Welcome back to another edition of the Frida Egg Podcast. In Part two of our conversation with Andrew Green, we discussed as restoration work at Inverness and Oak Hill, a bunker less course he's building, and much more. If you miss part one, be sure to check it out. And here's Andrew Green.
The fried egg requires a different technique.
What you need to do is actually square the face so it'll dig down underneath that bad lie and propel that ball right out onto the green.
Here's the thing. Playing out of a buried lion a bunker is completely different than playing out of a nice clean lion a greenside bunker. You need to be aggressive on any shop, whether it's sitting cleanly for its Frida Egg. Well, we've all faced it.
The dreaded Friday eggs not to be feared, though it's actually a pretty easy shot to hit.
There's very few places that have just like been content with doing nothing well, and some of the best spots end up being the ones that were broke for a really long time because they didn't have any money to do anything.
Yeah.
Philmont in Philadelphia had struggled for a while trying to figure out how to keep going and they're kind of still working through some of the management stuff. But that golf course, there was some debate whether it was Flynn or who designed it the north especially there, and we kind of uncovered it was Willie Park Junior.
But because they didn't do.
A lot along the way, it's so well preserved. You're exactly right, it's it's pretty amazing times.
The best thing is when they're broke.
Well yeah, yeah, it's uh.
And look.
And then you get in circumstances like at oak Hill. The West course wasn't the championship course, right, so not a lot got done to it, and those greens are spectacular, and I mean, I think the kind of the joke there is, you know if the West course greens are on the East course, I mean, wow, right, you know, and that's hopefully you know at some point what we're going to get to do.
But yeah, it's got to help that you have like that course sitting next to the other one and for people so you're working at oak Hill, yeah, because you can draw off a lot of stuff they did there, and I imagine there's a lot of common themes on the same property.
Yeah, and I think we've done that.
We took.
It was a good educational tool, right because the members innately knew that they liked the West Course and the things. They couldn't necessarily identify it, but you could walk out and you could start talking them through. Okay, well this why you probably like this is because of this. You know, that's what that hole over there really needs is a
little bit of this flavor. Yeah, it's certainly helped. The big thing on the West Course is most of the fairway bunkers got taken out, but the shapes and the landforms are still there. But the other cool thing there is when you look at Ross's notes, the notes he made on the West Course are different from the notes he made on the East.
Brilliant.
You know that he was looking at kind of some differentiated styling between the two courses.
That's fascinating. That was a course that he spent a lot of time at, right, How can you tell when it's a course that Ross spent a lot of time at versus like I know Inverness is one that he spent a ton of time at, versus one that one of his associates did.
Though, So.
Well, there's a couple of things he obviously did a bunch of work right, and he did some whistle stop things that seems like maybe just drove a stake in the ground and tea here green there, we'll see you later kind of thing. Certainly it seems there was some of that. I think his early work is very interesting. It's not standardized in any form. And playing Royal Dornick opened my eyes to seeing how he probably saw how creative golf holes could be, because that piece of property
at Dornick is amazing. But the things that I could see his early work obviously were pretty much all him. The one interesting thing is you don't find a lot of early drawings that were totally done by him. There's like most times it's some kind of as built, or a club member or an engineer or somebody did a representation of what got built. So even here at Inverness, the nineteen nineteen drawing that I pretty much call an as built, we can't find solid evidence that it was
him or his associate that drew it. It seems to be somebody here locally that created that plan. Working at Keep Your Country Club in Wilmington, North Carolina. He did two versions. One was way early and that drawing that they have is kind of an as built crazy. Some of the craziest things I've ever seen in my life on a golf course were part of that drawing. And then he's got one from maybe just a little after forty with McGovern and it's more of the standardized drawing
that you would see out of his offices. The coolest stuff, the stuff I love spending time on are his handwritten notes when he made psyche visits after he had associates,
because it blows my mind how quickly it appears. And I don't know exactly how long he was, you know, I don't have great records of he arrived on Saturday and left on the following Sunday or what, but to see how he took those field notes, Like at Oakhill there's field notes and the envelope from where he stayed in the hotel that he put it all together, and then he sent it to his office, and the office
created construction drawings that pretty much followed his notes. There were maybe a few little tweaks, but man, those handwritten notes are spectacular and his hand, his touch with the pencil. They're not the most artistic things in the world. It's kind of like have you studied some of Mackenzie's drawings, Right, They're not the most artistic things in the world, but they really help tell the story of what he was trying to create. You know, Yeah, they're so cool, They're awesome.
I could get lost in that stuff.
Past the Tempo's got the best menu in golf because they put all of his little little catches in the menu.
It's like, well, they've asked me here at Eenverness for some of mine from construction, and look, I'm probably a little embarrassed by how rough some of them are, because it's you know, I really like to provide field direction and help get the guys headed in the right direction of what I'm looking for before we even you'll get on site to work work on the things in the dirt. I kind of I call them tpee sketches to try to lighten the load that they're not supposed to be
this incredible artistic thing. They're supposed to provide direction and show which way water's supposed to move and where the high point is. And you know, but I actually I had somebody draw sketch something up and they send it to me, and I was kind of laughing about it, and they were like, well, you don't like it, and I sent them up one of mackenzie sketches from Augusta and I was like, no, I was saying, it looks a lot like this. I was like, it's pretty cool.
That stuff's great. I mean, because you just think about the day, the limited tools the guys had, you know, they're really just soaking it all in and creating these amazing things without you know, the bulldozer, and uh, it's just it's really cool at the craft. You know, it was a craft, and that's what I'm trying to do. You know, sometimes I get stuck in technology and in the business of it, but man, it was it was such a craft to those guys, and even Ross that
that that worked a lot and traveled a lot. And I'm not sure how he did all the courses or obviously if he did all the courses that are assigned to him, but the guy was brilliant.
With with Inverness, and you know, you it was a course that was, you know, brilliant ross design. Obviously, tons of history, six major championships, some senior opens, you know, just rich history. One of the most historic clubs in the Midwest. But it was a course that kind of was like a squirrel that you described earlier. So when you came here, you know, what were what were kind
of the biggest challenges with this project? And do you feel more pressure when you come to course like Okill or here like Inverness where you have all that history. That was like four questions.
Yeah, no, no, no, I'll start with the pressure part. I mean I feel pressure at every place I'm working. I love the idea that when I'm done, there's a sense that it's hard to tell what I've done. I think that's a success, you know, if I can check that off the list. And you know, sometimes I'm probably more successful than others. I'm probably my harshest critic. One thing I love about like Pinehurst and thinking about the way Ross worked there as he was constantly tweaking his stuff.
You know, to have that freedom is great because you always are seeing something that you know, maybe I could tweak here. There the pressure here, at Inverness and at Okill, it's just that for me, it's the pressure of and it's every club, but it's you know, I want to do what's right for the club, and it's it's not just the members of the club. Obviously I want to do it's right for them, but I want to do what's right for all of that history. And it's so
hard because the game changes so much. Like, how do you know this whole idea of restoration is restoration exactly the way it was? Well, that's all finding good. But I can almost show you countless examples of where something that was built or drawn one day was changed within a number of years, something that changed, you know, like you said, the sand lines you know, you said, you know they evolve over time. Yeah, absolutely, you know, the greens get sand splash out of bunkers and the top
lines change all the time. You know, the guy on the mower has a rough night and the skipson area now the green starts to get you know, rounded or whatever. You know, things are constantly changing. So trying to trying to respect the history of these clubs, trying to draw. I love doing the research. I love finding old stuff. I found both of these clubs at Inverness and Okill. I've found documents that the club didn't even have, people
didn't even know was out there. You know, using that as inspiration is exciting, it's not you know, I don't ever feel like I'm selling myself short when I can find a historical document and I can draw something off of it to put it back in the ground that fits the modern game. You know, it doesn't have to be Andrew's design. It can be Andrew's respect of what was there. And look, you open yourself up for criticism.
And everybody's a golf course architect, and everybody has an opinion, and I certainly understand that, and I listen hopefully maybe more or at least on the better than average side of most guys that do this. But it's the first day we drove a stake at Inverness on the new third Green, I was nervous. It's not doing a bunker line or you know, a couple bunkers on a golf course. That's one thing, creating golf holes that hopefully more history
will be built on. It's very humbling and nerve wracking for sure.
So and this, of course Invernessa got worked on by Tom Fazio in the seventies late seventies and kind of altered. And so you built three new golf holes essentially.
Yeah, three new golf holes, and then we adjusted a couple of others.
Yeah, so that, I mean, how do you approach building new golf holes on a historic course.
It's kind of a crazy story in that I showed up here the first time and I think it was August of sixteen, walked the golf course and I was I mean, when I got out of the car, I was blown away by the property. And it's it's kind of like some of these golf courses that maybe you respect a little bit more the more you're on them. But the way Ross put the golf holes, his holes on the property, he just did little things that made
them different. I mean, you could criticize them that there were a lot of repetitive things or things that were a little similar, but when you really studied it, you see how you know, like the first greens up in the air, the tenth greens down in the air, even though they play parallel in at somewhat the same distance.
You know, those things blew me away.
And as I was walking the outer part of the property, I crossed through the fence line out into the farm field and saw basically high points and things that I thought, well, based on what I've seen and how Ross put golf holes on the ground, and identified good tea and green locations and kind of connected the dots.
I was like, well that works there.
And for the new part three third hole, that's a long par three.
Its idea.
My idea for it was to replicate the original eighth hole, which was two hundred and nine yards in the nineteen twenty US opened up a pretty good golf hole for then, right, like a yeah, right, So all of a sudden, I'm standing on one high point and I'm taking my rangefinder and shooting the next high point and it's two fifty
and I'm like, well, well that works pretty well. And then walk out and see how with a little bit of work and keeping the soil all there, I can replicate a lot of what was on original eight, even though original eight was on a pretty flat piece of ground.
And then.
I walked out behind that green location out in this farm field, and you know, it was another high point and you could kind of see looking back how a golf hole could fit that would come to be the new four And walked through the tree line and kind of saw how the golf hole would fit the ground really well. Right, without doing a lot of work, it just would fit. And so when I did my interview in November. I showed them how I thought that could work.
I showed the committee here, and originally I had the fourth hole as potentially a par five because looking at just the way the yardage is set up and with you know, the two par fives, and you know, did that make any sense? I showed that as a potential option.
As we worked through the process, it became clear and clearer that we could represent the original seventh hole, which was a hard dog leg left that was somewhat short, but we could I could build that as that new fourth hole, and then everything fell onto the line, the green site location, the forward T. You can play the forward T and it could you could hit driver try to get it on the green almost like Ted Ray
did on the original seventh and twenty. You could go way back and have this amazing, really hard golfl you know, it just it really it just fell into place. It was like it was meant to be.
It's fine. I Uh. There's a course in Chicago, oak Park Country Club, and in the way the creek works on that on the fifth hole there, there's really similar to the way it works on that hole where you've got like you kind of hit into like a low with a creek running along the left that cuts across the fairway, and you have to kind of make a decision like it's depending on what tea you play. If you play back, it's just hit driver as good as you can hit it. But if you play up, it's like,
do I try and fly over the creek? Do I try to lay it short? Do I play it right? Do I play it left? Like And it's it's so interesting because it like when I stepped on that, I was like, God, this really reminds me of this hole. Yeah, and it's like that's a Ross course and it just kind of it does just fit. And that's like my favorit whole out there, it's a it's a it's a cool hole. Yeah, greens out of this world.
And it you know, it was like it was it was like Ross would have doing his little sketches and stuff walking the property. He would have identified kind of similar things. And it hopefully people will and it certainly appears that way that people will feel like those holes fit the property better than the old holes you know from the seventies. In that we tried to draw on all the things that was that were done on the original holes and tried to just pull that into what we did on the new.
UH with with you. So you've got Now you've got Coioto, uh Siota, ok Hill Andverness championship golf courses with championship pedigree. I mean, how does that compare to when you're doing a project for just like a membership play? Do you is there anything different that goes, you know, with what you're doing?
There really isn't other than I'll draw extra center. I'm a big believer in drawing center lines from every te and evaluating my design for every player. If you read all the great guys, almost every single one of them, and you know Thomas McKenzie, Flynn Ross, they all talked about the best golf courses are capable of. I think Ross says it's the first class golfer in the everyday player. They all talk about it and that, you know, that's so important. So I'll draw a center line from every
t on these championship courses. I'll draw one at three twenty five. The others I'm not, you know, three hundreds plenty. You know, guys can hit it farther obviously, and even guys can hit it more than three to twenty five on some of these championships. That's probably the biggest difference
just from my process. Otherwise, it's trying to make things work and fit on the ground, what's best for the golf course, and then you know, extreme yardages unfortunately, I guess it's good for business, but you know, maybe bad for the game.
With the golf ball.
But the biggest difference I guess maybe between Okill and Inverness and Siota is.
At Okill, the.
East course is the course that's the championship and the members are playing that every day to have fun, you know, they're playing it with their guests and to get a kind of a change of pace. But if they're out to just really enjoy, they're probably playing the West. So that's quite a bit of different dynamic than here at Inverness, where people are playing multiple times a week to enjoy
the game and have fun, you know. So there's maybe a little more balance that we really tried to work on here and Siota versus you know, Okill, where it's a little more that's kind of the championship course.
But that's also the luxury.
They have of having the two courses We're still trying to make that course more enjoyable for the everyday player, building forward, t's widening, short landing zones, doing some of those things, but as far as like bunker depth than things, it's a little more extreme.
There between the three of them, say East Course, Iota and Inverness, Like if you could take one thing that each of them do the best and make like, you know, if you were just making a figurative super course, if you could take one aspect of each's design, which would what would be?
I think what we're seeing at Toyota is some of the most unique elements of any golf course I've ever seen. When you look at the original construction pictures and you look at the Dodo bird from the twenty six open, there are things on that drawing and things that are represented in the pictures we have that I've never seen anywhere. Now, they might be other places and maybe I just haven't seen them or experienced it, and that's fine, but there are elements there that are incredibly unique.
So I would definitely draw that piece from there. O kill. It's got to be all the trees, I got it. No, I'm kidding. Uh No.
The property at oak Kill is spectacular. The it's the golf holes change directions so gracefully, you know what I mean. It's not like a forced switch. It's like they just flow from one to the next. And I think that's something that I really love about the East Course and the way the property is utilized. We're working on the trees, you know, trying to get to a balance there. They're gonna be trees at Okill, there's no doubt.
It's not.
It's not gonna be Oakmont, not even close. But we're trying to get the best trees there and at Everness. You know, I think some of the greens are pretty cool in a.
Sneaky way, do you know what I mean?
There there's a lot of variety to them, and yeah, just got neat little corners and yeah, I mean like even that second green, how it's got it's kind of got like depressions on It's like a it's almost like a lego, a square lego with like two depressions on the corner and two of the corners and the other corners are raised up a little.
Yeah, they're they're really cool.
It's uh yeah, that greens here are sweet. I think that's That's something I got I came away with is like they've got really cool green complexes and now it's got like the yardage. It's like that's I think. I think what you can take away from Shinnakok especially is like yardage isn't the chief defense. It's important for with with these with the modern golfer, but green complexes are by far the most important thing.
No doubt.
And I think that good greens give you the opportunity to set up as hard as you want or is potentially quote unquote as easy as you want.
Yeah, it's a variety.
Well yeah, and you can have middle pins that aren't easy exactly and at first, but but you got to be on the right side of them.
And in some of those interior contours were talked about that yesterday I think really helped define that.
So we we've talked a lot about Roth. Who who do you think is the most underappreciated architect?
Well you're gonna love this, I guess, But Flynn has got to be right.
He's gotta be wild Bill. Yeah, gosh, he was. He was so ahead of his time.
I'd ask anybody to go find find the the original documents not not reproductions, but go find the scans of his his his essays that he wrote in twenty seven. You could read every essay he wrote and know more in an evening reading those than than spending weeks studying other other golf books or what have you. He understood the game from so many different perspectives. It's something I'm
striving to understand and work towards. I actually have a quote on the back of my business card about the best way to whet the appetite of a player is to offer an incentive and provide a reward. And that is such a beautiful statement of it's not and he goes on to say, and it's not requiring you to hit this amazing golf shot, but it's basically hit the best golf shot you can make. Yeah, I mean, that's what golf's all about, you know. I think I used to use the swing of Ernie L's and a swing
of Charles Barkley back to back. Okay, there could be two more different golf swings ever. Okay, but it really shows you that each golf swing is different, right, So each golf game is different. So why do we design golf courses to only be played one way makes no sense. I should be able to play it using my best skill. And if I chicken out, then give me a place to chicken out, and then I'll pay the consequence on
the next shot. But if I want to hit the best shot I can hit, give me a place to hit that shot, and then hopefully my next SHOT's easier or somehow more advantageous unless I make a bad swing. I mean that that's what it's That is what it's all about. And then you read I love to think about the guys in Philly, that they're all drinking buddies, right, that's like, and that they hung out and there was a brotherhood and they talked about how to make the
game better and more interesting. And if you read every single person that went through Philadelphia at some point they all say the same thing. Mackenzie, Thomas, h Tilling, hass Flynn. They all talked about that dynamic of you know, providing options the proper side and the wrong side of a fair way, you know, allowing people to experience the game
the way they're best suited. I love Mackenzie wrote about the fourteenth hole at Saint Andrews, and he talked about watching a foursome play and that three out of the four probably played it the right way, but they all you know, he shows the drawing and the lines are all over the place round hell and stuff, you know,
and it's like, yeah, that's awesome. So and I think that's where we got off the rails in the late nineties and two thousands where everything had to be longer and harder and more narrow and trees and weal trees maybe before, but you know that misses the boat.
Yeah, I think that. I think we've seen it with the last two US Opens, where like Kopka's won them and but like it didn't predetermine the winner, like you had guys with different skills. I mean, Brian Gay was in contention on Sunday, like he's the shortest hitter out there, but like the golf course allowed him to succeed. And we saw the same thing at Aaron Hills, Like you know, Brian Harmon's not short, he's not long though, and he
was in everybody, Oh it's Bomber's parent. It's like, well, you know, like he could play because he could hit every fairway, you know, and he could you know, a golf course that allows you to play to your strength. Is like, that's the best. Is like where any type of player can win because and they because they are allowed to do what they do and play their game versus predetermining what your game needs to be at.
A golf course exactly.
And that's I mean, that's what's the great thing about that Inverness. I was talking to to Zach Boer about it is like, I don't feel like it's a course. It's a it's a championship course that I wouldn't mind playing every day, and so many championship golf courses, I feel like I just get my ass kicked. I'm like, you know, I don't know if I want to go back and play that, like you know a lot, like you know, and you think about like how you'd split rounds, but like this is a place that you can play.
And I think Ross, because I think about Pinehurst number two is kind of that way. Seminals that way, Seminal absolutely hard, but it's it's still like you can play it.
There's a lot of room.
Yeah, And I think that's one of the brilliant things about Ross that goes underrated is that his really hard courses were still really playable.
Absolutely, It's.
It just shows again that kind of craft thing that there's a little more thought put into it than just I need eighteen holes, I need par seventy two, I need seven thousand yards. You know, it's not good golf doesn't fit a recipe like that. You know, It's how cool can I get from the starting point to the endpoint and present problems to the player and provide lots
of options? I mean, when I'm designing for the everyday player, when I'm designing for the average player, I'm really trying to think about how many different options can I give give the guys.
To play?
Who'd be your mount Rushmore of golf.
Architecture, Man, I've got to go Ross and Flynn right right off the top. I'm doing a lot of Ross work, and I've really grown a greater appreciation for everything he's done. I love George Thomas.
He might be.
The greatest listener of any golf architect ever. And I'd love to meet him because I'd love to know. You know, if you look at his life and how kind of.
Privileged I guess it was, was he arrogant?
It certainly doesn't appear to be right I mean he he If you read his forward in Golf Architecture in America, I love it.
I've made a list. I don't know.
I think maybe Shackelford picked it up a riv this year or whatever. I made a list of all the people he thanked. In all of those people, you could see almost a heartfelt appreciation that they helped him understand the game better.
Man.
It was.
He was the greatest listener, I think, and because he listened, it made him.
A better architect.
So there's three, So what one more? It's got to be Mackenzie then Mac, doctor Mac.
I feel like he's on everybody I know.
And maybe I'm cliche because those are my four guys.
I don't know. Thomas and Flynn don't get on money.
Okay, you know, fair, fair enough, regular question all.
But yeah, I mean mackenzie. Anybody that has like, arguably the greatest golf course on four continentss it's pretty good, not bad? Right, Yeah, it's okay.
He was a good listener too. I think he was an educated guy that.
Man.
If you read Spirit of Saint Andrew's right, he talks about how he even related a lot of what he learned and golf to medicine and the camouflage and all of those different lives that he that he lived. And maybe that goes back to my thing of I'm trying to appreciate more outside of my little channel to make me a better architect.
So something I always am fascinated by is like, even on places with spectacular ground but have like flat areas or just flat courses. Do you ever think to really appreciate architect you have to see their work on like their horse sight.
It certainly adds an element, right, yeah, how do you how do you mess up pebble Beach?
Right? It was Jack's first first course, Jack Neville.
Right.
Some might say, well, yeah, right, right, right, whatever. Yeah, But that's where people ask about Seminole, whether it's overrated, underrated, you know kind of thing, right you.
Kind of what's your thought?
I haven't listened this year with you're do you have you ever shared that perspective?
So a lot of people say it's under overrated.
Okay, and I I'm falling on the other side, but I'll let you go.
You know a lot of people say it's overrated, right generally At that point I kind of stopped listening because, like The thing about seminole is like if you don't know how to play golf, like it will expose the crap out of you. Like you have to play proper
golf and like it. I mean there's so many ways, but like when you get in a bad position like issue, and I think this is like something that's happened with golf is like people are pre determined feel like, Okay, like I hit a shot into a bad spot, I should still be able to hit it at a flag. And like at seminole, if you're in a bad spot, you need to get it back into a good spot. Like it could be chipping it just short of the green.
It could be like it could be hitting it to like just somewhere on the green that you're not that you're putting up hill like but like it's sneaky, right, you have to play. And I think this is what happens in USGA events, And I think this is one of the issues that they have with like players with fair and not fair is like if you're not in the right position, you you can't hit at flags at really good spots like right, like and that's like what
was driving me nuts. These people are like, well, like, you know, that was really unfair. It's like, well, like he was shortsighted in a bunker to a green that runs away like that was. If that was water, he'd be out.
Well, So I can't I think it's Flynn that wrote No, it's Thomas. I think he wrote in that section on strategy talks about if a player tries and more than him lies and fails under the test, you know, he's worse off than the guy that knows he can't hit that shot and lays back.
Yeah.
So you know that's golf, right, you know, you take the challenge. If you miss it, then you got to pay the penalty, whether that's short siding yourself in a bad spot in a bunker, you know.
Yeah, it's like.
That where you have no chance really of getting up and down, but you have a chance to make it. You have a chance to hit an unbelievable shot and make three. Still sure and water you're hitting four.
Yeah. Water is an awful hazard.
Unless I mean with variety. I really like like meandering creeks.
Oh way.
Yeah, when I say water way different from a creak than a pond. And the only time a pond is is even remotely a decent hazard I think is on more of like a k pole or something where you can kind of bite off as much as you want to chew. It's still not great.
But the penalty for a pond is too much. That's that's the problem is, Like you know, no matter what it takes away, I feel like a pond takes away the heroic play recovery.
Yeah, golf is a game of recovery.
That's where all the fun.
Yeah.
Absolutely use your skill to get out of trouble. And that's what we were talking yesterday about trees. Right, It's a totally different mindset if you're hitting a punch out of a tree, even though I did that a couple of times yesterday with poor success, but versus having maybe a difficult lie that I think I can get it all the way to the green. But taking that risk and I don't execute, I'm probably going to be in more trouble than if I just punched it out in the fair way and paid the penalty.
I hit it pretty good yesterday, and all my problems came from just being in the rough with no trees in my way. And I think the two times I was in the trees, I got I made par because I just hit it to the front part of the green, so it came out of sin and yeah and got away. It like had like pretty simple up and downs. But the two the couple times I got in trouble were when I was like in thick rough and I tried to hit like on one par five, I tried to hit three iron and it just like hooded it over
and I, you know, hit into a creek. It's like, you know, like that, but that doesn't happen if there's a tree in my way and I'm just punching it out right.
And then you know the water, Yeah, you don't have any of that opportunity.
Right none.
What happens is they just play away from it.
Well, and then that plays into the golfer IQ. Most of the holes I am replacing at Inverness and Oakhill are holes that have a pond, because if you didn't know, to have a great championship par three, you have to have water a pond. Did you know that was in the rules of architecture. I'm kidding, I mean you got to have a signature hole.
A signature hole. They're all signature holes.
I was watching a new course flyover and they had something about a signature hole and that's when I when I closed the window.
Yeah you know, I mean the golfer IQ thing again. But yeah, they should they should all be good.
It's I think, like so like when I think about Inverness, I don't know if I could pick out like one hole that's a standout hole. And I think with like mass public perception of golf courses like that, there's a lot of golf courses like that. And I think one of the things is like when there's not one hole everybody can always go back to they have a problem. But like the greatness of Inverness is the sum of all its part?
Yeah, not. I watch.
I'll watch how other golf courses are represented. And it's amazing to me sometimes that you'll see only pictures of one golf hole from that course. Right, it's like the money shot.
But it's like the Instagram what like you know what Instagram and Twitter and like the photo the camera phone.
Right, everybody that goes to that golf course, they only take a picture of one hole. Yeah you know, yeah that that does kind of tell you. Yeah, I think Inverness the star, you know, the greens complexes and how that those greens set on the property give it that opportunity to have a lot of different different kinds of golf shots.
One thing when I go to classic courses that I like just nerd out about and people like I'll play with people and they're like, I'll point something out and talk to them about, like like how greens like stack on each other at so many really good old school courses, Like that's something I nerd out about and people will look at me like, God, this guy's your front hinge, right, So what's what's the thing that you that you really nerd out about?
I think you know this is coming. But the hummock is my thing, man, I love it. So you know, chocolate drops, dragons, teeth mounds, whatever.
You want to call them.
The creative ways that the old guys use the extra dirt that they couldn't afford to haul away, like just those little grading things. And even if it's not just a hummock, but the grass face where you saw they kind of just stopped cutting because they needed they had
enough dirt. You know those things. I mean they're very simple, but they're so cool and they show the golf course has some aging character and I love I love the way that presents a hazard to the player, and it really speaks to this idea of using your talent to recover. And you know, the better player can get really upset that they just missed the shot and now the balls way below the feet or above their feet or you know downhill a pill lie, right, it really messes with
their mind. But the higher handicapped player would much rather be in a difficult lie than in a bunker.
So it's just it's it's so cool.
And and you're going to see if you look at my work anywhere that I could find.
A sense that they were there. You're going to find a couple. You know.
I try not to overdo it, and I really do try not to have the same solution to every problem no matter where the course is. You know, I always want it to be different. But boy, if I can find some cool grading like that that's just off the beaten path, or you know old bunker faces that are hidden under trees or something, I really nerd out on that stuff.
You're building a bunker list course.
Yeah.
So for an Arundo County and Maryland, Eisenhower Golf Course plays a bunch of golf. A lot of older guys play it. When we started talking about it, it was it needs a lot of TLC. It's kind of in this model of you know, the course that was built kind of in the heyday and now it's kind of lived its life and it needs reinvigorated. And the concern was, Okay, we do something like a bunkerless golf course, is that going to turn away the public? Are we going to break what's not really broken?
The place?
Tons of people play it. And the thing that drove me to doing it was that for those older guys and ladies, bunkers are they're just they're like, you know, they're infuriating sometimes. You know, it's not that hard of a golf shop, but it is for a lot of those players. And then you got to build them, and you got to maintain them. And if you build bunkers, you're gonna be replacing them every let's say, fifteen years.
If you're going to just keep up, you're gonna have to do major reconstruction just because that's the life they live, right, You can, they can last longer, but they really decline. So we're gonna save potential money up front we're gonna save maintenance dollars.
You know, sand.
It's been proven that bunker maintenance dollar for dollar, square foot for square foot is more money spent on bunkers than greens. That's crazy, you know. And again, golfer IQ, what our clients request of you know, they want a perfect lie in bunkers. It's just reality. It's bunkers are hazard, no doubt. But in the United States, most of our clients have been conditioned to having at least somewhat of a consistent set of bunkers.
That's what they're striving for.
Okay, And look, that's good for business for me, okay, but they are hazard. But when you add all those things up, when you take that element out, how can you create exciting golf and fund golf and not dumbing something down, not making it boring, but do without bunkers and you.
Could almost get more bold without bunkers than with bunkers.
Exactly.
Yeah, because look, now you don't have to worry about draining water into sand that would wash out and destroy a bunker, which in the UK that's not really an issue because of the way they're designing the sand. You know, that's not an issue. The United States, especially the East Coast, huge issue. Some are thunderstorm white sand destroyed. If water is running into a bunker, well, now I don't have
to worry about that. So now greens that maybe would only fall back to front can fall three hundred and sixty degrees because there's no water running off that putting surface into sand or something we're trying to protect from a maintenance standpoint. So the property at Eisenhower is spectacular. It might be one of the best pieces of golfing ground in that little piece. And the routing we're going to leave some pretty well intact, is good. There's variety,
the wholes change direction. But because the greens sit on good spots and the tea set and good spots, we left most of the routing intact. And we're gonna use short grass, we're gonna use hummocks, and there's gonna be different questions and solutions for each hole. But without sand, I think the critical thing is can we get enough definition and enough whole presentation to make the golfer excited
Because sand we kind of eat with our eyes. When you play golf and sand, it's such a stark contrast that it's it's the eye candy, but you know, there's other ways to do it. And I've said a couple of times, you know, maybe it's my ego that I think I can.
Do this really well.
That's probably the case, but I also think it's a great way to have another different golf experience. Again, why does everything have to be the same.
It's there's this. I've talked to you a lot about this the last few days. It's my current like obsession is Langford Moreau and this golf course there's in Kanka Key. It's like an hour and twenty minutes from me, but like I go play there like a lot now because it's cheap and it's unbelievable and it's just like super overgrown. The greens are like there's one hole that got change, but then there's like it's bunkerless except for like three
bunkers that were built probably in nineteen seventy. Right, maybe one of the worst bunkers I've ever seen in my life is one of them. Like it's just like just like scraped it and put sand on it.
Yeah, but it's so bold.
The greens are like unbelievable, and it's all grass hollows, and it's I mean, if you get in one of them, it's it's way worse than being in the sand, right, and it's still super cool.
Well that's you know, think about the best bunkerless golf holes you played. Most of them are pretty interesting. They aren't boring unless it's, you know, something that's been dumbed down or lost to time because of maintenance or neglect. Most bunkerless golf holes that were designed in that for that purpose are pretty interesting.
They're pretty good.
So we'll see fourteen and Augusta doesn't stink. No eat green at Augusta, Yeah, doesn't stink. You know, there is the fair we bunker on eat but yeah, that.
That green's really cool. There's a lot of cool bunker less holes around golf. When you when you start developing a master plan, how how much research do you do before? Like if you if you had to put an estimate.
On ours every hour? I can. I can do it.
Uh, I get sucked in, you know, I'll find myself. My wife and I we kind of joke around. It used to infuriate her that I'd be working or doing research while we're supposed to be spending time together. Even though she might be cross stitching, or you know, maybe texting a friend or whatever. You know, I will spend a lot of my quote unquote free time doing research
when I'm when I'm beginning a master plan. I know there are a lot of guys that do great work and finding documents and have tremendous tools, and maybe I should utilize some of those guys more. But I feel a real sense of pride and I like finding information, even on a golf course that doesn't have a tremendous amount of history but has some history. I love being able to draw my own conclusions, like sometimes when you read books that have been put together by historians and
they're trying to draw conclusions. You know, we were talking yesterday about caddies reading your putts, right, he said, yeah, it's all feel it's like that in research. I feel the same way. It's like there's such a pride factor in doing the research, finding the documents, connecting the dots yourself.
Like, but you learn so much too along the way, exactly like, and it might not help you write that moment, but like at some point five years from then, you.
I can't tell you how many pictures I cut and paste or screen grabs of something I find that really wasn't what I was looking for, but I want to make sure I have it for something down the road.
So do you like label it to have like a yeah.
Probably could be more organized. Maybe I need somebody that would help me organize.
But I know my desktop is just all screen grab.
Yeah, but it's you know, it's so good. You know I have one. I think I shared some pictures on Twitter, like Augusta. Anytime I come across something cool there, I clip. It's just because it's been my experience, like an Augusta. It's a really good place to speak to the public about golf IQ because they all almost everybody can picture a golf hole right, they've seen eighteen they know it right,
and whether there's I mean, we could get in. We could spend a whole podcast talking about the changes and what's good and bad and all that stuff. But when you're starting to talk to a group of people that really only know the course they play, having that ability to go to something that they understand outside of their little window really helps.
So I'll do.
Yeah, it's ridiculous the amount of space I have between my computer, my tablet, dropbox, external hard drives of stuff I've just clipped from years of just looking at stuff.
Yeah, I mean the old stuff is so cool. It's i mean, just it and it's got to be so helpful when you come to a project like Oak Hill or Inverness where you've had like a rich championship history, you know, like where you've got all these old photos.
It makes a huge difference. I mean here at Inverness, S P. Jermaine wrote a book before the thirty one open and did hand sketches of every hole and put pictures and descriptions and the golf course that evolved, you know, since we're all first put it on the ground to that point. But it was a great way to understand how the golf course was playing, how the golf course had evolved, the tweaks they needed to make to make it better. And there's great pictures from twenty even ads.
This is maybe a secret, don't tell anybody.
You're telling everybody.
Is ads are the greatest place to find hidden documentation. You know, when you're on the journey looking through this old stuff, pay attention to the ads. An amazing story at Siota started the project, had a wonderful dinner with the board, and it's really right now, it's really is a research project at the moment. There's no set that deadlines, scope anything. It's really a research project right at this moment.
But we were hanging out in the lobby and there's a trophy cabinet and there was a program from the thirty one Ryder Cup and I was like, oh, that's awesome. I haven't seen that. I didn't see it in any of their documentation. Ornything in the club historian, who's a great guy and a wonderful searcher of documentation, he's like, oh, there's nothing really in there. It's like, let's take a look. So they go get the key and we take it
out and start to flip through. Well in hidden in the ad space was a picture of every Green's complex and they didn't know it was there, you know. So it's it's the places you least expect to find that information is sometimes where you find the best stuff. So sorry if I've given away one of my secrets.
Old ads are cool. I feel like advertising it might be making a renaissance, but the old ads are so much better than like the I mean, I think nothing really good happened from like nineteen seventy to nineteen ninety. From a creative sense.
Yeah, you know.
We technology is a wonderful thing, but when you use it as a crutch to eliminate the creativity or the craft, I think that's where it gets dangerous. And I think that's really where you see the golf architects that are popular now and do good work, not just popular, but doing good work.
You know, they have.
More of that respect of the craft, and they're not relying on, you know, every modern convenience to create golf.
If you know what I mean.
You know what you're saying, You're ready for overrated, underrated.
We'll give it a go.
Long par threes.
They're underrated in the fact that there should be more of them, but they're really hard to create for the tour pro right. We spoke about that a little bit yesterday. You know what's the greatest long part three that they play on somewhat of a regular basis, you know, maybe eight at Oakmont? Is that a great hole?
I don't know, it's long.
Yeah, I mean so my theory is that the short part four is now the long part three.
Yeah.
But the cool thing about a part three is that at least at that upper echelon from a long distance, is you feel compelled to hit the longest club even though it might not be the best play, you know, if you.
Because it's because of par. It's the one thing what par does.
Yeah, it's it's a mind kind of a mind screw, right, And I think on on short short four's the the guy that is trying to overpower it. Will you know, always pull the big club and go for the heroic shot. And there's a cool risk reward to that, and there's course management of laying back. But when you have the par three, everybody's pulling a club to try to get there.
Yeah, and it's always the front, always open.
So co that's it.
Yeah, I mean long par threes are so there's like eight at Olympia Fields North like two eighty. But it's it almost people like it goes back to like this fair and unfair. People think it's like unfair. It's like what what what is fair and unfair? Because so pointless like so what it's like it's a really hardhole. If you make a three, you pick up some shots on people. Right, par is really good in a long par three.
Yeah, And I think putting the ball in the peg. From a par three standpoint, I really would love for you to play really a good short, a good long in two in the middle. I mean ideally, sometimes the property gives you what it gives you.
I think that's what's the brilliance of the McDonald and Rainer template par three is is each of them were like uniquely different, especially like it's too bad, like the Barritz hole doesn't play like it should with modern technology, and like, you know, if you had a Burritz at two eighty, a ri Dan at two thirty and Eden at one ninety, and a short at one fifty.
Like, oh, that's a pretty good mix, right.
Yeah, that tests every single type of shot. You got to hit your you got to hit a wedge, you got to hit a mid iron, you got to hit a long iron, and you got to hit like a driver three would yeah.
Yeah, I mean the things you know I was trying to do here at Inverness was to replicate the shots that were hitting the twenty open. So we made the long part three at like two seventy nine. It's long, and you know, I've gotten some feedback of you know that that's that's maybe not the direction the game should be going. But listen, I just move up a right
for sure, that's awesome. Yeah right, but you know, I the game of golf, the history of golf, has been that on those holes, the problem involves swinging a long club.
In making a golf shot. Yeah.
So you know, it's a shame that the golf ball and technology and how the great skill level of these guys has made that long three tough tough to find the best way to do it.
And I feel like the par fives are like that in some sense. But with a par five people feel like they can miss a long shot, more so because you can still get up and down.
For Berdie, I think one of the things you see in post war designs, the par fives, which should have the most strategy, probably have the least, you know, especially some of the there is a lot of and maybe it's not some of the best architects of that era, but a lot of golf you see, it's like mindless par fives. Right, you hit as far as you can.
The layup, that's where there's no thought, right none. That is My next overrated underrated was long par fives.
Okay, again, I think it encourages you to play different shots. So being able to hit whatever you want off the t if you don't feel comfortable hitting driver that day, you can throttle back and hit three wood or whatever or hybrid. Now on a long five, you got to make a decision. You can't continue to let off. You got to either go again with the same stick or you know, really have three demanding shots. It makes you make a choice, which makes it interesting, makes you think.
So I guess I'm underrated there too.
I think TV people hate long par fives. They think they it's boring, but it's like, yeah, that's what like every par five was was like you have to hit three really good shots. And that's why it's always the number one handicap hole is because like for a higher handicap hitting three really good shots it's like really hard to do, and for a good player it's pretty.
Simple, no doubt about it.
Yeah, and look, it's I would I would say it's probably only boring for the guy not standing over the ball, right, you got to make exactly good decisions, good swings.
Yeah, I think that's I.
Was thinking about. TV kind of hurts a lot of things with golf. It hurts conditioning with the brown. It hurts like design in a sense because you know, like a long part five, really good long, really good long part fives are almost like like they aren't given the amount of praise they should be, because it's almost the hardshold of design it is.
And and then it goes back to what's a long five for which player?
Right?
And trying to make it a long five for everybody? It can be tough.
That's last overrated, underrated A W.
Tilling? Hast you set me up.
So I'll go underrated again? I guess because I think he's a smart man.
I think he gets it, gives you more leoy, Is that right? All right?
I think why that is is I think from a human perspective, we always want to package things. We always want to put neat bows, you know, like Donald Ross. I think a lot of times you think these flat bottom bunkers with grass faces and they look like bathtubs. But when you study his work, there was way more
to it than that. I think Tilling has you. The same can be said that, you know, you might want to find two or three things that really were his calling cards, but when you look at the number of courses he did, and and some of the things he did very creative, and I think he's probably one step behind Thomas in in listening and learning from what he saw and experienced, and especially in Philadelphia. And I think he gets an incredibly bad rep by some people about his later life and.
Some of his struggles.
And we talked a little bit about his time with the PGA, some of the things he wrote about out. I think some of the things he wrote about are incredibly brilliant, look like everything you could find fault maybe with with a statement or two anywhere.
But I think.
He may have done a disservice to some clubs at that time in eliminating hard to maintain features. And I don't know if I only use dumbing down, but you know, maybe changing the fabric of some of the courses in some of those recommendations. But look, he was really trying to make the game survive and make good decisions and make uh, make golf as good as it could be during a very challenging time.
And we talked a little yesterday.
I think some historians or golfers would say his article that he wrote about early American golf versus what he considered modern golf or and I kind of put in the Philadelphia school where he talked about, you know, the duffer zone that he had to you had to carry bunkers off the tee, and then you had to maybe carry another set of bunkers, and then the greens heavily guarded, and you know that versus having a good fairway bunker, a good green side bunker, an angled approach and hitting
good golf shots but leaving space for the higher handicap golfer to play. I think it's brilliant and often I use that. I'll show those that article to a group and I'll say, look at how okay, this is just a very simple way to explain strategy visually. And then I'll show the first hole at Shannakok that maybe is the most underrated hole on the golf course, but it
might express that strategy more than anything. Because the more you risk you take off the tee, the more right you aim, or the more you challenge that fairway bunker, the better your angle is into the green, and the more you play away from that bunker. Now you got to carry the left green side boker.
Yeah, and long, it's just dead and it usually plays down wind and it's like a really really hard little web shot.
I mean I birdied the hole.
Okay, just saying Tiger made a triple Yeah right, I'm probably better than Tiger right now.
You could be.
Yeah, but yeah that that hole is awesome and there's so much space.
Right and there's probably more. There was more, you know, years ago.
All right, Well, thanks for coming on, thanks for having me find you on Twitter.
Yeah green g C a green GCA.
That's me, not really super active.
But well, look important. Thanks.
You know, good stuff when you put it.
Well, I try to you know, quality over quantity maybe, and I got a lot going on, so you know, it's.
A good it's a good problem to have when you're busy.
It is very blessed.
I think people can probably figure out when I'm busy and when I'm home.
I think you can probably see that for me too.
All right, Well, we're excited to uh see you. Keep going and we'll talk to you soon.
Awesome.
Thanks Cindy, you've been listening to the fried Egg podcast.
We do the digging for you.