a short course. Yeah, all of a sudden that severe land makes for a great short course. You could play from high point to high point.
You know.
I think one of the things that the misconception is like severe land isn't really good for regular golf, but it's really good for short courses. Like, if you give me a severe plot of land, it's probably hard to find eighteen holes out on it. But you know what's really easy to do, really easy to find par threes.
Yeah. Yeah. Mcveig's Gauntlet at Sylvie's Valley Ranch, which I visited this past year. Mcvay's Gauntlet is probably built on the most severe piece of land that I've ever seen used for golf. And it's hard, but it's a bunch of part threes and it works. Yeah, that is one possibility. Another is like driving range, practice facility. We all know what makes the most money in the golf business, and that's a successful driving range.
And then my thought was like you could go to the city and say, hey, we're going to nine. We're cutting our maintenance budget, but can we reinvest a portion of the money we're saving you Yeah, into the golf course, Like, hey, we want to have one of the best nine holers in the country, and that's something we think we can achieve.
Like the way it's currently constructed, they will never have a golf course that I would say is worth going to play unless you're there, right, but if they not redid But they restored that original Ross nine, and that's what it was. It's a really it's got a ton of potential.
So Black Mountain and then you went to Asheville proper Asheville Municipal golf course, So tell me about.
That another ross.
This is like if you want to see Dona Ross, there's don Ross everywhere within an hour, and so many places I didn't get to see because we were only.
There for two days.
You know.
One of the neat things is even some of the private clubs, if you're a polite and ask nicely, they probably will let you come play. I know that's the case for Country Club of Ashville, which was redone by Rich Mandel, and I think Mimosa Hills is pretty open about unaccompanied guest play. The Asheville Muni obviously very historic
Donald Ross, you know, nineteen twenty nine. There's a golf channel piece on it if you search it cool place for the most parts remained for the most part, not too much monkey around with the original design, so you know, it's very playable. The greens on the front nine they play like low in the lowlands, you know, kind of, and then the back nine gets up into the into
the more of the mountains. The front nine has really it kind of winds around and it's it's pretty flat, some neat greens, and then it's got a great volcano green on the eighth and it plays, and then the ninth really starts some of the more dramatic land.
Now.
You know, one of the things with severe land right is you've got connector holes, holes that are just a means to get you to the next area that's really golfable. And the tenth and eleventh hole at Asheville Municipal are two connector holes that had some renovation work done at
some point that have completely made them worse. There's like a raised bunker that was like wedged into this giant hillside and they've got homes on they play kind of in these like funnel and again this is a drainage issue. This is mountain golf. Like half of it being good is about just getting water off it, because Asheville is a place, it rains a lot too, and you can tell that all the work that's been done to it
has just made it more of a drainage nightmare. No grass in the fairway, and it's just like an example of like how if you hire the wrong architect you end up with something worse. You spend a bunch of money to get worse. You know, I guarantee if they did nothing, it would function better than it does now. But those two holes, then you get up into this like spectacular topography. The twelfth through the seventeenth is an incredible stretch. It's almost like on like a foothill ridge.
You play down in the lowlands and then you get up into like part way up the mountains and there's this big ridge that you're kind of playing along, some really spectacular holes, some added bunkers that are in car pass Like it's just one of those places where you go around and you're like got these really good bones. It's really a great community asset. It's busy all the time,
tons around, but it could be so much more. It's just one of those where you look at it in that same vein of East Potomac, or Rancho Park in La.
Yolds Park at Winston Salem.
Maybe yeah, where it works, it's a great affordable asset for the community. But if they went the route of a Charleston or you know, a just a pure yeah, you wouldn't want to go the route of Charleston where you redid it, But if you put three million into
the place, it could be really spectacular. In one of those things you got to do if you're a golfer when you're in a Nashville and you could they could compete with the course that I didn't get to see that I really was disappointed that I didn't have time to see was Grove Park, which is now it's tied to a hotel, the Omni, and it's a Donald Ross
course that's a little bit more upscale. But if they they put three million dollars into that point, into Asheville, Muni, you could have a golf course that could compete with that. It could go punch for punch while providing the town a great asset.
Yeah. And again Ashville super cool town, university town, unc Ashville is there. The brewery that we were trying to think of earlier is called Wicked Weed, Yes, which is very much a modern brewery name. Charleston and Ashville might not be the first places that come to mind when people think I'm going to go on a golf trip.
That's the cool thing about them, though, is you can go there and do other stuff.
The other stuff. And Charleston we didn't even talk about Charleston culture, Yeah, which is the greatest food, music, like amazing place.
You know, I was there and I wanted to see these courses, but then you know you want to get back so you can do stuff. And I was there with my family, like you know, these are places like if you do your planning and advance and get the tea times early, you can go play golf and be back. The other thing is it's not an hour away. You know, you're ten minutes away from where your your family is. So if you get in early tea time, you're there and you're back and you got the whole rest of your day.
In some of the coolest cities.
Yeah, city golf deserves a revival because to me, it's the coolest destination golf. You know, as you go to city and you get to experience the new culture and you have really cool night life. And I mean, I work in golf, so I think my perception has changed a little bit. But I really like going to a city and playing eighteen holes and then hanging out the rest of the afternoon.
Yeah, totally agree. That's our show for today. We should be back soon. In the meantime, if you've been enjoying the podcast, leave a rating or review or both in Apple Podcasts. Really helps people find the Frida Egg. Thanks for listening.