Hello, and welcome to the Frida Egg Podcast. I'm Garrett Morrison. I'm here today with Andy Johnson.
How you doing Andy, I'm doing swell, Garrett, I'm doing wonderful. I'm excited to talk about Bandoned Dunes, and most importantly, I'm excited to talk about our sponsor for today's spot, Zero Restriction. They were instrumental in getting us out to Bandoned Dunes, a place that nobody has seen or covered before, but you know, we're hoping to bring unique perspective and twist to that. And many thanks as your Restriction who outfitted us and that you know, I guess it was November.
You know that November weather abandon You don't know what you're gonna get. And it was quite important to be outfitted with the many layers that Zero Restriction sent us, and you know, it was cool. We were able to provide some feedback on their product line that's not even out yet. So one item that I had that I really enjoyed was the durand vest. You know, one of the big things that their new line is the color waves.
It was red. You know, nobody was gonna mistake me for something unless like me that you're red, green, color blind, then you're in trouble. But this red really stood out. So it's you know a little bit more eccentric colors than your typical outerwear that usually is you know, gray, blue or black. You know, this having the color new color waves was really exciting. And the vest was a
great layering piece. You know, I could wear it over you know, polos and you know pullovers, or I could wear it under and uh it provided great wind protection and uh, you know it's another layer for for the rain. I think we went through one day that wash I'll never forget. But you know, the uh, it was just another piece that kept me warm.
Yeah, the vests are great because they do keep you warm and they don't restrict your movement when you're playing golf.
Well that's why they're called zero restriction. There you go, no restriction. The name comes from I believe actually, well you have no restriction in weather, you know. I think it's a double entendres and that's what you call it in the literary world.
A multiple entendre in the literary world maybe, but uh, yeah, it was. It was great stuff. We did have a couple of pretty rugged days at Bandon Dunes, and zero restriction kept us warm and dry during them, So that was much appreciated.
Yeah, and if you are persuaded to go get yourself some new zero restriction, I know the holidays are here. If you didn't get what you wanted, if you didn't get the outerwear piece you're dreaming of, go over there and use the code t F E twenty five and give yourself the gift of a nice outerwear piece. I will tell you this, it's very functional for people that live in real winter. It's a nice piece to have to layer on those very cold winter days.
Does Oregon have real winter? No, So what you saw at Bandon Dunes was just a very aggressive fall.
Yeah or spring.
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 bried egg Friday egg, the dreaded Frida egg Frida egg Frida egg egg Frida egg bride egg.
Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the hump. All right, let's talk about sheet branch.
Let's do it. So today's episode is the first of a few that we're gonna do on the band In Dunes courses. Each of the courses definitely deserves its own deep dive. We've decided to go in reverse chronological order in terms of construction, so start with the most recent course, but you can expect more podcasts about the individual banding courses coming Q one. But it's going to be fun to start with Sheep Ranch because obviously this is the
most recent addition to the band In Dunes resort. It's a fascinating place and it's.
The most popular according to the resort, which is I didn't I didn't realize.
Yeah, I mean, I think that's probably because it's the one that people haven't played yet, and so they definitely want to play it when they go to the resort. But yeah, Sheep Branches is packed all the time. And we got to go play it on a lovely day. You know, often it's really windy at Sheep Ranch. It's extremely exposed out there on that point, and it was a pretty calm day when we played it, and and so we got to see it and what's probably unusual weather.
I've played it twice now. I played it very you know, during the growing process. It was not at all like a mature golf course. When I played it the first time, and that day, just like this day, was extremely calm.
So did you play all eighteen holes when you did the previewing?
Yeah?
Oh wow.
So it was March of twenty twenty, right days before COVID hit the US, and so that was like kind of one of my lasting memories in the dultrums of COVID was played Sheep Ranch with one of my good buddies from college.
All Right, so we thought we would start by giving a little bit of history of the property, and you have actually covered that with Tom Doak before. Now. Tom Doak and his team at Renaissance Golf Design laid out the original sheep Ranch, which was a very different kind of course, and he described what he did, how that course came about, and what it was like. So we're going to play a clip from that episode and just
let Tom Doak describe what happened. Hey, So, in listening to this clip again, I realized that we needed a bit more setup to help you understand what Tom and Andy are talking about. So one thing is that the original sheep Ranch, in case he didn't know, was essentially a free form golf course. It consisted of thirteen greens and basically the player would get to determine his or her own routing, his or her own path around the
golf course. Then, of course Bill cor and Ben Crenshaw came in a few years ago and turned it into more of a traditional eighteen hole course to be part of the Bandon Dunes resort. So that's one thing. Another thing is that when Tom refers to Mike in the clip coming up here, he is talking about Mike Kaiser, who is the founder and developer behind the Bandon Dunes resort.
Mike and his friend Phil Friedman, his partner from the greeting card business, were the major forces behind the Sheep Ranch, getting it off the ground originally and continuing up to today. All right, here's Tom.
Phil Friedman was Mike's college roommate and his partner in recycled paper greetings. And when Mike started looking at doing band Dunes, he asked Phil if Phil wanted to be a partner in Bandon too, and Phil said no. He thought Mike was crazy to be spending so much money out there on a golf project in the middle of nowhere. So when we started doing planning for Pacific Dunes and Bandon Dunes was getting ready to open a lot of
the trips. Phil would come out with Mike to Bandon and Phil was just feeling like such a dope for not having been part of Bandon Dunes. He loved playing the golf courses. He was like, he played the first loop of Hall's the Preview Loop at Pacific Dunes more than anybody. I think he just loved it. And he was just like beating his head against the wall. Why didn't I participate in this? So the land for the Sheep Ranch came up for sale. I don't know if
there was an intermedia. At one point, a power company had owned it, and there were some wind turbans out there, like back in the seventies or early eighties, and it was so windy, like destroy the wind turbans and they didn't work, so they took that all out. But I
don't know if there'd been an intermedia owner or not. Anyway, it was for sale, and it was for a pretty good chunk of money for you know, two hundred acres on the Oregon Coast in the middle of nowhere, and you know it was right next to Bandon and right where you could see it, and and Mike was like, well, I got to buy it to protect the resort from somebody building a big, ugly hotel there or cashing in
off what we've done and building another golf course. They're separate, but it was a chunk of money too, And you know, Phil raised his hand and said I'll go have these with you, and Mike was like, okay, that don't save me some money. So it was a separate deal from the resort, a separate ownership. So they tried to come up with a business model that wasn't like directly tied to the resort. And the first idea was, well, let's
make a private you know. And you know, I thought it would have been neat as a private course to you know, like get some members, build a little clubhouse with some lodging. Sure, they go play at the resort during the day, and then they come up there at the end of the day and play till dark, basically on their own little golf course without a lot of other people around. I thought that would have worked, and
it might have worked. But somewhere during the process of routing, as we were starting construction, I don't think Mike Kaiser ever anticipated at that point what a hero he was going to be in the golf world for building Bandon Dunes and it being all public. But that was that was starting to be the story about the resort and Mike all of it sudden realized that if he did this private thing right next to the resort, he would
kill that and he didn't want to do that. So he got really called feet about the business model and kind of backed off and didn't really want to didn't really want to build anything, having any idea what he would do with it. But Phil, who spent half the money to build it, and you know, he really wanted to go ahead. So he asked us if we could go ahead, and you know, what could we do for a limited amount of money? And I said, well, you know,
really the big cost of this whole deal is irrigation. Irrigation. The irrigation system was literally forty percent of the cost of building Pacific Dunes. So without that, you know, if you're just building greens and a few bunkers, and we didn't even we built about three bunkers because it was not sandy soil, and we figured the sand.
Would all blow away.
We just built a couple of bunkers to see if they would hold up at all. And Phil said, okay, we'll just build some greens and you know, we'll just we'll just see the whole place. And you know, you get enough rain there in the winter, you get a catch of grass, but it just goes, it goes super dormant the summer. They would shut it down for a while in the summers because it would just get so toasty.
He didn't want it to catch fire.
But it just had a loop of irrigation around the greens and nothing else. So it was really like what you'd see in New Zealand or rural Scotland or somewhere as far as the maintenance level of it. But because Mike had kind of like disavowed it, there was this always this awkward relationship between the resort and the sheep Ranch, like we've got to make sure that no staff from the resort is doing a work up there, and they're not using equipment from up there. So the sheep Branch
only had a couple used motors. Basically was what they maintained the golf course with. I mean, it was basically a two man operation for years, and you know, some people didn't get it. It's like, why are the golf courses down there so perfect? And this is kind of raggedy, And some people just loved it that way because it was so different.
And I think that's an important historical anecdote. That is what happens when new courses open. Magazines write about how it's the best course here, you know, no matter what, it's always that's always going to be the conversation. But it's important to remember that what you did at the Sheep Ranch was a drastically different concept and wasn't It's
not like it was a failing. It was a success in a different way than what Bill and Ben just completed there is it was a commercial golf course, and yours wasn't a commercial golf course built for resort play. You know, it was a it was a concept and and in many ways, the idea of low cost construction, low cost maintenance with a golf course that made people like imaginations run wild is a smashing success and not something not an idea of golf that should be abandoned.
No, and I'm meant, I mean I want to be really careful. First of all, I haven't seen that. I haven't seen Bill and Ben's course yet, but I can. I've got a pretty good idea. It's like it's spent a lot of time in the ground. You know, I've seen the routing plan. I think the routing plan is really good. They did some things that Don and I never thought of that made I mean, basically, they fit eighteen holes on about one hundred and twenty acres and
made it really cool. You know, it's got to be really close together and it's got to be kind of all mode tight for that to work. But it looks really cool and I'm excited to play it. So I'm not saying what we did was better. It was completely different for a completely different concept and client and everything else.
And so the sheep branch was kind of in limbo for you know, we you know, it was done in two thousand and three, and it sat there for fifteen years with people occasionally playing it and not really understanding what was going on. When Mike and I started talking about Old McDonald, and really not when we started talking about it, but just when we just when we agreed
that I would do Old McDonald. Right as I started to shake his hand about it, he said, you realize that if I have you do Old McDonald whenever I do something with the sheep Ranch, I'll probably have somebody else do it. And I like hesitated for about a half a second, you know, because at that time, you know, Mike and Phil we did an impasse over what to do with it. I was like, whatever's going to happen with the sheep Branch is way down the road, and you know, we could use this old.
McDonald job right now.
So I didn't think very hard about that, but I did it kind of with sadness too, because I really I did love the concept of the sheep Ranch, and you know, I knew it was going to go away someday and they would do something real with it. And it was kind of a bummer that we didn't get to work on it again when the time came. But by the same token, you know, I was kind of like, that would have been hard for me to do, all right.
So there's a number of interesting things to say about the original Sheep Ranch. Neither of us played it, first of all, and so we can't really comment directly on what that course was. It seems really interesting in concept, but it just wasn't going to work as a public resort course. This was always going to be a private members course. That was the only way that it was really going to work.
Well. It's an interesting aspect of golf and whether it's a club like I think clubs struggle with this. They build these really neat short courses. One that comes to mind is what the course that OCM built at Shady Oaks, the nine hole short course called the Little Nine I think. But when I got out there, I was looking at I was like, God, you could play this, you know, seventy five times and talking to the superintendent do you ever do this or seventy five different ways? And they're like, no,
this is how we set it up every day. There's this reluctance for golfers in concept. If you know, if a golfer is in the right mindset, it's like al and it's a really cool place to go, you know. And I think this probably has a lot to do with people's personalities. If you're not like a type a planner, this is a concept that you find very appealing, Like I can I don't know where I'm going next, but I'm going to go somewhere and I can play there.
It's not necessarily there's no handicaps, there's no you know, this is not a place I'm entering my score. But for somebody that's type A, this is this is an
utter disaster. The idea of not knowing where you're going, not being a formal scorecard, not being able to track my scores, not being able to enter a handicap like these are things that just kind of would cripple a type A person where, you know, and I don't want to cast too many generalizations, but that I think, like you know, for some people, for certain types of people, this concept is is unbelievable. But for others it's it's just like, no, this isn't golf, this is not my structured golf.
And I think specifically people who are going to band It Dunes, if they encounter a free form course, their first question is probably going to be, well, which one's the best routing, which one's like the top one hundred course here? I want to play that?
Yeah, I mean that's the question you encounter when the second you step on foot, is that everybody wants it out. What's the best course? And you know, with the sheep branch you could come up with sixty different courses in its original you know, construction, which I find quite appealing. I you know, ironically, I think this course and the Loop are two examples of Tom. I think one of the things that Tom does that not a lot of architects do is they push the boundaries of and they push,
you know, where they're comfortable going. Like, you know, they don't stick to what has worked for twenty He doesn't stick to what has worked for twenty years. He wants to design new concepts. And I think when you look back on his career, that's the thing that you know is probably one of the most admirable things about about
him is that he pushes the limits. And you know, this course and the Loop, to me are two courses that were built at resorts that are would be far superior golf courses for municipalities or clubs because of the versatility of them. You know the loop is going to work because you know that that resorts really embraced it.
But I always think about that golf course, how unbelievable it would be to play it every single day, because that's where the more and more time you spend on it, the more and more you appreciate all the little intricacies that went into that design and just the day to day variety of playing a completely new golf course every day.
And you know, in some ways the Sheep Ranch concept might have been a little bit ahead of its time.
It seems like a perfect state course.
Oh yeah, And it ended up kind of being that, right. It ended up being sort of a private playground for Phil Friedman and his family for a while, and they finally decided to you know, formalize the routing, make it an eighteen whole course that was more part of the Bandon Dune's resort when Freeman's kids had grown up and you know, they weren't going out there as much. But for a while it kind of functioned in that way.
But you know when I say it was a little bit ahead of its time, Now we have places like Hoopy Match Club and the Loop, which the reversible course that Tom Dokes Firm designed at Forrest Dunes. There are these alternative concepts starting to pop up. We're starting to see how they work, and maybe it would have been more possible for Sheep Ranch to happen if that were the case. But at the time, Mike Kaiser was like, you know, I've gotten a lot of positive press for
opening up these public courses. There's going to be a little bit of blowback here if we establish an ultra private course, which which this would kind of have to be in order to function.
Yeah, and who could complaint with the results as it's the busiest eighteen hull course at you know, maybe the busiest golf resort in the world. And you know, people seem to love the golf course. So you know, hiring it worked out, Bill Koor Ben Crenshaw obviously you're going to usually get a pretty solid product. I think this golf course is very distinct from all the others because it's in a complete it's off site. You leave the resort, you know, you leave the central theme of the property.
You know, the dune ridge that extends across every single golf course at Bandon is not present here, and you know, it is a It is probably the smallest site of all the golf courses.
The smallest site and very different from the land at the other golf courses. Now, just to backtrack a couple of steps for those who don't know, Corn Crenshaw came in a few years ago, did a new routing, eighteen whole routing, and that's what we have today at the Sheep Ranch, which has been open for what a year and a half now.
Be twenty twenty, so almost two getting close to two years, but a year and.
A half now. Tom Doak and Don Plasik is at Renaissance Golf Design had done an eighteen hole routing. In fact, I think multiple eighteen hole routings on the Sheep Ranch property before, and Tom has one of them in his book Getting to eighteen. That's really interesting to look at now because it is pretty different. As you mentioned, it's a pretty small site, and so fitting eighteen holes on there, eighteen regulation holes was always going to be a challenge.
The way that Doak and Plasic dealt with it was by having a couple of holes cross over each other kind of, and then you have a couple of holes kind of climbing up into the northern inland corner of the site where the driving range currently is. Bill Corr solved these problems in a very different way, and Doak talks about it in his book. He says, you know,
Bill found some solutions that I didn't see. You know what Bill did was he has that first hole kind of running along the northern boundary of the site great first hole indisputably the best first hole on the resort, and that was not a hole that Tom saw, and so Bill kind of found that one. He also found the green site for number nine, which is kind of out on a peninsula, and you know, that was sort of in a part of the property that the original Sheep Ranch didn't use, and so Bill kind of found
that stuff and made it work together. As part of the routing, Bill also has holes playing along the cliffs in different directions, and he does that by having holes play out to the cliffs and then kind of go off in one direction and then the course wraps back around, plays out to the cliff again and goes in another direction. And so it's really cool the solutions that Bill Corr found on this site. And he talked to you in fact about the pieces of pizza.
Yeah, that is one of my favorite moments of the podcast history is he's describing how he figured this out and he talks about how they're like pieces of pizza, and that's a good way to visualize it. So, you know, the a hole when you tee off, you know, you play out to like that's where your shot, you know it Fans out like a piece of pizza, right, and then when you play into greens, that's like playing to a point of a piece of pizza, right, everything narrows down.
So it became about matching up, you know, the insides of the piece of pizza in these gathering points. And you see it right off the bat with the first hole, the eighteenth tee, the seventeenth green, and the second tee on this one little area and then they're all the corners the front parts of a triangle piece of pizza. And then everything comes in or goes out from there like a you know, fans out. So that's how he
kind of did that. And he has these different gathering points throughout the throughout the property where it's it's it's very easy to see once you visualize it that way. And we did a video that kind of highlights this. You know, it makes the route it like, I mean, it's already small plot of land, but you keep you
go to these places and you return to them. And another thing from you know, Bill talking on the pod that I'll never forget is how much he admires the routing of Cyprus Point and he always talks about how it goes to areas and returns to areas. And that's something that you start to notice with Bill when you when you think about how, you know, the places that he's really enamored with seem to have similar characteristics with routing,
and then you start to play his courses. And this is very similar to Bandon trails, which I don't want to get into, but there are these points that you go past and then you return back to and the same thing happens with the sheep branch, and it's you know that that northern point that you go to the first hole, you don't return back that are until the seventeenth at the very end, you know, and sometimes it are long gaps between them. Sometimes it's very short, right, Yeah.
So just to explain the pizza metaphor a little bit more, you can also imagine just like a triangle. And the problem that he's solving with this in the routing is that this is a pretty small site, so it needs to be a tight intimate routing with holes pretty close together. There aren't things to separate the holes from each other. There aren't these huge dunes the Pacific Dunes and Bandon
Dunes have. There aren't trees. It's just it's pretty open, and so if you have holes tight together on a fairly small property that's really open, then you have safety problems. And so what he worked out is getting different tea complexes close together and then having the holes play away
from those tees in different directions. And so you can get a lot of width in the driving zones because you're playing kind of from the same place, but you're playing in a different direction, and so it's a super wide course, but at the same time, the holes all fit. And the way he makes that work is by designing these triangles or pieces of pizza so that people aren't hitting into each other basically, and it really works beautifully, Yeah, more.
So than anything any other course. It's it's very like jigsaw puzzly in the sense like there's no dunes that like are are there right that pieces fit into or up into or over like everything's there and everything just kind of fits together. And I think, you know, obviously one of the things with this golf course, it's never going to be mistaken as a championship course, like they're they're never going to bring one of the USGA championships
to the Sheep Branch. The Sheep ranch is a you know, it's it's a fun golf course and obviously one of the most distinct features there are the bunkers. So the bunkers, they made the decision not to put sand in them. I think that's a maintenance issue that they deal with at at Pacific Dunes and Bandon Dunes and Old Mac
is sand blowing out of bunkers. This is the most exposed site, the site that gets the windiest, Like, if you're going to play it on a windy day, luck, it's gonna be the windiest place on on the property. And you know, one of the things they did was not put sand in bunkers, which I think is something that more golf courses should look into.
Absolutely. How did you like how they played?
I haven't ever been in one, but I've watched people play all right, Well, I was in a couple. Yeah. I think they're impactful. I think like what happens is you get a lot more unpredictability out of it. I think you see good players struggle out of them. You know is the thing is you get really gnarly unpredictable lies. Sometimes you get great lies and you can hit a shot,
you know, say it's a part five. You can try and go for the green out of them, but you can also get really bad lies that you wouldn't see unless your ball plugged in a bunker, you know. And I think that's the thing that I like about it is that it does provide a little bit of a leveling of skill between a scratch player and a fifteen handicap, where the fifteens generally struggle it from years ago catting.
I hope I'm not type casting it, but just in general, you know, fifteen handicaps compared to scratches, that that skill level separates even further out of bunkers. And I think this is a really you know, a it's cheaper to maintain and b it effectively like brings skill levels together, which I think is a very very clever design feature that we should look at more in the future.
Yeah. I mean, through the history of golf, we've developed this idea that bunkers need to have sand in them. And the reason bunkers originally had sand in them is that that was just what the soil was. On the oldest courses, you dug down and there was sand that was what was naturally there, and that's true also of the other courses. At the band In Dunes Resort, if you dig down into Pacific Dunes' soil, you'll find sand,
and so sand in the bunkers is pretty natural. There At Sheep Ranch, you're not dealing with sandy soil really, and so they sand capped it though they yeah, you're not dealing with a naturally sandy site. I mean that that was a big reason why they didn't put sand in the bunkers, right, because if it blows out, then
you you don't have much to replace it with. And so you know, what's at the bottom of these bunkers is pretty natural, and I think that a big thing that makes it work is that it's not intensively maintained rough. That's what you usually see in grass bunkers. When courses have grass bunkers.
They're collection area. They're like water collection areas. A lot of times there's catch basins and do they serve as drainage functions. And what you get is like the thickest, gnarliest rough there. This is very sparse, It's like it's
kind of patchy and gnarly. And what it does is it creates like really good lies like you can have that ball sit up and it's like it's on a tee or you could get you know, you're in between tufts of grass and you're you're looking at it and it's like, I don't know if I can even hit this ball ten yards and.
You've got to play a variety of shots out of there.
Right.
Sometimes it's hard to tell how long your backswing can be. Because if you're a pretty good player and you're in sand, then you can kind of go after it. You have a little bit of freedom to swing hard at it. But when you're playing out of one of these sometimes you don't know how the ball is going to come out. Sometimes you have to be really delicate, and I think that that's what courses that don't want to do traditional bunkers should really strive for.
Yeah, it elicits imagination too, because you get in a lot of predicaments that you're not used to it. It's the idea of like the departure from driving range or short game area golf, Like you get in spots where you're like, I don't really know what I should do here, but this seems like the right shot, and then you couple it with some of the green concepts out there, and it makes for a lot of really fun shots and the ability to really you know, engage your creativity around the greens.
What are some of your favorite holes?
Well, I think I think if I had to pick one, you know, interestingly here, like everybody, everybody's very aware of the ocean holes. And what I think about this golf course is actually the best holes are inland, the most
jaw dropping topography. Now, like there's nothing like playing on the ocean, right and you're staring at the ocean, but when you're talking about playing a golf course, and the way I like to think about golf courses isn't necessarily the first time I play them, but like the more times I play them, what what grows and the holes that really stick with me are are inland. There. The eighth hole is one that I think is just absolutely tremendous. It's got one of we talked about this on the
podcast on the Dream eighteen. It's got arguably maybe the best green on the property. It's a green that you know, Cameron heard us who were we out there with, made a comparison to an Augustin National Green, like the fifth Green in Augustina National and anybody that's seen that just a massive false front. But it also has like some avenues of play that you can get at with with different angles into the green, the you know obviously the
ocean holes. The ninth hole is one of my favorites, just hitting into that green and having it run away the way it runs away is a is a tremendous hole. But then you know, going inland again, the fourteenth hole and the eleventh hole. Eleventh hole is a par five that plays up this hill, up a huge ridge. It's like, I don't know how to really describe it. It almost feels like you're playing out of a quarry up to the top of you know, and it's where the clubhouse sits.
That hole is stunning, it's a it's it's probably one of the sternest par fives on property. You have to hit two really great shots to get there, and it's blind, you know. On If you don't get there, you're probably gonna have a blind third. And it's got one of the whi it's got a really wild green. It's you know, that's the thing I think, I I you know, the the land inland is really really good. It's got you know, kind of more dramatics than the land on the coast,
but it also has the most dramatic greens. Is you can tell that there is an effort to make those holes really spectacular, because you know, otherwise they'd fall short of the ocean holes.
Now, so the eleventh hole, the par five that you were talking about, the green literally is in a quarry, in an old quarry. This is something that I just found out where you know, it was basically a sand quarry that Doakes team used to get sand for some of the things that they were building on the Old
Sheep Ranch. And to make the eleventh hole what's now the eleventh hole, Corps team knocked down one wall of the quarry essentially and they have the whole play into it, and the green kind of sits in that cavity and it's just really cool, really spectacular, an inventive use of not a natural feature necessarily, but a found feature. I think fifteen is a fantastic hole too.
It's a great like hard par four gettable part four.
It will say more about that, what's the how is it both hard and gettable?
So like well, like fourteen is like a just a stern par four and then fifteen is a hole that, like, you know, depending on your skill level, if you're you know, if you're trying to score out there, you feel like that's a hole where you should get a birdie because you can, you know, it's a short part four. But
then you get up by the green. The green is just absolutely jaw dropping where the location of it right on the coastline, and then also the undulations it's got, you know, a spine that runs through the you know, the green kind of is oriented on a diagonal. So the further left you play off the tee, the better angle you're going to have into the green, which I
think is a little counterintuitive. It is away from the straight line at the hole, and it's a driveable hole if you get the right wind, and I think most people end up trying to drive it, end up right and end up in a really bad spot to approach the green. But if you hit it left, which you know is a little counterintuitive on a short part four, you know, it provides you the right of the angle to really get at every pin.
Yeah, what's counterintuitive there off the tee is how far left you can aim and be in a great position going into the green. Because you just feel like you should be cutting off more. But you can really aim away from the green and you'll be in a good spot.
But it's kind of like a hard thing to do because that the way the green in the coast is, it kind of cuts on a diagonal and like you know, there's not a lot of stuff in the way, so your depth perception is a little off. But you don't know how far left you can go because of the coast. If you're a long hitter, you're kind of like thinking, I might run out of real estate over there, even though it's really far.
Yes, yeah, yeah, And you don't know how crazy the green is until you get up on it, but it is truly crazy and very very fun. You know. There's this spine running through the lower portion of the green that you mentioned, kind of right through the middle, and it really is a spine. It's a hump, you know,
putting over it is difficult. And then there's a tier at the back of the green that goes way up kind of you know, flows from the spine and creates a shelf at the back right portion of the green, and you can definitely three put that green a lot.
Yeah, yeah, I mean and you can make bogie from just off the green if you drive it up by the green really easily because you get in the wrong spot. Those those backpins are really really difficult. Whether it's into the wind, you know, you're trying to gauge your distance control right you know, and your spin you know with the backpin, and then if it's downwind, you're trying to run it up with the right touch, and it's a
that's a that's a hole. I'd love to just sit around and hit pitch shots at all day to different pins, but like I think we'd be remiss, like the obvious, like contenders for favor holes, like sixteen as one. I think sixteen is super cool short part three and when you combine it with the third green they have, they share a green, and the way they kind of create those massive undulations that divide the green, I thought it was really clever.
Yeah, and Bill Core credits that green, which is the one that everybody's seen. If you've seen pictures of Sheep Ranch, then you've seen a picture of this green. It's out on five mile point. What you don't see in those kind of high above pictures is how extremely undulated this green is it is. Really it has a lot of movement in it, you know, like ten feet bottom to top or maybe more. And billcre credits most of that
green to Jim Orbina. Basically, what Core says is that we rebuilt the green, but essentially what was there before
is there now and it is super cool. It functions beautifully as a double green because the sections are cut off from each other, and when you're playing to it from the sixteenth tee, the sixteenth hole is just so fun because there's this narrow walkway between the edge of the cliff and a big dune and you're basically playing along that and if you hit it over the dune, then you have a really good chance at feeding the ball to the hole out on the point. But it's
not immediately clear what you have to do. You know, there's that feeder slope there, but you don't really see it, and.
Nobody that's like a scratch player is really thinking about that because you have a wedge in your hand and you're thinking like, I can hit this close, I can fly it close. But you know, if you want to bail out, there's a way to bail out and have it run right by. It's a little bit less predictable than your wedge, which is why a scratch player would
never do that. But you know, it provides relief and it's a very I mean, it's a t shot that you stand over and you're kind of you're, no matter what kind of player, you're a little nervous because you know you're exposed to the elements you're hitting out out of this point and like it's a big target, but you know that that cliff is unforgiving on the left.
So here's a general question about Sheep Ranch. I think that one of the things that we all hoped that the new Sheep Ranch would do was that it would retain some of the feel of the old Sheep Ranch because you know, that was a unique place in golf what Doc and his team designed there. Obviously, it couldn't survive when the Sheep Ranch was incorporated into the larger resorts. Something else had to be built there. But do you think there's still something of that spirit in the new
course there? This is something I've been thinking about.
I you know, I think in the sense that it's kind of a quirky, yer place than than the rest of the golf courses. I would say, you know, it's got it's it's a charming place. I do think it was a little resortified in the in the nature of like the par three's are kind of what grinds my gears at Sheep Ranch, and they're they're different from each other, but the three of them in the first three in
the golf course are very similar to each other. And that, you know, I think there could have been some decisions and you know, obviously I'm not I'm not an architect, but I think if you were not designing a resort course, you might have made some decisions that were different and not have three you know, part threes that play in the first seven holes that play kind of in the same direction, similar lengths to similar green sites.
Yeah, and I would say that out of those part threes, which are three, five, and seven, and so that's that's part of the problem, they're they're.
Yeah, yeah, they're very close, and you're just like, wait, this is like a really similar shot. It's a similar wind because they play in similar directions they do. And and then like the green sites, like they're I've been there, you know twice. Now it's like kind of hard to distinguish, like I know seven runs away, and you know, I remember holes like in three, you know you have some helping Three kind of runs away a little bit, but
then five you've got some helping contours up. But like they're kind of they're very very just you know, there's not a lot of it, and I think like not having bunkers probably plays a role in this, but they just feel really similar.
Well the first time you play them, they definitely blend together a little bit. I think that three and five out of those are probably the weaker holes. Seven is a terrific hole. I think, you know, it plays out to a peninsula and green, as you mentioned, runs away a little bit and so you really need to land it short. And there's a really interesting green complex there that is just kind of fun to play around. But five, I would say, is not a particularly strong hole overall.
It's a little bit longer than the others. I guess you're playing a longer club, but there's not much there that jumps out at me. Is like that's a distinct feature on this hole. It's more like it was kind of put there in order to have another hole playing at the ocean. And I would say that three is you know it's fine, but it's more just functional than it is a great.
They're just kind of there as holes. I feel like now they point right to the ocean and that it's stunning. Yes, but you know, when you look at the merits of the golf hole, they I think fall short of Like, you know, they're a couple of the weakest holes on the entire property, you know, across all the courses. I've something that I've kind of thought about and mold about. This is my biggest complaint about the golf course is like could there have been decision that changed it a
little bit? And what I've kind of thought about is if the sixth hole, which is a great cliff side hole, different than seventeen but similar in the t shots they kind of mirror each other. Obviously seventeen t varies directly
a ton based off where you play it from. But you know, they these are two great epic cliff side par fours, right, And if you turned six into a par five that played to seven Green, which is a fantastic green site, like probably is of the three my favorite green site, you would remove some of that you know, monotony, and you'd get that par five and then to make up for it. You know, one of the holes that I like, don't want to hit a good drive on so I get to hit the third shot is the
eleventh hole up into the quarry. So one of my thoughts was like, if you created a par four that played down to the bottom of the quarry and then you had an uphill par three up there, it would add so much variety to the par three's and I I don't know if it would be a better course, but from a par three standpoint, it would be significantly more memorable in my opinion. Better.
That's interesting. Now that sixth hole that you're talking about, which is now a long par four and you could turn into a par five that would be spectacular. It would take up a lot of coastline. And I think that that would probably be the concern that you're you're sucking up, that.
You're trading too. You're trading too Like here's the resort aspect of it, right, Like Banded Dude's one of the you know, and I think Mike Kaiser's been pretty direct about this, Like the postcard pictures. There's a big thing the magazine pictures. Like when when they started of the ocean is a big thing, a big part of their success. Like you're talking about replacing two coast holes, making it
one and then having two inland holes instead. That's where the resort aspect of this, you know, kind of prohibits that idea, which it's kind of disappointing, you know, And I think, you know, that's just my two cents though.
Right Well, so in the transformation from the free form course with thirteen greens to the eighteen hole resort course, I think one thing that they've gotten right so far is just the feeling of being out there and playing in an open piece of land. Yeah, because the holes are not very distinctly defined from each other in a good way. You know, there's just this kind of these open expanses that you play across. There are some longer grasses, there's a little bit of gorse out there, but mostly
what you have is enormously wide fairways. And so I think there's still that feeling of going to a tee looking out at a green in the distance and saying, Okay, we've just got to get from here to there, and there are a number of possible routes there. I've got this big field to play over and I'm just going to figure it out. And I think that there's still something of that spirit still in the course just because of how open it is. It is by far the
most barren looking property at the resort. Now. I'm not sure that that's going to last necessarily, but I like it right now. I like that feeling of the openness.
I think it it promotes like a feel of camaraderie in a way, like you're on a journey. You're out there with other golfers. You see that everybody all over the place, and it promotes almost like a community feel where there isn't as many walled off areas. It's like you're you're playing golf on this beautiful like it's almost like being at a party that's like on this epic you know, ocean frontage and it's just this big room that everybody's in and you're going and you're just working
the room. You're working around it, right, and like everywhere you turn there's a great view and I mean epic holes like I think, you know, granted, I've played it in little light winds, but it's some of the most fun golf that I've played. Abandoned.
Yeah, I think it is really really fun. Now, as you say, it's really different when there's a heavy wind out there, I'm sure that the course feels completely different. But when there is a lighter wind, it really does feel like a sporty golf course, you know, as compared to a championship course, which you might find elsewhere at the resort. You know, Abandon Dunes is you know these days it feels like a championship course. It literally is. That's where they're holding USGA championships.
Yeah, And like Pacific Dunes is like a place that like, you know, like there are multiple points in that round where you know you just have to hit a perfect shot, you know. And at Sheep Branch you feel and I think part of it is that expanse. You feel the ability that you can kind of be a little bit looser and you can, and I think that plays to that sportiness that you talked about, Like you feel like
you can experiment and you can hit different shots. And because it does, you know, you don't have these deep blowout bunkers that are staring you right back in the face.
You know.
It just it enhances your ability to see shots because you don't aren't as scared of repercussions. You could still get in terrible spots, but it's not as visually intimidating.
And maybe part of that is that there's a lot of ground game out there.
It seems like that and Old Mac are the two that embrace the ground game the most, and I think like it, we'd be remiss if we didn't talk about conditioning. They're the two newest, they're they're the two with you know, basically fescue everywhere, and they play they promote the ground games as as the most of any golf courses because of the way they play.
Yeah, and Sheep Branch is gonna evolve, you know, yuh Like it's it's gonna change because of the wind and because of the type of terrain that's there. You know, it's it's not particularly sandy, it's it's much heavier soil. I'm sure the grass is gonna change. I'm sure there's going to be different things happening in the areas between
the holes. There might be gorse reintroduced, or if there's not gorse reintroduced, I'm sure that the grasses are gonna gonna shift and evolve, and I'll be curious, particularly to see how Sheep Ranch changes in the future because it is very new and it's on a site that probably is going to be very malleable.
Yeah, I mean that. I think that's one of the things you always have to keep in mind with new courses is and it's something that sometimes can be frustrating with when you think about how courses are judged, and it's they're judged when they're growing in when they aren't even fully matured, and you know, we always slap the you know, the Sheep Ranch obviously was like slap that that might be the best course abandoned when it when
it was opened, because that's what magazines do. But you know, one of the things I always think about is like golf courses should be judged like five to ten years into their lifespan because so much of it is about, you know, how architects build golf courses and how they hold up with like quality construction. Just like a house, if you buy a shitty house, it's gonna fall apart.
Like you know, if you build a shitty golf course from an infrastructure standpoint, it's gonna you know, it's not going to age well and then it also holds the ownership accountable to maintaining and keep taking care of a golf course in the right way. So that's something I think about a lot, and I think, obviously like the
Kaisers do a wonderful job with both those aspects. But Sheep Ranch is one like before we make these lots like that is a golf course that's gonna evolve more so than almost probably any in the world.
Yeah, we'll see. So you mentioned the magazines that were eager to say that Sheep Ranch is the best core said Bandon Dunes. I don't think people were necessarily saying this is definitely the best course at Bandon Dunes, but there was the kind of strong suggestion this might be it. But I think when people say that Sheep Ranch might be the best course at Bandon Dunes, that they're forgetting how good some of the other courses are and it's just not quite on that level. And I don't think
it's necessarily trying to be. I think it's trying to be its own thing. But if you're looking for a course that's as good as Pacific Dunes or Abandoned Trails, I just don't think that was ever what this was going to.
Be this is the ranking of banded courses is always an inevitable rabbit hole. And the way I would phrase Sheep Ranch and you can phrase this with a lot of them, And I think this would fall into the two courses I'd probably want to play the most if I played there, Like if that was where I played
golf was banded all the time. The two courses, and this is not a realistic thing for really anybody, but the two courses I'd want to play the most are probably Sheep Branch and Old Mac, you know, and I think they have kind of the most variability with the you know, with the design, and they they also I think, you know, Old Mac is hard, It's very hard, but it has the most shot options, and Sheep Branch is a place where you feel like you can go get stuff.
And you know, Pac Dunes is absolutely jaw dropping place. But you know, there's some shots out there that I don't want to see and hit all the time, but I really enjoy hitting them occasionally but not all the time.
And I think that's where, you know, I think I put it in that bucket of like and Trails is a little bit bigger of a walk, so that would be kind of the detriment on that is like Sheep Branch is a place you could go play like fifty four holes in a day, no problem, like you know, walking, And I think the same with Old Mac is, like you know, the the climbs, like it's it's not as
taxing of a golf course. Now, obviously the wind plays a huge factor on that, but the golf courses are easy to get around and fun and they offer a ton of variety day to day.
Yeah, I'd agree with that, And so it depends on what you're prioritizing. That's why it's tough to rank stuff.
Yeah. I always struggle with this because it's like I think there are golf courses that are better than other golf courses, but the other golf course I might want to play more often than necessarily the better course. And
it's something I always grapple with. And this is one that was score really high on the like I want to play there a lot list, but I think there are some issues with it that hold it back from being like a truly, truly great, great golf course, like in the breadth of like the very best golf courses in the world.
Yeah, all right, I think we've done Sheep Ranch. I think we've covered it. Anything else you wanted to say about it.
Well, one thing, I think the second hole it'll never get any love, but I'd love that hole. It's a clever, little short par for nothing land that, just like the green conto, are delightful and I love like the dry dish that runs through it. It's like the least trud like you're never gonna see somebody take a picture and be like, you don't believe what I play today? And that's the picture.
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