I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset.
When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
And when I find my ball in a brid egg Friday egg and dreaded Frida egg, Frida egg, Frida egg Brian Egg Frida egg.
Bride egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off.
Of the course.
Hello and welcome to the Frida Egg Podcast. My name is Garrett Morrison. I am here today with Andy Johnson Andy House, San Francisco.
Revealing my location.
It's it's delightful to be out of winter, and uh, it's cool. It's just nice to be out seeing some some golf courses and seeing some stuff and being somewhere where you can do that and not be really cold.
Yeah, well, well it looks lovely. In any case, We are here today to talk about a West coast location.
Pacific Northwest locations shared Pacific Northwest location.
Yeah, well, is San Francisco in the Pacific Northwest.
Some can say it? Consider it?
Who would say that, I don't know. Okay, it's somebody, you know. Intelligent people would consider it.
So okay.
Now Midwesterns, naive Middlewesterns would consider it.
Anything that's not the Southwest or southern California is the Pacific Northwest.
I think yeah, I think that's that's true.
It's if you have redwood trees, you're the Pacific Northwest in my book.
So we are talking about Bandon Dunes obviously, that that little known resort on the Oregon coast, and today is the third of our bandoned deep dives. We've done Sheep Ranch and the last one we did was Old MacDonald and today we're going to dig into Bandon Trails, which was the third course that was built at the resort. You know, we're doing these in reverse order, and so that's why we're at Bandon Trails now. Designed by Bill
Corr and Ben Crenshaw. It was built in two thousand and three two thousand and four, opened in two thousand and five. Some of the associates on this project included Tony Russell, Jim Craig, David Zincnd, Jeff Bradley, kind of a murderer's row of shapers and great architects in their own right at this point, just to kind of situate people historically with the Bandon Dunees project and where Bandon Trails was in that Bandon Dunes had opened in nineteen
ninety nine and had been a sensation. Pacific Dunes opened in two thousand and one. I think it was right, and that too was a sensation, right immediate entry into you know, the top twenty in the world, and Bandon Dunes had become a really really big deal. You know, if you can imagine when Banded Dunes had one course, it was, although it was an incredible course and everybody knew about it, it was just one course way out in the middle of nowhere.
It was like going and finding the great up and coming band at a local dive bar, that you know. And then when Pacific Dunes is when they started playing at like relatively known locations and on a tour in cities. And then I think, you know, Pacific Trails or Banded Trails, Jesus, Pacific Trails Abandoned Trails is where you know, kind of probably it launched the resort into you know, you know, in the subsequent courses, really launched the resort into a whole new stratosphere of superstardom.
That's when they started playing arenas.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, So that is the context in which Banded Trails came about. And I think there was a lot of pressure on it because Banded Dunes and Pacific Dunes had been so well received. Both were on the ocean, in these spectacular environments with great cliff top holes and everything like that, and people knew very early on that Bandon Trails would be a different kind of property. It wasn't going to be on the cliffs, it was going to
be inland. There were parts of it that were even going to be in the forest, and so there was quite a bit of pressure on corn Crenshaw to sort of live up to what band In Dunes and Pacific Dunes had been. Now, Okay, so Bandon Trails was different in a couple of ways. One way, obviously, is that
property that I talked about. Another is that Bill kre and Ben Crenshaw were very well established at this time in their career in a way that Tom Doak and especially David Kidd were not when they built the first two courses. So by this point corn Crenshaw had built Kapalua sand Hills Friar's Head Old Sandwich just before Bandon Trails, and so you know, they were already incredibly well regarded architects, maybe the best regarded architects in the world of golf, and here they come to do trails.
I think it's important to note here that this is the first time that they worked with Mike Kaiser, Yeah, which we then see, you know, they they were the first course at Sand Valley, they were you know, they did Cabot Cliffs and who knows what you know, they might do in the future with with the Kaisers. But you know, the this started the Core Crenshaw relationship there,
which we see more and more of. And obviously they continue to work with Tom Doak and David Kidd, but this is a significant point in terms of them working with the Kaisers and building their most you know, publicly popular courses you know, generally come from these big resorts, and the Kaiser resorts are some of the most popular golf destinations. So this is you know, Coren Crenshaw, you know sand Hills and Friars Head or of courses that
nobody's going to see. You know, this is this is a golf course that people could go see built by Ben Ben Creunschhaw and Bill core.
And this is really an incredible error era for their architecture because I think most people would agree that Friar's Head and Old Sandwich are both among their best courses, and that that is the time in their career when they came to band In and built their first Kaiser golf course, and then since then at Bandon you mentioned some of the other courses that they've built at Kaiser
associated properties. They did band and Preserve and then they did Sheep Ranch and so now at the Bandon Dunes Resort, kren Crenshaw are the dominant architects. You know, Tom dok has two eighteen whole courses there too, But you know, Kaiser obviously liked what he saw from the trails project.
As of now three of the six courses.
All right. So that's all to say that there was quite a bit of excitement about this project and some trepidation on the part of Mike Kaiser and probably on the part of kren Crenshaw as well, that you know, this wouldn't work out as well. It wasn't. It wasn't quite as splashy and exciting seeming as the first two Bandon Dune's courses were, where you had up and coming architects and you had these incredible sort of mind blowing
properties right by the sea. You know, where is this new course that's kind of in this forest land area, how is that going to fit into this resort? And so recently you talked to Bill Krr And in fact, this episode just came out a couple of weeks ago. It came out on February first, so this is not
that long after it. But you talked to Bill Corr about Bandon Trails and he told a great story about essentially how the concept of the course design came about, how they worked out how to tie together the property and some of the decisions that went into that. And we thought we would replay that clip here. Now, if this is really fresh in your memory, then it's about nine minutes and thirty seconds long, So just skip ahead
if you want. But even if you've listened to this once, I think it's really worth listening to again because to me it's just so interesting.
The whole thing on Banded Trails was really illuminating.
Yeah, very much. So, Okay, so here's that.
Clip Bandon Trails.
I'm quite smitten about that place, and you know, I think it's at the resort. It's got its cult following there among a lot of golf courses that are right on the ocean, and I would love to hear a little bit about the constructing the golf course and connecting those very distinct different areas of the course, the different ecosystems, if.
You would say, you could say.
The ocean, the dunescape ocean holes with the meadow holes, with the forest holes, and kind of how you guys creatively weave that journey together.
Well, Andy, it was Bandon Trails began when Mike Kaiser called, and I remember quite well the conversation telephone conversation. He said, Bill, I'm thinking about doing a third golf course Abandon Dunes. He said, it will not be on the ocean, so you and Ben may not be interested, he said, but I would just like to have the conversation to see if you if you might be, and if you are, would you come and take a look at the site. And I remember then, Andy, I mean just said Mike, yeah, absolutely,
we would love to come sit. I've seen Bandon Dune's, I've seen Pacific Dunes. It's just fantastic. We'd love to do that. And it's not like the site has to be on the ocean. It's not like we have to say, oh, we've got to have the best site. If we can do something that's that you and we and hopefully others will thank complimentary to the whole goth experience there, then let's take a look at it. He said, Okay, come on,
let's go. And so went out and did look at the site at that particular time, Andy, Mike and Howard McKee, you know McKee's pub. Howard McKee who's passed on, but did all the planning and permitting and everything for Bandon Dunes and for Mike, and it was a fabulous architect too, brilliant guy. But they had they had thought that abandoned trails would be all east of the big dune ridge back in the forest.
And that dune ridge is the dune ridge that runs through from the hotel really the lodge, all the way across, you know, like two at Bandon Dunes plays into it, and then eighteen at Pacific and plays along it, and Old Mac plays over it on the third hole. So that's the dunes ridge, and it'd be east inland of that.
Yes, but it extends down the coast. It's just a giant dune ridge there. And so originally Howard and Mike said, let's build it back in the forest.
It'll be more protected from the wind.
And I went out there with that understanding, and I went back and I wandered back there as best you could. It was very hard to get through because of the trees and the gorse and things. There were trails though, there were both animal trails and a couple of hiking trails that went back through there, and.
I would just look at it. I went out for.
A number of days, but each time I was staying in the lodge, there abandoned dunes and I would walk out, and each day I would walk out and I'd look at the dunes what's now number one and eighteen abandoned trails, and there was a trail that I walked on through those dunes, and I walked out through what's now number five and number seventeen, the two part threes there what we called the meadow area. And then i'd walk and get and go around the bottom end of the big
dune and back into the forest. And each day andy i'd come back, I go I could see, I guess putting it all over here in the forest. And then one day Mike Causer was out there an hour and I just remember looking at both of them and I go, you know, guys, this is after all called Bandon Dunes. What if we start in the dunes and work our way to the forest. And Mike was going, well, I kind of like I might how are you going to do that?
Though?
And uh, well, I don't know, but it might be interesting that the more I've walked out there, it's three distinctly different environments dunes again what we call the meadow with the beautiful but the beautiful trees and the connect and neck and the ground vegetation and sand, and and then of.
Course in the Pacific Northwest forest.
And so I'm not quite sure, but I think maybe there could be a way. And Mike said, well, how are you going to get over the big the big ridge? And I'm not sure about that either, cause I know we can go at the bottom end of it where it's it's much smaller, which is down where six Green is seventy.
So that was a big lynch pans that you.
Could get around that way. It's just how you were going to get back across. And but the more just wandered out there and undered out, and Ben came out and we just kind of you know, we looked at it and it just it just seemed certainly to me and Ben was in agreement this it could be interesting to tie those three elements environments together. And Mike was so as he's always been so supportive, and even though it didn't fit what he was thinking of in the beginning,
he was open to it. And Howard McKee, who had permitted everything there, and Howard was Howard whom I just absolutely told was one of the most amazing human beings I've ever met, and talented people. But I would have dinner with Howard quite often and he go, Bill, I don't know. I just don't know, he said. He said, first of all, he said, we're getting ready to dedicate a lot of this dunes area and to preserve and he said secondly, he said, that area where you go
through you call the meadow. He said, that may be the prettiest property on this entire all abandoned. Do sight, you know, he said, I just don't know how you're gonna do golf out there, he goes, but maybe you could convince me. And Howard too was open minded. And the more we looked at it and the more he tried to piece some holes together in the routing. He said, all right, all right. I remember distinctly him calling me.
They were met me out there where the old road used to go in to the main road in the abandoned dunes. You hit over now on the third T and the eighteenth T. And Howard and Mike are both going, you're gonna play over the main entry road.
Well we did. We've all seen places you do it a lot, and they go, okay, that's okay.
But Howard came out there and then he just said, Bill, you have one thousand feet one thousand feet from this road towards the ocean. He said, that's it. You can't go one inch more. He said, I've talked to the you know, all the agencies, the state agencies, the county agencies. We can get you that much that strip of dunes, which is exactly where one in the two and eighteen
or he said, So you've got that nothing more. And then he looked at me and he said, and if you mess this up in this medal out here, I'm just gonna kill you. He said, this is my favorite place in the entire resort. And I said, Howard, look at this because what's now the fifth hole, the little part three, the green was there. You were talking earlier about greens. It was there, the big trough in the middle of it. It just graded it off enough to
put some pins on it. The green at seventeen was more or less there, and all the stuff in between. So it was it was like, Howard, we're gonna build two part three's in your metal here, one going this way, one gone that we will do very little disturbance.
And he goes okay.
So anyway, that's that's when it linked together and people say, well, where did the name trails come from? It came from trails because there were hiking trails out there, particularly through the meadow part the dunes and the meadow, but then there were animal trails over the big dune ridge and back into the east. So I used to literally walk around all of those trails. And so when Mike and everybody was talking about what would the name be, I just go, well, there's a lot of trails out there.
So they said, all right, Bandon trails.
All right, So that's how Bandon trails became Bandon Trails. Now, one thing I think that didn't necessarily come through in Bill's memory of the construction is that tying together these three environments was a really big, big concern during the project.
They were actually very worried about it. And this is something that comes out and Stephen Goodwin's book Dream Golf that you know, I've been mentioning from time to time in these deep dives, they were actively thinking like, this might not work, we might not be able to do this.
I think that's the thing.
Sometimes when you have a golf course that moves into different distinct environments, you can get a feel of disjointedness and it cannot tie together right, and it cannot blend together right. And obviously, you know, a good example of a golf course that does it really well is one of Bill Corr's favorites, who he's talked about a great deal about the routing, how he is enamored with it
as Cyprus Point. But then there's you know, probably everybody here has played a golf course where you all of a sudden are like, ah, this, this is out of the blue. I didn't know this was coming. And I don't know if I necessarily like moving into this environment, and then you go back into a different environment, you're like Ah, it would be nice if they could have just had that the whole way around, you know. And I think that's that's something that a lot of courses face,
and tying together different environments. Obviously a banded trails, there's three of them. They have the dunes, the meadow, in the in the forest, and tying together those parts and making it feel like the same golf course and feel you know, like a you know, a well put together story. It's just like if you're writing something, it's sometimes hard to change topics right and tie those topics together back together.
They do it so well here, and I think part of it is the way that the golf course starts and ends in one spot and then visits and you know, and revisits to the different other areas.
Yeah, very successful and not easy to do. I mean, it seems that when you just play the finished product, it seems like it was easy. It seems like it was natural that it would be this way. But I think it can't be overstated, like how hard it is to pull this off and do it well. Cypress Point you mentioned as an example of a course that obviously
does this well. Now, there was another course that was specifically on Mike Kaiser's mind when Bandon Trails was being built as an example of a course where it's not as successful tying the environments together, and it's very close to Cypress Point.
Yeah, spy Glass, So Spyglass is obviously always the victim of this. It's a perfect example of this is where you play the first five holes and they're spectacular, they're on the ocean, you know, and then the rest of the round you're climbing up a hill in a forest and there's artificial ponds and it just you're just kind of like, oh, that's a different golf course. And I always say it should be just flip the nines. It
would get a lot better. It would be a lot more coherent of a story because you'd start up in the forest and then you play down and then back up into the forest. But like this, that's a good example of a golf course that just doesn't feel together, jointed in its current routing and journey that you go on.
Like it, it wouldn't be the way as Bill Bill always says, you know, he talks about routing a course the way you'd walk a course the first time of property the first time, and I don't necessarily think that'd be the way you'd walk Spyglass, but I certainly think it would be the way very similar way you'd walk bandoned trails.
Right now, I think that an underrated part of what makes Spyglass not quite working. I don't want to dump on Spyglass too much here because I think it's a terrific golf course.
You lived right next door to it for a while.
I know. Yeah, so I lived at Stephenson School, which is a boarding school that literally is right next to Spyglass Hill golf course. Stephenson School is right between Spyglass and Poppy Hills, so it's Pop on one side, Spyglass on the other. And yeah, I was really close to it. And in fact, actually it's great at spy Glass because there are little trails that go through the course that are public. You can just go walk through that golf course. It's not a problem. And we did it all the time.
You know, my kids were young. We'd put them in the strollers and we would be off and taking these wonderfully beautiful walks in the forest, which is an incredible environment. And so, you know, I don't want to say that Spyglass Hill is a terrible golf course. It's really not. It's very, very, very good, but it doesn't quite link
up those two different parts of its identity. And I think that one reason for that is that the holes that are in the dunes are different in more ways than the holes that are up in the forest than just the fact that they're in the dunes. The holes in the dunes are shorter, they're a quirkier, they just look different. Overall that the shaping is kind of different. The greens sit in different types of places. The green
shapes are very different. You know that the fourth green is this crazy, like, you know, narrow long thing that you never saw Robert tran Jones do something like that again, and for some reason he was inspired to do so in those dunes. But then when you climb back up into the forest, it just it gets a lot more conventional, and so it really does give you that schizophrenic feeling.
Now at a place like Cyprus Point, the holes that are back in the forest or in the dune environment or out on the ocean cliffs do have a sense of unity because the execution of the architecture is similar across those environments. So even if they're in different types of landscapes, they still feel like they're part of the same course.
I think, yeah, I think that there's also like a unifying strategy. They have coherent holes that you know, kind of fit alongside each other and blend together well in terms of like they you know, you have the rhythm and when you go Spyglass, like you go it's it's all those short holes you're talking about, kind of quirkier holes, and then you go back up into the hill and you just feel like you're getting bludgeoned with a hammer.
But you know, there's it loses some of the kind of up and down nature that some of the really great courses have where you have a mix of gettable holes and tough holes, and you know, golf course could be hard, like this is not, but it is a it's the idea of some flow in it where you feel like you've got some good chances, and especially chances if you pull off shots, like there are holes out of Spyglass where if you hit two great shots, you're just like hoping to make a par after two great shots,
you know, like the eighth holes.
When it comes to mind, like I don't know what you do.
There, just just praying to hit two good shots and then you might have like forty feet out of pretty severe green to make you know, and you know, I think that's kind of what what happens. Whereas, like, I think one of the things overarching with Core and Crenshaw that I I've noticed is like if you execute, if you hit shots, you get really good scoring opportunities. And I think that's something like where you can really get cooking on Core Crenshaw courses.
If you play well.
But if you're off, you know, it's going to be a tough day, Like it's not easy if you're off.
This episode of the Frida Egg Podcast is brought to you by Zero Restriction. So on our trip to Bandon Dune's last November, we encountered all kinds of weather. We played bandoned trails and torrential rains and gale force wins, and we played Old Mac on a beautiful, clear, but somewhat chilly day. So we needed performance apparel that was really versatile, that could handle anything that the Oregon Coast threw at us. Thankfully, we were outfitted on this trip
by Zero Restriction. Zero Restriction makes cutting edge outerwear and we actually got to try a couple of new items from the ZR collection on this trip, including the Mayweather Pullover and the Wave Hybrid. Both of these pieces have high tech fabrics that are water repellent, moisture wicking and all that good stuff, and they're nice and stretchy and comfortable, and finally, both items can function really well as either a top layer for a mild day or as a
middle layer for those colder and wetter days. You can find the Mayweather Pullover, the Wave Hybrid, and all sorts of other apparel right now at zero restriction dot com. And if you use the code old Mac at checkout that's one word, all caps, old Mac old Mac at checkout, you'll get twenty percent off at zero restriction dot Com. Let's get back to how Trails ties together these different places. Okay, so we've mentioned that there is a coherence to the architecture,
whether it's strategy or shape. Trails has that across the three different areas. But I think that there are other things that make these different environments feel like they're part of the same course. One is the way that the holes are connected with each other, and how thoughtful the transitions from a green to the next tee are and how often those trails between a green and a tea take you from one environment to the next, And so there's kind of a gradual fade or a gradual blend.
Think of the trail from the second hole, which is in the dunes, to the third te which is starting to be in the meadow with some trees around. You walk off of that second green and you're still in the dunes. You can kind of see what's ahead of you. You can kind of see that there are some trees and a different type of terrain, but that trail just so beautifully like gradually fades from dunes to the flora of the meadow environment, and it just makes you feel
like they're part of each other. So there are these segues. If we're using a writing metaphor, you need segues between different sections and paragraphs. That's what these trails do.
I think another way you could put it is like when you're somewhere where you have a great DJ. They're playing all these different songs, different you know, sometimes different genres of music. But the way they kind of blend the two songs together at the transition. Think of that as the Trails at Banded Trails where it's that kind of in between the two songs where you get you know what's coming, but you're still finishing out the other song, so you know that's ending and you're going and it's
that in between phase. And that's kind of the way trails works with these in between these holes that go from one area to the next.
Yeah, okay, So there are the connections between the holes, and then there's the overall sense of coherence in the story of the course and it's routing. I've heard you talk about this before. What's your basic take on what the story of this course is?
So I think one of the things with the resort, right, all the holes on the ocean are are kind of interconnected, and you're you're at this resort and you know you're at the resort when you're at these courses and you're you're right there, you're on the ocean. There's infrastructure, there's clubhouses, there's everything. At Bandon Trails, you kind of go out to the edge of this ocean side and you start and what it is, it's a story of departure.
You leave the resort and you.
Go almost it's really you know as somebody who shoot shot out there. I took a hiking trail and it is you go on almost a hike out there. It definitely has the most vertical climb of any golf course out there, and you go up into the forest, but like you're leaving and it's it's very peaceful. Everywhere else you hear the crashing of the waves on the ocean.
At Trails, it's silent, and it's really a peaceful place to be because when you're down at the resort, you see people, you see your you know, you see other holes. You get up at the top of the of Trails and you're isolated and it's and you really feel a way and you feel this, you know, departure from this resort that you've been staying in. The resort's wonderful, but
it is nice to get away. And I think that's one of the things Trails has got this somewhat cult following, and I think, you know, some people have trouble synthesizing why it's their favorite place. And you get to leave society for a while, and that's really delightful. It's a delightful escapism that it offers guests out there and you know, you get to go on effectively, what's the most beautiful hike that you could create out there.
It's interesting that the resort sort of feels like civilization now. Right the place where Bandon dunees is Pacific Dunes and Old MacDonald, all of that really does feel like a bustling city at this point, and so Bandon Trails is a departure from that. It is more isolated up there. It is, there's more solitude, and there's this sense that, you know, what you're hearing is no longer other people and vehicles and stuff like that. It's it's the sounds
of nature when you're up there. But just think of when Bandon Dunes was just one course, the whole thing was a departure. Then there wasn't this sense of bustle or civilization as much at the resort. And so maybe what the function of Trails was was that the resort was starting to take on this character of a really
busy place. Right. You know, Pacific Dunes and Bandon Dunes in the early two thousands were packed just all the time, all day, and so here comes Bandon Trails, offering a reprieve from that and a little sense of what the overall feel of the resort was very early in its life, so it's kind of appropriate that Trails came along when when it did well.
I think that also, you know, I think that leads into some of the real popularity today and how it's grown over time, is that people get there and they're you're part of the resort, and.
You know you're part of this.
It's like a disney It's not Disneyland, like I'm just to say, like a Disneyland of golf, right, and this is the one where you get away and you get you get and that's such a nice feeling and whether you know, I think that is something that's become more and more part of its identity as the resorts continue to grow after it, because Old MacDonald is definitely part of that bustling system and Sheep Ranch is a little bit disconnected but still really part of that system.
You can see all the other courses.
You get that.
Ocean sound, that ambient noise. I think think one of the things that when you if you go out to Trails is the solitude.
Of it and away from the ocean, the ocean is super loud. When you get away from Trails, you notice its absence.
Yeah, that's the thing.
One time I played a golf tournament at like a state am at Beverly in the city, and I was there. So I was there for four straight days, and it's one of the loudest courses in the country. Like it's got city roads, it's got a railroad, it's got it's right in the flight path of a major airport, and it's so loud.
But after four days you get used to it.
And I remember the next day or a day after that, I went to a different golf course and I was like, God, it's so quiet here, you know. And I think that's something that happens with Trails is that it's it's it and it's so distinctly different. That's I think the magic of it for the resort is that it is it is so unique to the other courses. Like the other courses are all different, you know, they have their own identities, but they do sit on ocean dunes. They all share
a very similar setting. Here, the settings completely unique and it and that is something I think that makes it such a you know, have such a cult following.
Okay, so you mentioned that it's a story of departure, but then it's also a story of return, right, So it's departure and return. And the key is that you don't start already departed. You start with something familiar. You start in the bustle of the rest of the resort with the two holes in the dunes with one and two, and then you gradually fade into this sense that you're away and that you're you've departed by working your way through the meadow and then up back ridge and into
the forest where you stay for seven holes. And then there there's a turning point where you launch off of the ridge spectacularly with the fourteenth hole, but a controversial hole which we'll we'll talk about later, and you're back in the meadow all of a sudden, and then the story is, you know, kind of gradually fading back into the dunes and then you fully return there by the
eighteenth hole. So I think the way that these the dunes environment at Bandon Trails functions is sort of like a frame story in a movie, and novels sometimes use this device too, And what a frame story is is basically a separate set of scenes that take place at a different place in a different time and Often what happens is that the characters in the frame story are telling the story that constitutes most of what you're reading or watching. And so an example of this is like
Saving Private Ryan. The frame story is the older Private Ryan in basically the present day, the nineties when the movie came out, all right, going to the cemetery. Do you remember this? Yeah, he goes to this, it's the beginning of the movie. That's the beginning of the movie. He goes to the cemetery and then flashes back remembers. I think, I don't think he's telling the story, but d day right, and and the whole movie is set there. But then at the end it goes back to the
older Private Ryan at the cemetery. We returned there. That's a frame story. It brackets the story. Another example of this is the Princess Bride, right with Peter Falk I think it is who plays the grandfather, and then Fred Savage as the as the little boy.
And that's familiar with that one.
Princess Bride.
Really, I don't know.
I got to get you to watch Princess Bride. It'll be familiar to a lot of people who are not familiar with Saving private, Ryan, I'm trying to cover all our bases here. And so the frame story is the grandfather reading the story to the little boy, and most of the movie is that story that he's reading, right, and you return there a couple of times throughout the movie, but mainly at the beginning and the end. It is
this bracketing frame story. And so for me that the first and last holes at Bandon Trails are like the frame story, right, This is we're in a familiar kind of time and place, but we we know.
Where we are, almost like a dream.
Yeah, and then we then we transition. Yeah. The rest of the course, I feel like is the dream.
Yeah, it's like you're it's you're waking.
It's like you're going to sleep conscious and you're waking conscious. If you consider if you thought of it as a dream.
Yeah, No, I love that. I think that's exactly what it feels like. Now. People may think that we're getting a little bit high on our own supply.
Yeah, they're gonna be wondering what we smoked before this.
This is getting very dorm room. But it really does feel that way that that is what we're trying to explain, is the the ineffable feeling of magic at bandoned trails. This course has it. It has that something that really transports you. And that's why I love it so much. Right, That's why I love this course. I don't love this course because it's a collection of the best holes abandoned dunes, because it's not that's Pacific Dunes, you know. I love it because it has this feeling to it that is
dream like, that is story like, that's transporting. That's what it does.
So well.
Yeah, I think that's the that is it, and I think there's some other qualities to it. You know, if you play it in the afternoon, one of the things that you get out there is you get, whether you whether you're a photographer that recognizes this stuff or you're just somebody that does, you know, you get that unbelievable filtered light through the trees out there that you don't get anywhere else. You get you get that like kind of misty filtered light in the afternoon out there.
That adds to that aura.
And and you're going through this journey and if you're playing in the afternoon, which I recommend everybody if you're going to do an app like if you're doing a morning afternoon round, do an afternoon round it at Trails because in the afternoon that light, that afternoon light hits and it comes through those trees and it's just like everything turns gold and it just adds to you know, if we're going to use dream, it adds to that dream that you're having out there, and it's it's super neat,
I think, like, and what you said is right, like when I think about you know, they have some weak holes at Trails, like and it's not not at all the best collection of golf holes from a from a golf architecture standpoint on the resort, but it's got the best story of any golf course out there from from a storytelling standpoint.
And the holes are really good and some of them are absolutely great, Like a good half of them I think you could say are great golf holes. But there are courses at the resort Pacific Dunes certainly, but maybe also Old MacDonald where if you're going hole by if you do that kind of head to head thing people do. But what's the best first hole, what's the best second hole? I mean, we did this exercise with the Dream eighteen, but.
It Trails finished had so many that just finished second or third.
You know, in people thought we didn't like trails. When we put out that episode, They're like, ooh, seems like you don't like trails. It's like, no, it just is not built to do well in this kind of exercise.
Yeah, but if you if you flipped it and said how you would you split ten rounds between this course and this course, it would win a lot.
Yes, exactly.
Let's talk about so we've talked about the dunes holes, let's talk about the metal holes.
That's the next thing. You transition.
So obviously you move from two to three, and that's one of the cooler transitions of the golf course you play, you know, to the dramatic part three that you kind of plunge down into the bottom of a dune and then you're down and it enters you into the meadow. I will say this really quickly. If that damn road wasn't there, it'd be so much cooler. It already is extraordinarily cool, but it was you know, it's like, what
I think, one of the coolest moments on property. But it would be so much better if the road wasn't there.
And I kind of hate the road. It makes me angry.
Now, that's so, I see it. It's too bad. Yeah and yeah, and the road was there before the course was built too, that was the entrance road. And it was a discussion on the design team and with the ownership, like isn't it kind of weird guys that were building holes like right by our road? You know, what are we doing here? But it certainly wasn't planned that way. There is a different way to get into the resort.
There's a road that comes straight out. It doesn't do kind of this wandering path around that this road does. And you kind of wish maybe that they'd close it down, but that's obviously very much easier said than done.
Can you think it?
I think you're going to get the logistics guys on your ass here.
Yeah, you can't. It's not realistic, Garrett, Why are you even talking about it?
Yeah?
You need to get a big infrastructure talk gone. You know, maybe they'll be part Deep Dives, Part six bandon.
Infrastructure, really really deep dive.
We'll bring chron Carter in as.
It Infrastructure week on the freddig podcast featuring Trunk Carter. Yeah, yeah, let's make it happen. Why not The Meadow. The meadow is one of the coolest places ever. I mean, it's just so beautiful there. It is completely unique. The plants that they have around there. I don't know all the names. I think there's one called kinnikinick, which is a great name for a plant. But there's you know, there's all this different all these different little things that you see.
There's so many different colors and textures. It's just a great place. Bill Korer loved it from the start. He wanted that and had to fight for that piece of land.
Beyond the the unbelievable aesthetic that the meadow has, it's it's so beautiful. The fauna flora make that and the
trees make that, you know, aesthetic so unique. Beyond having this beautiful aesthetic as as pretty of an inland asthetic as you could have, it also has some of the best ridges that you could ask for in terms of golf ridges that you know, they worked into the holes to be in very impactful areas off the tea and at greens where greens sat into uh you know, below or on top of these ridges.
Incredible land for golf. And you know, if we're talking about ridges, there's one that kind of cuts semi diagonally across the fourth hole.
What's such a great thing about that ridge on the fourth and it's why it's you know, I picked the fourth and old Mac. I sometimes regret that decision for the dream eighteen I may, I may, I love the fourth that abandoned the diagonal nature of it, and an old max is diagonal.
In a similar way.
But what that does, which I think is is something really important in the modern game of golf, is it makes long hitters particularly have to hit the ball the right distance and on the correct line. And that's something that Bill Korr talks a lot about. He talked about
it in the lead up to Trinity Forest. Is the idea of hey, you know, you're gonna have to pick how far you hit it if you want to hit it on a certain line and there you know, if you hit it a little too far on the left line, which is safer, you're going to run into the bunkers. If you hit it a little too short on the right line, you're gonna not get over the hill, or
you're gonna tumble into the right bunkers. You have to really merge, you know, you a great t shot is different based off of what distance you hit it, which I think is really neat. Like you know, it's not just one singular line. It is are you hitting it three hundred, are you hitting it two fifty? Are you hitting it to seventy five? These are all different windows, which is really neat because of that ridge. And then and then the green sits in a beautiful little pocket.
Which is a theme in this part of the property. The green sites are incredible. The fifteenth Green is one of the great green sites on the on the resort. That's it just is perfectly kind of blended in there. I don't know how much dirt they moved to make that green.
Bill Bill said it wasn't very much. I think he didn't say it on the pod, but he was.
We were talking about it before.
It wasn't very much.
Yeah, it was a green that he brought up himself.
The fifth Green I know, which has that big trough through it was there. Yes, that's what That's what Bill says is that was basically just sitting there. And the discussion was about whether they had to tone it down a little bit because because it's it is, it has big undulations. But that was essentially sitting in the land waiting to be discovered as a green for a short part of three, which it is now the fourth hole. I've come around on this hole. This is not one
that I liked. Initially, I thought it was too hard to get over the ridge. I thought it was just a blind second shot, no matter what. But you know, when I revisited it, I saw that there were these different ways that you could negotiate your way around.
Since you brought up holes that upon first site sometimes rubbed people the wrong way. Should we should we talk about another metal hole, the fourteeth.
I don't think it's just first sight that people don't like this whole. Hold on. I think there are people who have seen this hole many times who despise it.
It's so the fourteenth you come out of the forest. It's the first hole out of the forest. And obviously you've got the famous bench up there that you know, Mike Kaiser sat at and you know.
And gazed out upon his domain and yeah.
You know, some some line that's probably been changed a little bit.
Over the years. Yeah, maybe makes a little bit more dramatic, but it is.
An incredible view. I mean, you can kind of why, you know, somebody who came there and looked out at the view of the ocean and the dunes and all the variety of this property might think to himself, Yeah, that this should be this should be a place people play go.
The first time I played Banded Trails, I played by myself late in the afternoon. This was like the day before the world shut down for COVID, like, and I was in bandoned that it was the first time I played trails. I teed off like two hours before sunset and was just nobody was out there, and I was just booking around myself and honestly, I didn't know where anything was. And I walked from from thirteen up to fourteen to that exact spot and I just was like,
oh my it was a beautiful night. And I was like, oh my god. And then I read it so like I will say I had a.
Similar, same experience. I did not know fun of it.
I know, I didn't know it was there, but like it was like a very similar experience.
But it is like, you know, I don't know.
Well, there's that view, okay, so that that's the view from the tee. It's absolutely amazing and so you're immediately primed to think that this is a great hole you're about to play, because look at what you're playing off of. But okay, so here's the hole. It sits on a pretty severe side slope. There is a little area on the left where if you place your T shot there then you will stay up high and you'll have a shot into the green. But most people's tea shots run
down to the right. Okay, And when you're down on the right and hitting up onto this green, I don't think I've really seen somebody hold the green from down on the bottom on the right, and that's because this green is a tabletop. On the right are bunkers and a severe drop off that goes with the general movement
of the land. And then on the left there is another drop off that's that's doesn't go down as far, but there's a definite kind of rejecting contour on the left of this green that goes down into this little gully, and then the land moves back up the hillside. And so people's objection to this hole is I think twofold one. It's too hard to find the ideal position on your T shot to be up on the left and have a view of the green and a reasonable angle in there.
And two it's just too hard to hold this green. And once you're kind of in various spots around it, it's you can go back and forth all day. Now, I'm just putting that out there as the argument against this hole. I'm not saying I necessarily agree with it.
Now, i'd say from the left side, if you I've been in the boat where I've been over left after my second shot, I've been in the boat where I went right off the tee and hit the green.
You know it was a really good shot.
Did you hit the green?
This was the first time I played it?
Oh, okay, I've been in the spot where I was in the ideal location and I missed the.
Green from the idea. Remember that horrible shot.
But but the point I think is like, if you miss back left, it's it's a pretty manageable up and down from there for par.
I think so too. I think that that is the that is the best counter argument that you can make that shot from back there.
Yeah, Like if you so, if you miss right off the tee, which is the natural place to hit the ball, there's you know what I love.
Here's what I like.
About the whole lot is that it is a very friendly T shot. If you consider friendly fairway, Like, if you think a success of your T shot is finding the fairway, you're gonna love the T shot. But what I like, what I love even more about it, is that it is a hole where the fairway isn't necessarily friendly.
No, that's the thing.
I just think the magic of a golf hole, I think just one of the greatest, one of my greatest joys. And I think I think this comes if you you know, I used to play strictly for score really early in my life, and that was what my my round and how I thought of things was was through a lens
of this. And when I stopped caring about score as much because I stopped playing competitive golf, what I started to realize was my favorite things happened when I playing, when I was playing a course for the first, second, third, and in really great courses for the you know, if you've played somewhere ten times and then they still trick you. When you get tricked, it's such a wonderful thing.
It's like I thought, I thought I could hit it over there, but I can't.
You know, that is a magical feeling, I think if you but you know, it's hard to feel that way if you're really, really, you know, grinding on score on your personal score. And I think this is a whole that's so brilliant because they give you all the room in the world over there, and it's super short. You can make a two here if you're long hitter, it's two is in the cards. But if you're if you're out of position, four is gonna be very very hard to make well.
So I don't know if this hole necessarily tricks you, does it. I think it's pretty clear to most people what you need to do. You need to try to stay up left, but it's just really hard to do that.
Here's the thing, though, is you you know that the only place, the only place you can really ruin the hole and your mind is left is if you hit it left where the way and the forest on the left and and and it's it's just like the almost like that famous hole Woking the fourth right with the railroad and the center line bunker. Right here, they have a ridge right in the center of the fairway right that that that ridge then pushes you further and further
off line. But if you play along the railroad at Woking at a boundary line, so just think of the left as out of bounds, is it. You know, you're just gonna be hard to find your ball over there, and they give you all the space of the world, right. I mean, you can hit it really bad shot right and it still finds that fairway over there on fourteen and you know, they give you all the room of the world over there. And whether you or not you
admit it. Subliminally, what happens is people bail out. You know, it's very hard to get yourself to hit it up the left, and that's where you know, whether or not people admit it, they chicken out a lot and they and they bail right, and you face the penalty for bailing right, and people what people get upset about is that they can't hit the green from the fairway from forty yards and you shouldn't always be able to, especially on a three hundred and twenty yard hold or whatever
the yardage is. The yardage is irrelevant, right, you know, if you if you can hit it up there that close, there should be some penalty for being in a very very bad position.
Yeah, And if we're talking about course management. If you're down on the right, what you need to do is have a club or a distance where you know you're going to be long. You know where you're not going to be short in the bunkers on the right, because that's really really dead and you can hit that shot.
Now.
I think that over time they have softened that green a little bit, so maybe the recoveries are easier than they used to be, and maybe some people form their impression of the hole earlier on when the green was more severe.
Apparently the hole is really similar to ten at Riviera.
Yeah, but so much more extreme in its land.
The land is what the Riviera has, the extreme bunkers and more extreme green contours.
And really hard to hit from the right.
Yeah, it's the same thing though, it's the same concept.
Yep.
You know if you can hit it pin high left your gold. It's just it's just, you know, a riv you've got palm trees, like palm tree bushes that you could get in here, you've got a forest.
Here's the difference. I think here's the difference between fourteen abandoned Trails and ten at Riviera, and that's that it's a much more common outcome on the tenth hole at Riviera that a player ends up left of the green.
They don't have out of bounds, they don't.
Have out of bounds on the left. You have room on the left, and you don't have the whole fair way pushing your ball to the right. So it's a much more common outcome to be up the left, And I think that that's what that's the argument I think that a lot of people have against trails is that if you're thinking about the percentage of times that the outcome is that you're up on the left and you
have the ideal angle, it's pretty rare. That said, I saw you up there once, and I've been up there once the first time I played trails, So it does happen. And so the question is like what percentage is acceptable? You know, if we're talking about a hole where the there's an ideal side of the fairway or angle, at what point does it become a bad golf hole because that outcome is too rare? And I don't know. I
think it's an open question. I think that if every hole abandoned trails were like this, it would be a problem. But personally, I don't have a big issue with it being the one hole on the course that's kind of like this.
Another thing I like about it is it introduces an extremely high variance in scoring without a ton of lost balls. It does this without like a huge water hazard in front of the green like an island green.
It creates an extreme.
Like if you get out of there with a birdie, you know, if you're playing in a foursome, somebody's making a five or six, you know, and it's a short hole, and I just think that it's I think sometimes like if you think about like a golf course as a you know, golf course is kind of like defender, right, the fourteenth is kind of like you're Bruce Bowen. He's like, you're the guy that's just like he's He's or Patrick, Yeah,
he's Javan Javian. At your sides, he's You're chippy. It's the chippy defender that gets under everybody's skin at one point.
But it's just that, yeah, it's just he just here.
It is just an irritator, you know, And some people can have a wonderful time and have no problem. Like people have games where they have no problem with Bruce Bowen and torch him but then there's some other days where they just they just get under their skin. And you know, and I think that's the way you got to think of this is it's like it's the guy that you want on your team, but you don't want to play against.
Yeah, and the and the guy. When you play against this kind of player, you think you should be able to take advantage. I mean, Bruce Bowen wasn't the most athletic player in the world, right, Yeah, And I think you have that a lot of people have the same reaction to the fourteenth fold. We just compared to golf. Hold the Bruce Bowen. By the way, why am I not short bar four with a hugely wide fair way. It's drivable in a lot of situations when the wind
is going the right direction. How am I taking a seven here? You know that's the feeling. Okay, so banit. We should probably talk about that. We've spent twenty minutes now on fourteen abandoned trails.
But the forest holes, the forest you want to talk about the crossing because the crossing school too. Five and seventeen in the metal holes abandoned trails. One of the best spots in golf.
Fourteen is an interesting hole to talk about because there's a debate about it. But I don't see any argument that fifteen isn't just an incredible, wonderful golf hole. Same with five and seventeen and three and four.
Six is cool. I think six is a cool hole.
Two six is so cool. High low fairway, very subtle green, probably the flattest green.
Very hard green to hit because of the angle. I especially if you're on the low side, on the left side.
Now, sixteen is definitely not one of my favorite holes. That's that's one where I actually think this is not a very good golf hole. It's a part five that just goes straight up a hill.
Seven fits into that boat too. The hard holes out there are the ones that go up the hills.
And there may be holes that you, especially the first time you play them, you might not remember much about them. You might remember that seventeen goes sixteen goes straight up a hill. But I think nine and ten also are ones that don't stick super firmly in the memory. Come on twelve.
Nine.
I love nine. I just love the green. I love the back there all in the trees. I think the ridge off the tee on nine's cool. I think you're short change in nine. I really I enjoyed nine.
I'm just saying it's not a hole that you remember, particularly after the first time playing.
I think that's like the most peaceful spot, like you get back there or eleven that are eleven, you know, the nine and eleven stick out to me is two places where like I kind of pinch myself as to like, God, is this really you know, I don't think. I don't think the best I think the weakest holes the trails probably are the forest holes in general. But I will say that, you know, the meadow is probably my favorite, but the forest part is where I feel like the most alive.
Yeah, I mean I was working through all the holes that might be considered less than absolutely exceptional to get to holes like eight, eleven, thirteen that are incredible.
Yeah, I don't.
I think the meadows probably to be the best golf holes, but the I think the in there. I'd love the forest holes too. I just love that getting up to the top. You know, you climb up on the seventh, and you know, I think the seventh is a decent hole, and you get up there and then I think those that being up there, you feel that like sense of accomplishment that you've almost made it to the top and then you get to just explore back there in the forest.
And I think one of the things for me being somebody not from the Pacific Northwest is like, that's such a unique type of golf and and just setting for golf with those big trees. And yeah, the eleventh is so cool too, the green site down by the pond, that's that's just like and it's so fun looking back up up the hill and having that you know, it's just such a gargantuane, you know, like feature that goes through at that ridge that you tee off over.
But yeah, I agree.
It's it's like in every other whole course in a way where like you know, like it has like these like just absolutely spectacular holes, and then there's some holes that you know aren't spectacular, but they're still very good.
There.
There's usually at least one thing, a couple of things about each hole, even the less memorable ones where when you play it a second, a third time, you discover it and you say to yourself, that's really clever or that's really fun. Okay, So that's band in trails. We should probably start wrapping this up as a kind of
closing thought. Is something that I think is remarkable about the history of this course and kind of how the idea developed as it got designed, is that there was a time when they were working with this property at the very beginning, when Mike Kaiser and Kemper Sports, which manages the manages the resort. We're thinking that Bandon Trails might be the first course where they would introduce golf carts. They were considering that because you can see why, it's
a pretty extreme property. It's a tough walk, it's spread out, and so they were considering maybe offering golf carts for this course. They ultimately chose not to, and I think that that was such a great decision because this course is really a tribute to the beauties and the wonders of walking. It's everything that's wonderful about taking a walk, or you could even call it a hike, the things that you discover along the way. This is something that Bill Corr talks about all the time. You know, he
and Ben Crenshaw are all about walking. They walk everywhere when they are exploring a site. They don't take their vehicles. They walk and look and talk and walk and look and talk. And this course, more than just about any other, I think brings forward that part of golf.
Yeah, golf carts would have really taken away from just
The whole journey.