Hello, and welcome to the Frida Egg Podcast. I'm Garrett Morrison and today I'm joined by Andy Johnson. How's it going, Andy.
Oh, it's going swell. Just another day in paradise. We had great weekend Labor Day, weekend of golf with the Solheim Cup and you know, just ready to talk about two wonderful hidden gems in Michigan with you.
Are you still in Michigan? No, No, you've You've finally come back.
Mentally, I hope to think that I've stayed in northern Michigan, but I I'm afraid that all of my hopes and dreams of keeping that mental state have come crashing down, you know, on this Tuesday, as I've really gotten back in the saddle with work and and just you know, I took the garbage out last night and I realized that, you know, things are different.
Yep, yep, back home all right. So first, our sponsor for this episode is Zero Restriction. Zero Restriction is not only a Frida Egg sponsor, they were also the official outerwear for Team USA at the Solheim Cup. It is not Zero Restriction's fault the Team USA lost the Solheim Cup. They certainly were well dressed and I'm sure comfortable in any case.
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Bride egg Frida egg, the dreaded Frida egg Frida egg Egg bride egg Lie, I'm.
About ready to run off the golf course.
So Andy, we're going to talk about mainly a couple of great affordable public golf courses in Michigan in this episode, but we thought we'd first say a few words about the Solheim Cup, which we just watched over this past weekend. What are some big takeaways you had from the Solheim.
Cup Women's Golf. I think had a had a bit of a moment this weekend. Obviously, they had their premier event at a great golf course Inverness and went up against obviously the Tour Championship and whether or not the numbers will bear it out, you know, the social media definitely was an indicator that the Solheim Cup was the event to watch this weekend first and foremost. That'll be my big takeaway. You know, things such as how do
you pronounce his name? Nile herand the one direction guy with thirty million followers tweeting about it, no idea.
But I don't know how to pronounce his name. But there's no doubt in my mind that for people under thirty under twenty five years old, he is the most famous amateur golfer in the world.
Yeah, like him tweeting about the Solheim Cup, not the Tour Championship, you know, not men's golf. Women's golf was such a big deal. Like just like things like that anecdotally as well as like the dominant social discussion this weekend, you know, just like an NFL Sunday where there's a dominant social discussion, one storyline. It might be your team, it might be a player on your team, you know
your rivals team. There's always one dominant like the dominant story this weekend was the Solheim Cup, and that's just tremendous for women's golf, and it shows like when you put together a team competition, team competitions are far and few between, you know. I think like one of the natural reactions is we need more team competitions. Like one of the things that makes teams competitions so popular is
the scarcity of them. So I don't want to flood it with but I think there's room for more of them. But we have to be very pick and choosy on how we cultivate these ideas. And we don't need all of a sudden fifty weeks of team competitions right.
Now, Well it wouldn't be as special anymore. I mean, part part of what's great about the Solheim Cup the Ryder Cup is that you know they only come around every couple of years and you have time to miss it, Unlike what happens with PGA to our golf when you don't have any time to miss it and yearn for it. I think there are enough team competitions out there right now.
I mean you've got the President's Cup, the Ryder Cup, the Solheim Cup, the Curtis Cup, the Walker Cup, the NC Double as even the PGA Cup or the Eurasia Cup if it ever comes back. I'm not sure what's going on with that right now. But the problem is we don't cover them enough. They aren't really on TV except for the ones at the professional level. The Walker Cup is barely on TV in the US when it's overseas.
It got pretty good television coverage this year, as did the Curtis Cup, but I'd like to see more of that. I'd like to just see more emphasis on the team matchplay tournaments that we have because those have tradition, those have relevance to the players who participate in them, and I think that we need to cultivate those instead of thinking about adding more, because you could get to the point, as you say, where you know, all of a sudden, we have too many and that would be too bad as well.
You make a great point about history, tradition and that matters, and in the Solheim Cup is a younger event. So I think that's like this is going to be a big jumping off point I think I saw early in the week and I apologize to whoever wrote this, but they they made a comparison of this Solheim Cup and what it could be to the Ryder Cup's Kiowa moment when like that war by the shore, and I think like to a certain extent, that was a pre tournament prediction.
It's somewhat came true with this Solheim Cup where it really elevated the women's game to a different level than we typically see it.
I agree, But what do you think it was about this particular Soulheim Cup that elevated it to that level.
I think the coverage was great, Like there's a lot of its substantial we could watch everything, which is you know, being able, Like I would have loved to see it on NBC more than it was, but the reality is like the NBC is going to show the Tour Championship because they have a whatever billion dollar rights deal with them. But the I think think the coverage was number one. I think the golf course played it and do it having it at a golf course that's hosted numerous major
Championship Men's Major Championships was a big deal. You know, obviously the fans being there, but I think that's what elevated it. And then there was great play. The final important thing was that the players delivered and there was exemplary play and people saw just how talented, how good so many of these women are.
Yeah, it was great to see Inverness Club. It was great to see approach shots into those greens that weren't necessarily falling out of the sky right. You know, obviously they weren't running them up like you would on a links course necessarily, but you saw a variety of trajectories going into these greens, which made it really interesting for me as a viewer to watch this tournament. Because you know it's team matchplay, you get to see a lot of shots. That's one of the wonderful things about the
match play format. You tend to see more shots covered on TV than you do when it's stroke play, and that broadcast can kind of get into this pattern of just showing putts. So we saw some delightful approaches into these greens, kind of bouncing over bunkers, running up, using different contours on the green, but just you know, there
was a feeling that this was a major tournament. You know, the fact that it was at Inverness, the fact that this club has a storied history, that it's hosted a bunch of men's major championships, I thought gave this Solheim Cup a real weight. I do think that the venue was crucial here and I hope that that's part of the lesson that the organizers of the Solheim Cup learned from this past weekend.
Yeah, yeah, the venue was great. One of the things just real quickly about the venue that I enjoyed. And I don't know if this is a women's game thing or if it was Andrew Green's work, because we haven't seen like a men's major out there or a men's tournament out there, but like the penalty that those bunkers inflicted was really delightful. They you get up near and I think this is like just anecdotally from me playing it,
I feel like those bunkers are dead. You know, if you hit it into there and it gets anywhere near the face you are, you're not probably getting home. And we saw that with the women this week, where like finding bunkers had a monumental impact, especially the faraway bunkers.
You know, it's just something that we don't see we can week out on the PGA Tour very much right where like it was, it inflicted a penalty, and obviously I think that's one of the beauties of match play is where each hole feels so important, you know, and there's like a weight to the hole and losing ground,
like it feels like it could just slip away. And then certain players you just don't want to get down to and that you can see them just kind of put the put more and more pressure on them, and finding a bunker was this catastrophic thing like also, oh, I'm not gonna make par if I find this bunker like we saw it on the and the eighteenth which is the ninth hole with those bunkers on the right, which I didn't understand how poor the driving was on
the ninth or the eighteenth hole. It's like a very easy driving hole.
So the eighteenth hole for the Solheim Cup, which is the ninth hole for members, Yeah, I don't know. I find I find that to be a tricky driving hole. I guess there's a lot of space out there, but you know, when you're standing on that tee. It's a little bit hard to tell where you're supposed to hit the ball.
It's maybe true for me at.
Least, maybe you would expect more from a player who has already mapped out the course.
I just couldn't believe how many people were hitting it right. Yeah, and and like there's nothing good right, but there's all the room of the world left and.
We and we saw those bunkers that you were talking about really come into play there where you know they're in fairway bunkers, And a lot of times we saw the players kind of pitching out, which we just don't see that often. We see approach a lot of approach shots on the PGA Tour and the LPGA Tour, we see players hitting appro shots from bunkers. But yeah, I believe that green did build up those lips of those bunkers substantially and gave them that kind of raised up
angular appearance. And that's not just an aesthetic thing. It's also functional in the sense that it exacts a real penalty if you end up in the wrong place in those bunkers.
It seemed also like the other thing was when they missed green side, I felt like the recovery from those was so tough when you were short sided. Yeah, you know, a lot of bunker shots you saw. If they didn't have a lot of it was like, well like if they keep it, you know, fifteen feet, it was a great shot. And that probably has something to do with the old school sloping greens, like greens with substantial slope.
Yeah, and the external contours on those greens, right, there's a lot of severe contours on the edges of those greens, and often when you're playing out of a bunker, your recovery is going to land on a downslope and kind of propel away, right, and you're just not going to have much of a chance to get it close.
Did you find yourself watching the golf differently after your podcast with Joseph Lamanya last week and analyzing pairings and different plays a little bit differently.
Yeah.
So we had Joseph Lamania on the pod last week talking about the strategy of team match play and how captains really should be thinking through how they make their pairings, And certainly I was looking at the pairings that were made and the decisions that were made by the captains with through a slightly more critical lens. And you know, one of the main takeaways from what Joseph told me was that players with similar skill sets really shouldn't be
paired together. You know, you want people with complementary skill sets, especially if you know you're pairing together two relatively short players and two relatively long players. What you really want to do is spread those players out and make sure that you know they don't get caught with a lack in a certain with an absence of of a certain skill area in a single pairing. And that's especially important
and alternate shot. To my mind, I didn't see too many pairings that were glaring to me where I was like, yeah, that doesn't seem like a good decision. Maybe putting the court of sisters together actually wasn't great because both of them are among the longest players on the LPGA Tour. Maybe they should have been distributed more through the American team.
But one thing that I did notice when I was just considering the relative skills of the players on the American team and on the European team, is that Team Europe had a lot of long hitters.
Yeah.
Right, you would have just assume, maybe this is an.
Assumption men's it's a men's take that exactly, Americans are longer because men American men are the longest hitter.
And there's also a kind of sloppiness like European players just to learn the game different and they're more tactical. Blah blah blah. It's just nonsense. But the European team
had a lot of long hitters on it. I mean, Lexi Thompson is the longest hitter out there, But there were a bunch of Team Europe players who are in the kind of teams and twenties of the LPGA distance ranks, and they really didn't have many short players and a Nordquist was the lowest ranked player on Team Europe in terms of distance and so, whereas the American team had had a few short players who had great other skills
as well. But I think that the course prized a little bit of length, and I think that Europe had an advantage there.
One perfect example of like a data driven pairing that Joseph probably would have been proud of was the Leona McGuire mel Red pairing where mel Reid obviously a long player, a shaky potter, and you put her with one of your shortness hitters Leon McGuire, who's like eightieth and a distance off the tee and one of the best, very very best putters in the world. So all of a sudden, you melded that skill gap. And I think that's one of the things like if I see it with our
our tournaments. You know, we have it all at our events. We have alternate shot at every event, and it's like what you see is there like compliments from like teams that do well, like even if it's a high handicap, if they have like a you know, a high handicap low handicap pairing, they've got like a really good shot
at playing pretty well like above expectation. And then you sometimes see these two high handicaps work really well together, and then you see them maybe they make it into our shootout and it's like, oh one of them's really long, yeah, you know, and that that really helps, you know, So complimentary skills in an alternate shot is like such an important thing, and to understand it beyond data is to
play it. And when you play, like there are people that your game just works really well with in alternate shot, and typically those are players that play significantly different than you. I think one other thing I think there you know, obviously, like this might be simplistic, but the one of the lures of the team events is that there is a very clear winner and a loser.
Yeah.
And it's not like, you know, like the professional events, there's obviously a winner, but then like if you finish eighth, you don't necessarily say good week, like great week, you know, good playing. There's a gray area between winner and loser. Right with the team events, the finality of it's over and one team won, one team lost. Yeah, I think that adds to the viewing because you know that it's over.
Yeah. That there are clear stakes in a team match play tournament. This is something I thought about throughout the week, just the consistency of the stakes. There's there's real substance to which team wins, obviously, and every match feels important from the first day through the third day. Every match
feels like it has big consequences. And yet at the same time, late on Monday afternoon, even though Europe was playing way better in a lot of ways than the US team, even though Europe didn't really relinquish its lead throughout the entire tournament, it felt like things could turn around. It felt like, you know, this could all flip if a few matches go the US's way.
There was like that flickering hope. But it was just like it was so it was so absurd to all the things that needed to happen. It was enough battle, like sure, I like because like I thought it was over, and then I was like it's over, and then I was like, well, wait a second, and then I thought about it. And then by the time like it flipped, it was like I realized, like, you know, how ridiculous it was to think that the Americans still had a chance.
It seems like in retrospect, but listen, I mean, if a couple of matches flipped, yeah, then then it could have been you know, and that would have been one of the greatest comebacks that we can remember. And so there's always that little potential you never know. Yeah, it's the hope that kills you. We should probably move on to talking about these uh these Yeah, this was way longer, but the courses that we're going to discuss are Champion
Hill and Pinecroft in Michigan. I think the overall topic that we're discussing here right the concept we're talking about is how affordable golf can work as a family business, and and we're using these courses of as an example of how that can function. So Champion Hill and Pinecroft are in Northern Michigan or northern Lower Michigan. I guess I should say, I don't want to offend the people
on the Upper Peninsula. Uh, these courses are owned by the same family, and they're they're pretty close to Traverse City and really close to Crystal Downs, which is the famous Alistair McKenzie.
Course Arcadia too. They're fifteen minutes from Arcadia Bluffs for sure.
So this is these are definitely courses to go to if you're going to take a trip to Arcadia Bluffs. They're family owned. As I said, they're affordable, they're well designed. They're basically examples of these public golf unicorns that we only occasionally run across in America. I think the first of them that you saw was Champion Hill.
Right, Yeah, So I saw Champion Hill a number of years ago. It was one of those. I was in the area, I had like three hours to kill. I went out there and saw and saw it and it was it blew my mind. It was the middle of the day though I didn't have my camera with me. I took some you know, shoddy drone and it was just something in my mind. I always was like, well, I need to get back there and do a proper, proper frieda egg. Look see at it, because it's an
incredible place. And this was the second golf course that they built. You know, we'll get into the story, but these are people that weren't serious golfers that built this golf course. They were farmer and it's just an amazing thing when you stumble across a piece of amateur architecture and and it blows your mind at how good it is. And I think they're few and far between, like you discussed. Like another example would be the Ache and Golf Club
down in Aken, which we've done pieces on. But these guys did everything right. And you know, this time around, I got to play Pinecroft too, which was their first design and it opened in the early nineties. It's just a wonderful example of architecture. I couldn't believe. Like I was expecting it to be like a little bit worse than Champion Hill, like in terms of like the architectural stuff, but like and the end, I actually kind of the more I think about it, I think it was more
it's more sophisticated. Wow, from an architecture standpoint, and what they accomplished there than Champion Hill is, even though Champion Hill is a better golf course, but what they did at Pinecroft is truly unbelievable in terms of how it's routed. The layout is like amazing, and then like they built a lot of very wide range of greens, you know, down to you look back on the round, it's like, God, they're par threes. They have a short, long, and two
medium par threes. They have like great variety. They didn't just build two hundred yard par threes on that course. And the routing is incredible because it's situated on this side hill. This is Pinecroft. They're both situated on hills, but it's on this pie on this hill that overlooks Beulah, Michigan and Crystal Lake, which is one of the most beautiful lakes in the country. And it's a very severe hill. But you go down the hill and you play the front nine and it kind of winds around and comes
back up very similar to a Perry Maxwell routing. Ten U t off right next to one you go back down the hill and then it comes up for the final four holes, which have this dramatic views of Crystal Lake on the flat ground, and you just realize it's like god, like, so many people would have screwed this routing up, and they nailed it. Yeah, like they absolutely nailed it. And it's like, this is not an easy place to lay out a golf course because of the severity of the land.
And this was the first try of an untrained architect.
M and that's the amazing thing about it. And then you go to Champion Hill and the routing, you know, they did something. You can tell that they built bigger greens, you know, and you know, the routing's a little clunkier. I think, you know, it wasn't an easy place to rout a golf course. There's a couple tough walks on the front nine, the routings a little clunkier. The land is absolutely jaw dropping. Like you know, Arcadia Bluffs has
better views. The site of being on the lake at Arcadia is better, but the land for golf, if you're purely looking at it from a golf standpoint, the land at Champion Hill just blows it out of the water and blows almost anywhere of the water in the country. So that golf course and then you see all the par threes are like two hundred yards, so you think, oh, like this is where somebody said you need longer par threes.
Like you can start to see maybe we're public public feedback crept into their design thoughts.
Yeah, yeah, and made it not as good, which is the.
Well, if you go there, just play different tees for the par threes and make them varied, and then all of a sudden they aren't all two hundred plus yards.
Now.
To be clear, the peak eighteen hole walking rate at both of these courses is forty five dollars. Yes, you were making a comparison to Arcadia Bluffs and the rates at Arcadia Bluffs are quite a bit higher to say the least. So these are these are pretty special golf courses.
You know.
Champion Hill is a stunning looking golf course. It comes across well on social media. You posted some pictures on Twitter and Instagram a few days ago that the people really enjoyed. Can you paint a picture of this golf cour for people? What does it look like?
Just in general? So you're at the highest point in Benzie County, which is the county that is in So you're up high on this very dramatic piece of land. There are very few trees. It's tumbling terrain, you know. You see you kind of drive up this road and it's really the only thing around. It's got some really fun short par fours. It's one of those golf courses like it doesn't really matter what the greens are because
the land is so good. It's such a you know, you have to hit shots in different shots that you're not used to so much to get to the greens. And then they have some very clever greens. I think if you were going to point to where Champion Hill falls a little short, it'd be like the greens aren't quite as clever as the Pinecroft greens. They're bigger, but they have less going on in them. And you know, the land's just it's just stunning land. Like I mean, you think about a few of the holes out there.
The second plays up to this wonderful like peninsula like green that's on the point of the property, and it's just a it's a stunning hole. And then you know right after that three and four three is a short part four that plays up a hill, this blind over it, over a ridge. It's it's a really cool hole. And then four you're up on this high point and you're looking down and you know, you look down and you're like, is this is this really? Do I pay forty five
dollars to play this place? You're like cackling to yourself, Yeah, because it's just like wow, like that, you know you've got this. You're you're playing this downhill par four long par four with a ridge that kind of cuts along. I mean, it's just the only way really to properly describe it is to go see it. You're just wowed by where the that this land exists, you know for golf.
So these are pretty unique golf courses, but they do represent a certain model of affordable golf that is different from the model of affordable golf that we talk about the most which is municipal golf government owned properties. This is a family business basically, these two courses together and the comparisons that listeners to this podcast might be familiar with would be Aiken also Eagle Spring, a family business
Eagle Springs. Right, these are courses that were not necessarily designed by a professional architect but they were designed by people who knew what they were doing, who had good ideas about architecture. And this might be the ideal model of affordable golf because you know, we all love municipal golf, but municipal ownership comes with a lot of complexities that
don't necessarily serve the golf course as well. There's always a shortage of funds, and the people who run the courses are often not free to do what they want to do to make the experience as good as possible.
Well, they aren't necessarily incentivized to make a profit.
Yeah, and so there are a lot of problems with the municipal model. Obviously, right, it's still great, but there are issues with it. This family owned model is so much more appealing in so many ways. The problem becomes when you know the people who are running the business don't know what they're doing, but when they do know
what they're doing, the results can just be wonderful. And if they're committed to the mission of affordability, which the owners of Pinecroft and Champion Hill are, then what you have is a unicorn.
Yeah, and I think there's certain things like when I think about Aiken and here. The maintenance strategy is different at these places than it is at your municipal golf course. Like all these places, you know that we just described Eagle Springs too, there's like substantial width on the golf course, like whether it's fairway grass or whether it's you know, a single mow, there is width and there's limited trees.
Like they know that they that gets people around more. Yeah, you know, you think about the maintenance of them though, and it's like they all have this wide corridor and it's not perfect. They understand, like if I'm going to maintain a golf course with a tiny crew, all of
them have skeleton crews. This is the type of maintenance that is aspirational, tiny budget and tiny budgets, tiny crews, and they provide a great product versus like rather than saying, hey, you know this superintendent at exclusive country club that's got a multimillion dollar budget, they're just in completely different arenas and these people like you know, Champion Hill and Pinecroft.
I got a message or somebody commented on Instagram it's like, if they only cut the greens, and I replied, I said, well, you know, if they cut the greens more, then it wouldn't cost forty five dollars, and somebody else like said something, I've never I've never heard somebody complain about people cutting their greens, And I said, well, I've heard a lot
of people complain about price. And that's the thing is the magic of these places is providing a wonderful product at a very affordable price and being able to turn a profit, which they clearly do.
Yeah, and keeping the maintenance minimal, and then being able to manage golfers expectations around that because that comment you got about cutting the greens is a great example of something that gets said to golf course owners golf course superintendence and puts pressure on them to ramp up the maintenance budget and then ramp up the green fees, and then all of a sudden you're caught in this cycle of expectations and rising costs that we're all familiar with
in golf courses. Fortunately, it seems like the owners of Pinecroft and Champion Hill have a solid enough sense of self and security about what they're trying to do so that they can, you know, keep doing it, keep it affordable, and not get caught up in this rat race.
That's the thing it is sensible. Like the clubhouses are super sensible. Yeah, Like at all of these facilities, like they're small, they have a grill, they don't have like a massive food you know service. It's like you go in there and you pay and that's all you do. Like that's all you need.
You know.
I think about a lot of like the the great public golf courses, and it's like the public golf courses that have the fifteen million dollar clubhouses are rarely the ones that have the great golf course. It's like like you think about like Sweeten's Cove is a perfect example. It was a trailer. You know, it just still is a trailer, right, you know, that's all you need, you just need. You know. It's just sensible because all the
things that are luxurious end up just costing consumers. And if you're in Northern Michigan, it's hard to contend with Arcadia Bluffs. If your price is one hundred and ten dollars, you know, you're in that same stretus and people are gonna look at It's like, oh I could go look at Lake Michigan. Whether or not your golf course is
better or not. You know, that's just gonna be the consumer reat Well, I stare at Lake Michigan all day, but at you know, at forty five dollars, these places are just like you're not gonna find many better values of the entire country. Like I think that's like where I would put these in terms of the value discussion, is that you know, probably in the top twenty value
courses in the entire country. And like, if we're talking about like just a value trip in general, like you can drive, like we've covered the three Degrees courses in Grand Rapids, and those are three terrific golf courses. I think the most that you'd pay in any of those Grand Rapids is like seventy five bucks. Then you drive up the coast a little bit. There's Maynesty Golf Club, which is a bendelo that's right on Lake Michigan. It's got like four goals right on Lake Michigan. Stunning property.
You know, it probably shouldn't be an eighteen hole golf course at this point. It's kind of constricted because it was built in the early nineteen hundreds, and you know, maybe if it was a twelve gohle course it could be really spectacular, But then you got that golf course and you know it's worth checking out. And then you got if you play Arcadia South at twilight and it stays light till ten pm there in the summer. Yeah,
I think the twilight right, there's like sixty bucks. If it's like past four o'clock, you got plenty of time for eighteen holes. And then you've got these two courses and it's like all together, you're you know, it's a couple hundred bucks. You could play like seven rounds of great golf. And then you go a little further in Belvedere's up there. That's like up to one hundred and
twenty bucks. Now. But if you want like really affordable golf trip, and meanwhile, like one of them, drive up one of the most beautiful coasts in America, which is right along Lake Michigan, this is your trip.
Yeah, maybe we should introduce the guests that we have for the rest of the episode. Who are these guys?
Yeah, so Lee Stone is the owner of these two golf courses. He was a fruit farmer turned Christmas tree farmer, and then one day he decided to build a golf course because he said he was getting old and tired of farming Christmas trees, so this was a solution. It tells the story of that briefly. And then Jim Cole, the guy is superintendent from day one, guy that helped them build the golf course, who had been in the superintendent industry, had been on some construction crews in northern Michigan,
but at the time was a home landscaper. He was just, you know, doing spraying people's yards. And I mean the fact that the guy Jim Cole, was like, well, Crystal Downs is a good spot, and he bought He tell us the story, but he said Crystal Downs was a great golf course. So I bought Mackenzie's book and we followed the thirteen principles. It's just as simple as that.
There's nothing too complicated about it. So here are Jim Cole and Lee Stone talking about Champion Hill and Pinecroft in Michigan.
Within before you built Champion Hill and Pinecroft, Pinecroft being the first golf course, what were you doing for work?
My family, we were still farming and the Pinecroft property we had converted it from fruit over to Christmas trees. We were in the Christmas tree business for a lot of years, but we didn't. We decided we didn't want to keep doing that, getting too old. So we've got this one hundred and sixty acres sitting here and we didn't know what to do with it. It's the original farm, so when my grandpa started, we didn't want to sell it. And we you know, a beautiful development property, and we
could have. We could have sold it in a minute, probably for development property, but we just wanted to keep it. But we didn't know what we were going to do with it. And I might have told you this before my wife and kids back in the I guess it would have been the middle eighties, early eighties, late eighties. We went down to Panama City Beach over some vacation
break during school and the kids. We stayed at a KOA camp right on the main drag, and the kids and wife could walk across the street to the beach and I would get up early, still dark, and I shoulder my bag. We had a little motor home, so I couldn't drive there, so I had to walk there. I walked, I don't know, three or four blocks down to the Signal Hill golf course. It's still there at that time, and I don't know if it's true now
they didn't take tea times. You get down there and you stick your ball and a thing, and when your ball falls in the thing, then you go out. And so there's a whole bunch of guys standing there in the dark. I thought, well, gee, if people will do this, maybe that's something we should think about. My dad and I didn't know anything about golf at all except we played, and so I came home and I talked to my dad about it, and oh, he said, I don't think so,
you know. But the more he thought about it, probably two or three weeks later, he said, you know, maybe we had to look into that. And that's about the time I started talking to Jim.
So, Jim, what's your job here at Champion Hill and Pinecroft?
Well, I'm the golf course superintendent. I go back and forth between the two of them and just basically manage the turf grass.
Did you do anything else for the courses? Were you feel like you're selling yourself short here?
No, that's just about what I do.
Nothing with construction. You didn't help build them?
Well yeah, way back when, you know, but as Lee said, we had. His name was Craig Carlson, and he was our shaper, and I mean Lee and I balked this property day after day after day with different routings, and I don't know, we probably had ten or fifteen routings before we figured on one.
Yeah, how did the whole process start? So you came out with Lee, he started talking to you. You were at Crystal Mountain at the time.
I had been at Crystal Mountain on their golf courses, and but I had gone and to Ala. I started my own lawn spray business. I was spraying lawns and landscaping at the time, and when Lee hired me, we started out kind of slow, and he said, you keep doing what you're doing and come and work on the golf court, help with this golf course in the evening. So we took it a step at a time.
So what were your first impressions of the property when you came out here?
Well, as I said, I was spraying lawns. I probably had three or four hundred lawns.
That I sprayed.
He drove me up the hill, which was a two track back then, and I made to turn look west and I knew that I had to be part of it.
It just had to be Yeah, yeah, it's obviously a stunning property overlooking Crystal Lake. I'm curious how you guys went about. Like obviously, I think everybody, when there are any golfer, dreams about owning and building their own golf course. So oftentimes amateur golf design isn't necessarily something that goes great. You guys, on the other hand, have built two really phenomenal public golf courses that are affordable and really fun
and wonderful designs to play. How did the process start, as you know, Lee, as you said, I didn't know anything about golf except I played. How did you guys start the process of building the golf course? What were you know? You said you had ten to fifteen routings. How did that come about?
Well, as Jim said, I brought him up to the property and and it kind of excited him a little bit, and so then I thought, well, maybe there's maybe we could do something, But we didn't. I think when I started, I didn't have I couldn't see into the future. I thought we were just going to make another place for people to come up and play golf, maybe for twenty bucks, twenty five bucks or something like that. That it turned out better than that.
So how do you just start building? Like you talked about the routing, Probably you guys were walking that. You guys walked the court and walked the property a lot, like how did you start figuring out what hold what? How you wanted to build the golf course?
Well, we bought a laser so we could shoot distances and through the through gym and some of the stuff that we read.
What what did you read?
We read Mackenzie's book and we studied as ten principles. I remember when Lee and his dad, Jeane both approached me and we agreed to work together. That they both they said they wanted to build a course that uh was minimal. They wanted to move as little dirt as possible. They didn't necessarily want to build a course it was high end. They wanted to build a course that would require less fertilizer requirements, less pesticide requirements. And we've moved
along those lines for thirty years now. I think we're probably one of the very few golf courses in Michigan that are wing their fairways with rotarymovers at one inch and the grass loves it. The people that come here love it. So we've moved in that direction for thirty years.
I mean it provides it's a perfect playing service. Like I think that's so many courses get caught up in conditioning. But like the fairways here, they're fine. They aren't like they're not super tight, but like you know, I think in a way it helps the average player who sweeps it, who his fairway was, like, they like it, and for a good player, like, it's actually more challenging because you're always worried about whether the ball is going to jump
or something out of a lie. So it's an interesting way to provide. Almost everybody always talks about shortening the gap between good players and average players, and that's like a perfect way to do it. It's just with you know, a little bit a little scruffy or fairway makes it a little bit less predictable for the good player and a little bit easier for the average player.
Yeah, and you know the thing that we did here instead of going with bent grass fairways and having that tight turf situation where you can spin the ball and hit down on the ball and people just seem to like a dude, they come here or they like it.
Yeah, it's cool. So talk about the routing, Like, you talked about walking the golf course a bunch beforehand and you had ten fifteen routings, how did you settle on holes?
Like?
What was that like?
Well, the one thing we did in the league came had a topo map made, so we relied on that at the beginning, and then it was just just walking and it's thinking about you know, where the sun's going to be, where the is going to be, what how that will affect things, that sort of thing.
We wanted to get from one level to the other level, maybe one of the easier ways, and so that was part of the design too.
So for walkers, it's a joy to walk.
It's a one time up walk, well partially all the way up one time, and we get a lot of walkers. We have a lot of walkers that play here.
So you guys built this golf course and it opens in ninety two, is it immediately? Would it become pretty popular right off the bat or did it grow over time? You know what led you to building the second course?
Well, it was popular. The first year we opened. We only had nine holes and we were working on the back nine and the first nine. The routing actually changed.
You had the high holes, I bet in the first nine right.
Well, we had some on the lower part and some on the high part, but the routing and changed, and then after we had full construction, then we then we had our front and back nine. So the second year. The first year we were busy, but we were only nine holes and we had a good reception. Second year with eighteen holes, it was even better. The third year we were running out of tea times and we we were on what eight minute tea times at that time.
So in kiddingly, I think I took Jim up to Champion Hill.
Did you own that land?
Then? Yes?
It was that another farm, another farm, and what kind of farm was this one? That was Christmas trees Champion Hill with Christmas trees.
And were I kiddingly said to Jim, I said, maybe we ought to build another course. And we thought about it, and we were turning people away here at Pinecroft Course. Golf was raided in its heyday, ing us us GA or National Golf Foundation. Somebody was saying, oh, we need more golf courses. Well they were a little bit wrong on that one, but anyway.
I think they said that they needed that the America needed to build a golf course every day or something like that.
So in ninety five, well, we worked on seeing if it was going to be possible. We had We ended up buying a little bit of property, and then in ninety five that's when we bought the dozer.
We bought a D eight D seven D six doz are which Lee and Craig ran most of the time. But the day, I don't know if you remember this or not, the day we took delivery of it, I think the three of us maybe I think Hippie might have been there too. And so we had this new toy to play on, and of course we were having a few beers, and before the night was over, we all got to play on it. And we also decided that we were going to go UH with our designated driver,
Hippie UH head for Augusta. We wanted to see Augusta. We did not had there, but that was in our minds.
That's fine. How did you learn how to use the dose? Was it just like you get on the doser and do you figure out like how it worked? Like how is there what was the first green that was built? Is there something that you built out here that was a mistake? That maybe turned into something really good.
Well, there's enough mistakes probably that could have been done differently if we'd known, you know, as far as slope on greens. But and we've made some corrections on them. But I think number one was our first hole.
It's great golf all. I love one.
I don't know we had we've made it. We've modified number nine and number eleven over the years. Other than that, I guess it's pretty much the way it wasn't it. Little tree removal apparently not enough.
Just so funny a couple. I'm not trying to take all the trees out of here. I just I just pointed out like five of them. What with it? Like regards like building the features, how how did you start to build the greens and stuff? With the doser? You get the dose and then yeah.
The farm we were in the farming business at the time, and the farm had a little dozer and then we bought another one. It was a little bit bigger and uh, and we just started pushing dirt for that green on number one. It was just taken forever. And then we hired somebody, a real operator, yeah, Craig and uh, and
things were a lot more efficient at that point. And then by the time we got done, we had some fairly big equipment here to you know, not any bigger than a D six, but we had a couple of scrapers. We had to move a little dirt. But you know, I don't know, we just we would I guess what you would say is is we pushed dirt around until we thought it would work. And that's about where we stopped. Right.
Well, that's the way a lot of them do a lot of the best guys do it. They say, they get into the dirt and then they figure out what works and they get off and they say that looks pretty good. And that's how they build the greens.
Right, I don't know. That's how we did it, That's what that's how we did it.
So with Champion Hill, you guys had built here and you operated it here, operated here for a while. What were things that when you went to build Champion Hill that you wanted to do that maybe you had learned from the years here. What were some of the different things from the construction and just the golf course perspective.
Well, we wanted to have a golf course that was completely different than Pinecraft. We didn't want to have two courses the same, and that property being up in the highest part of the county afforded some pretty wide open You had a feeling of openness up there, whereas Pinecroft is tree lined. And we made the greens bigger, and we still made a couple of mistakes on our greens there. Some people say, and uh.
You know, if somebody says it's a bad green, that means it's probably a good green because you.
Know, well, as far as cupping, we've got at least one green that we're a little limited on where we can come. But it's a well wait we call that a what a highlands uh links course or it's got a lot of heathery stuff around it, and but you have a feeling of openness wide fairways and uh there's no water except on the last hole, but the heather is not a good place to be. They just like to hammer that ball out there because they they're not what do you, I don't know how you see, Yeah,
there's nothing there that's just wide open. You know.
The thing that impresses me with both courses is like, I feel like a lot of times if you if you're designing, you know, you're given a land like this with hills, A lot of times people like to just go up or down. And what I've noticed about the two courses is how you guys weren't afraid to go along the sides of hills and around hills rather than
just always straight up or straight down them. Was there any thought with the routing process on how you know you guys weren't afraid to build a hole on the side of a hill and have a ball kick across a fairway.
Well, I think for me, I mentioned before, I was in the launch spray business and one of my customers was a member of Crystal Downs, and you take me there for several years once a year as a guest, and that's what you see over there, and then you read his book and that's stuff just kind of sticks in your head. And then on top of that, you had Jeene and Lee telling you that that's what they had in their head too, So it just all developed from there, I'd say.
I mean, I think one of the things that it's so interesting is obviously, like I think one of the hardest skills in golf architecture is restraint. You know, people want to move dirt to make stuff flat, make it more fair, or you know, want to you know, build these like wild dreams, when sometimes some just subtle stuff is all that's needed. And this is the two of
the course. Both the courses a great examples of restraint, like you know, the the just the natural land itself in them in many places is more than enough for the strategy of the golf course.
And it wasn't just restraint. It was probably lack of.
Money, if you don't mind me asking, you know, like when you guys built the golf court, you obviously already owned the land, Like how much did it?
Do you do?
You know how much it cost to just build the golf course? Obviously you did it all on your own. So you know, if you're not comfortable answering that, then I.
Don't know if I remember, I would say, didn't we build Pinecroft for about eight hundred thousand or was it less than that? It might I don't remember. It costs us more more than that at Champion Hillton because we we had a lot more seeding and a lot more irrigation. And I don't well, I'll tell you what I can remember. When I was in debt over a million dollars, so it must have cost something.
Yeah, yeah, it's uh so well obviously COVID being a course owner, COVID was like a you know, at first really scary, but then golf had a huge boom and it's carried through this year. What's the turnaround been like as a you know, independent golf owner, which there aren't a lot of family run golf courses like yourselves in America? I mean most of them are run by you know, management corporations or resorts. Like, what what's the what's the uptech been like for you guys? Have you guys seen.
Well, we're having our best year ever this year. Last year was our best year ever. So I guess we've seen a lot of a lot of new golfers, a lot of ladies playing, and I think we're seeing a few more younger people playing.
Do you what you know? Do you think that it's a like is it a different type of golfer that you're seeing than usually than you used to do or is it you know, you know, outside of the women, and you know, have you noticed anything else?
We're in a tourist area, summer tourist area, and last year people were really limited. What they could do, and so golf was something that they started doing, and I think people got interested in golf again. And we're seeing those same people this year, the recreational golf, not competitive golf. We're seeing families and small family groups come in and play. But when our season is, the warm season is done,
we're pretty much done. In fact, we closed Pinecroft the first of October and that's really probably the prettiest time of the year, but it's hard to maintain because of the leaves, and so we shut it down a little early. Champion Hill we don't have that problem, so we keep that open till the bitter end.
Yeah. Yeah, how's has there been anything that's changed, like with your guys' philosophy with golf over the you know, now thirty years that you've been operating courses.
I mean we know from our businesses. Something you don't see very much of is courses like Champion Hill, links courses, wide courses. We have these two and this one is constricted.
With trees and there's space though.
There's space though, but there's more rounds and say our membership, our membership prefers Champion Hill. They like Champion Hill because they can stand up there and hit that driver along and not being underneath a tree. And if you think about it, at least when I think about northern Michigan, you have two courses down here, Arcadia Bluffs. There are links courses in this part of Michigan, Champion Hills the other one. There's probably others that I'm not familiar with.
But people like that style. That's what I see.
Yeah, it's definitely it's fun because I feel like here too, is like it's very beginner friendly. Like there's plenty of space, there's no force carries for the most part. Outside you know, there's one pond that you barely have to navigate, but like you know, there's very little force carries. You know, you can run it into most greens here. I don't think there's a green. I can't think of a green that you can't run it into here. And then you've got a great variety. I mean, like you got short
part threes, you got longer part threes. It's really a cool place. You guys did a wonderful job, and I lee, I'd love to know if you ever had where you're like, why am I building this golf course?
Well, I don't I would say, eight years after we build it. I had that feeling, yeah, two thousand and eight. But building it, I don't. It seemed like there was quite a bit of interest in it in the community, and I guess once we got going on it, it was go for it or you know, bust.
Do you miss the Christmas tree business?
Not at all?
But hey, I thank you guys for coming on, and I urge everybody when you're up in northern Michigan stop at one or both. You guys got it? What's the double deal?
Is it?
What fifty sixty bucks to play both in one day?
I don't work at the counter, but I think it's sixty three for the first round and then the replay, which can be done at either course. Yeah, I think that's in the thirtiesties.
Under one hundred bucks, thirty six holes of really good golf. So thank you guys and hoping for more great years. Hopefully next year is better than this year.
Well we do too. I would like to say that it's we've got a really good crew and uh and we're we've got we're family. I think there's nine of us that are that work on the golf course that are family.
That's awesome and uh, and.
We've got the second generation just moving into higher positions and we hope it continues. We're we would hate to sell this farm or now it's a golf course, but we would hate to sell this property.
So the that I interviewed a guy named Mike Bolan who owned a course in Wisconsin and his family had owned it for since eighteen ninety three. Pretty neat, you know, same family for they just sold. He just sold it to a cousin. So still technically family, which is which is neat And it's you just in general, support, your support, your family owned businesses. Those are the the lifeblood of society.
I think actually my family is extended because I consider my partner here, Jim, is part of the family.
Thirty years together. Thirty years together makes you family.
We've each got our own personality and I guess that makes us get along all right.
I'm lucky I have worked for Lee for these thirty years because people say that I can be short tempered, and he's put up with it.
This episode was edited by Meg Atkins and by me Garrett Morrison. I want to give a quick plug for our newsletter written by Will Knights. It will arrive in your inbox every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and it will tell you everything you need to know about the world of golf. Go to our website, The Friday dot com and you can subscribe to our free newsletter there. Check it out and thanks for listening.
Mm hmmm.