Welcome back to another edition of the Frida Egg podcast, this one with Brian Silva.
We did a little differently, started having a conversation and it just worked, so don't have that normal intro that we had at most of our podcasts.
Thanks for listening, and if you haven't already, please subscribe to us. Rate us in the iTunes app store. It really helps us out, gets more eyeballs on the on the podcast. And if you haven't, please subscribe to the Friday Egg newsletter. It's sent every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
It's the easiest way to stay up to date with golf and everything that's going on.
So thanks again, and without further ado, here is Brian Silva.
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 Frida Egg, Frida Egrida, Frida bride Egg Lie, I'm about ready to on off of the.
I've been out at the Western m this week, which is at Skokie Country Club. I mean, unbelievable set of greens, and you know they have this one that has this massive false front. They have a couple with them that. But you know this, this guy is complaining. I was with my buddy in a practice round and this guy's complaining. He's like, I don't understand why this is all green here. It's not like they can put a pin there. And I'm like, well, that's why your ball will roll twenty
yards down the hill. You know, it's makes the whole green.
You know, it's hard for people to appreciate that the green, under the best circumstances is part of the hazard on a hole. And it's better that you hear things like that than I do, because I don't hide my visual reaction when some knucklehead says something like that. You know, all they're trying to do is make every golf course in America like every other golf course in America and kind of homogenize vanilla eyes it down to the least interesting,
most standard, least unexciting thing. It's unbelievable. It's such an incredible double standard. You know, of course has a really unique, beautiful clubhouse. Those people would who want to just dummy down their golf course and make it look like every other golf course would never say, you know, our clubhouse, it's really too unique. We really need to tear it down and like put up a metal butler building. Oh and then they'll say a metal a butler building. That's
easier to maintain because everything that gets done. I say to people sadly, when we do a project, there's maybe ten items of interest that we're that that everyone's talking about keeping in mind throughout the entire project. And you know, bullet points or whatever you want to call them. One
is the most important. It's the one that gets talked about the most, and ten is the least important, the one that gets talked about with the least I swear more often than not, characteristics of golf course design find themselves largely lodged in number ten. It's a she's how do we get the cart paths around? And you know, I hit a perfect I hit a perfect shot to this green, but because of this false front that shouldn't even be green, I ended up twenty yards back in
the fair way. That's not fair. So it's fascinating, and all it proves, Andy, don't take this personally, is guys like you and me haven't done a good enough job educating. Yeah, I know, I agree, you know what I mean it's just and unfortunately we're swimming against the tide because more often than not, when a new course gets well, they don't get built anymore. But when work gets done, it really you would think their goal was to take the character out of the course, to you know, take the
unique features out of the course. It's unfortunate. Now, don't get me wrong, I think this the swell work going on out there, but there still was this in ertia to make every golf course look like it was built in the nineteen sixties. And that's unfortunate.
Yeah, I mean, it's the it's really interesting. I mean I watched this kid, Cameron Jamp yesterday play and he's like one of the longest guys on you know, he'd be the longest guy on tour. He's a college kid. He kills it. And he played this four hundred yard hole. The pin was way up front on the right side and he hit driver up to like thirty yards and he was absolutely dead because you know, the way the green was, and this is a green that would never be built by.
Today, right, and the way.
The green was. He had a knob in front of this front pin and a knob behind it, and he had nothing. He couldn't do anything, and it's like, okay, like that was a really bad play, Like you need to have a full shot going into that green right right, And people are you know, how do you defend distance?
How do you but like great green complexes defend well, because then you have to play angles and you have to have a strategy going into the hole rather than just you know, pull out driver and bludge in the course. And that's what I think those are.
Those are outlandish thoughts, Andy, that you'd actually think on the tee where you want to be the best access to the green, You're you're going in the wrong direction, big guy. You know, it's all power golf. It's very sad.
I sense a hint of sarcasm.
Yeah, I mean I see why a lot of people are like that. And uh, because if you put a if you put a percentage on the number of courses in the United States that don't require that thought, that don't have of the angles, that don't have the strategy, that don't have multiple roots, I'm afraid that percentage would be above ninety percent. And so they're not used. They've never seen it before, and when they see it, they
find it odd because they don't see it. It's you know, I can't do a project without trying to force a stupid punch bowl green in on it. And people say, well, what the fuck is that, because well it's a punch bowl green. Have you other been to Scotland? Every course kind of has one, and there were these two knuckleheads named MacDonald and Rayner who used to do them. And these are the names of the courses. You know they've
done them on. Oh, I've heard of those courses. So it's it's interesting crafts.
How did you get into golf course architecture?
My dad was in light construction. Well, he started out working for a big company a JF. White that built part of Logan Airport. He ran a bulldozer. He did the Masspike extension into Boston. But then in the early sixties and Andy, no answers are short with me, so just tell me to shut up.
You Yeah, you've heard enough. The beauty of this format is you can just talk and we and it's great. It's just a conversation.
But my dad, I had a little bit of a reputation as a bulldozer operator and I grew up in Framingham, Massachusetts, and oddly enough, there was a guy in Framingham, Massachusetts, who built, who was in a construction company that built golf courses and playing fields, so he needed a guy to shape greens and teas and bunkers in the early sixties. And he said to my dad, Hey, why don't you come try working with us for a week and we
can see how it goes. And after a week, Bob Drake said to my father, you are the only guy who's going to do stuff for me. By that time, my dad and another guy from Framingham had started a small construction company, just two guys. They had a couple bulldozed as a couple back hoes, and for the spring, summer, and fall, for the next eighteen or twenty years, that's what my dad did. He worked. He did shaping for this guy named Bob Drake, some new courses, but mostly renovation,
do existing courses. And that's what I wanted to do. But you know, my dad, he worked on the machine six days a week and then on Sunday he was his own mechanic. He'd do repairs and maintenance. And he
didn't want me doing that. So ever since I found out, I wouldn't make it in the National Hockey League, which I found out when I was thirteen, and I went to a summer hockey school with kids all from all over Canada in the United States, and it took me about ten minutes to realize I'd never make it in the NHL. I decided I wanted to be a golf course architect, and my dad worked on a lot of Jeffrey Cornish projects, who Jeff did a lot of work
in New England. And when I was in high school, I met Mster Cornish and said, what should a kid do who wants to be a golf course architect? And Jeff said, well, you should go to turf school for two years and then you should get your bachelor's in landscape architecture, and you should work on golf courses during the summer. And that was in those heady days when
I actually listened to what people told me. So that's what I did, and when I was at then I went to graduate school in plant so Sciences, and when I was there, I taught a professor left right at the last minute before a fall semester started, so I taught a couple courses each semester in turf. I liked that a lot. I went down to Lake City Community College where they used to have a two year program that trained superintendents. I taught there for three years, and
I wanted to get back to New England. I worked for the USGA Green Section, you know, the agronomous staff, visiting golf courses, and then one day mister Cornish and I just happened to be visiting the same golf course on the same day. We were walking it and all the committee people were in carts, and when they went to get the carts and we were walking down a hole, Jeff turned to me and said, you know, I think
it's time you got involved in golf course design. Why don't you come work with me and then I'll retire after a few years, and and you can just run with the ball and you know, like some wet behind the is kind of guy. And myself, well, Jeff, Jeff, let me think about it for a week. I mean the minute he said that, I knew what was happening.
So a week later you played You played it cool, though, and you're like, oh, let me think about my actions.
No, the only the only thing that was obvious is I immediately went my hands. But you know, I called him back and said, I want to do that, and he said, Okay, this is how we're going to do it. I want you to work for the United States Golf Association for five more years. You've only worked there for two years. And I just said, Jeff, I cannot do I cannot know that this is going to happen. Sort of my dream. I said, you're a wicked, awesome, nice gentleman.
I said, could let me just finish this season and next winter I'll come on with you. And so in February of eighty three, I went on with Jeff. And so that's kind of the way I got my start. You know, if you're not Jack Nicholas or or someone like that, it's still very much like the European system of an apprentice occupation. And if you know what I mean, the Brian Silvers of the world don't just put a shingle out and say hey, I'm a golf course architect
and then get jobs. And it's appropriate that they should learn and train under somebody who's really well experienced. So I was lucky, you know, when things were moving and grooving in the eighties and the nineties and the early
two thousands. I would say that Jeff and I got at least one hundred resumes a year from kids in turf school, from kids from landscape architecture school, from fifty year old guys who wanted to get out of the financial business who wanted to become golf architects and wanted to know how to do that. And out of all those people, not many get a chance. And I was just unbelievably fortunate to get a chance, because in all honesty, I still get things where they send me, you know,
full sized plans of these imaginary golf courses. They do grading plans, and I just say to myself, Wow, my stuff isn't half as good as this, And you know they tried to get in. So I was just real lucky.
Yeah, I mean a lot of times it's an opportunity and you know, hard work and are set and he got a kind of the good start there. I mean it, it's interesting I look at the landscape of the architecture world, and especially with you know, the economic slowdown. Now you have this marketplace where there aren't enough jobs for how many talented like associates that work for guys like Core
and Crenshaw and Dope. And you know, if you look back to the eighties and nineties, those guys would be, you know, have their own architecture firms.
Now, do you think I We had a couple of young guys who work for us in the office and one of them named Brian Johnson. His father was a golf pro. So Brian's been doodling golf hole since he was about six. He had to get out of it because there was no work. He's got a management company now in Houston, Texas, and he manages a golf course. For a guy, I'm going to tell you something, if he ever got a chance, he would blow everyone in the industry away. He does my drafting now, So I
still get he's unbelievably talented and imaginative. I still get the benefit of his imagination. But it's really sad that a kid like Brian who wants it as much as anyone I've ever known, and who is more talented than anyone I've ever known, the multiple roots he thinks about it, Oh, Chie's and the strategy and the angles is just incredible. It's too bad it is, And it's no fault. It's through no fault to theirs. You know, this is the truth. I got to do some work, not insignificantly, just by
lucky timing. Yeah, you know, nobody likes to say stuff like that, but that's the truth. You know. Being born when I was and getting into the work when I was, there were ups and downs, you know, but nothing like it is now in terms of new courses. I really lived through a twenty five year boom. And that's why, you know, when I see guys now and they bemoan
how quiet it is. I don't want to say the wrong thing, but there are times when I'll say, well, don't you think when we were all building three hundred brand new courses a year that that was maybe as ridiculous on one side of the equation as just building five new courses a year. But you know what happens, dandy.
You know, when you're in the heat of the battle and that many courses are getting built and it goes on for a couple decades or more, it's easy to think, well, this is the way it is, and you know it in one way it was the way it is. In another way, it definitely was not the way it is. And so if you live through that and you're complaining. Now, I just don't know that you're taking a very realistic viewpoint. But like Brian Johnson, I feel bad for these talented
guys and gals who just can't get their chance. It further proves to me how fortunate a knucklehead like myself, how how fortunate I was.
I don't know, it's it's like that old I think it was the player saying, you know, the more you work, the luckier you get, and sounds like you put in a lot of hard work.
So oh no, no, no, I did. But but you know what Andy and I did. I worked. I believe I worked as hard as anyone. When I used to go to the Architects Society meetings and I talked, you know, after dinner with guys, what are you doing? Then there's this They would just the volume of work would would stun them a little bit. But you still can't. And my wife says the same thing, Oh.
Any you actually had you you left on money and you didn't come back till Saturday, all while Ananda was growing up. You worked hard, And I said, yeah, but you cannot get away from the fact that I had the chance most you know, it's a small profession. A lot of people never had a chance. So I realize how fortunate I was. I when it's busy, you can sometimes forget that, you can forget how full today I
got it going on. But again I think seeing Brian Johnson such a great he's a great kid, really good player. And I had him up and we played golf for a few days in May. And I got up one morning and on my desk was a couple of eight and a half by eleven sheets of papers of golf holes he designed over the night while he couldn't sleep. And when and I got up, I saw him and he was already up, and he says, Brian, I really want to I really want to.
Get back in this. And I said, I know you do, Bry, but but I said, you know, you have a really good job right now. It's probably paying you more than you could do if you could just scratch out a job in somebody's office. And I know, you know, he wants me to get busy enough to have to need full time help, and I'm not sure that will ever happen again. Yeah, being home during the recession, uh, you know, being home more than two nights a week was a
real eye opening experience for me. I enjoyed it more than I could have ever imagined.
Mhm. So you know you've started, You've done a lot of restorations too, and I'd love to talk a little bit about kind of the golden h architects that you've encountered and kind of learned from, and who you consider your biggest influences and why.
Well I I I got to go modern first, Andy, because early on in my life, when I was teaching at Lake City and see, during the summer when there were no classes, my job was to drive around the Southeast and visit courses where my students were working on their summer on the job training thing. And I started to you know, Harbor Town and Well and even Seminole, which Pete didn't design, but he was a member of. I started to think that his courses were a little
bit different than other people's courses. And it wasn't just it was it was decidedly not the railroad ties or pot bunkers or strip bunkers. There was something going on there, and and that kind of planted a little thing in my mind. I wish I had been bright enough to fully understand it, and Then when I became a USJA agronomist up in the Northeast, I saw lots of golf courses, but I started to really like these McDonald and Rayner
golf courses. There was something going on there. I wasn't quite sure what it was, but I knew they were different and they were fun to play, but they were still challenging. But I still was so stupid, I couldn't really boil it down to its fundamentals. And I'm going to tell you a story I never tell in public. But we used to close the office the first week in December, back when we had an office, and we'd
go out to Lakenta, California. I had friends who worked for Landmark, and we would play like Ryder Cup matches against them for a week. There had be four of us against four of them, and we would play Lakinita Mountain, Lakita Citrus, we'd play PGA West, we'd play the old Dinah Shore, we'd play the New Dinah Shore. So it was a Pete Dye extravaganza. And again I felt there was something about his courses. And this is the truth, and I'm a little embarrassed about this. One night after dinner,
I walked over to Lakinta Hotel. And this was in December, about two weeks after they'd had the Skins game at PGA West. Yea and I sat next to the fireplace, and in a little wicker basket next to the fireplace there were the program books that they sold during the Skins game. Yeah, and I are you taping me? Andy?
Oh?
Yeah, okay, all right, then I won't use great expletives. In this wicker basket was a program and I opened it up and the centerfold. You know, only a guy interested in design can go nuts about a centerfold, which is an aerial photograph of PGA West, you know, and when you look down on it from the sky, immediately
I said, oh, holy crap, it's all about angles. I could see the angles that Pete had put in, how a green might point down a point at the hook side of the fairway, and how there was one of his bite off strip bunkers that went down the right side. And the more you bid off, the more you align with the green. And I said, honest to God, I said, oh, you stupid, sob you were on the edge of this, but it didn't with the different old points didn't all go together to make you realize it. And that day
what I thought about golf course design completely changed. So it was really Pete's angles hit me. I didn't fully form it in my mind or verbalize it. And then Rayner McDonald I saw more of that. And then when I saw this picture, it completely changed the way I thought. I knew my carter's for play had to be much wider. I knew we had to cut down trees to give
people the width that allows alternate routes. It was really it was a interesting for me awaken For if you said to me, Brian, what would you do different in your life? I would say to you, well, I would have gone to see all the golf courses I did when I was working at the college, when I was grown up, going to my dad's jobs, when I was a USG green section agronomous. But I would have gone and visited even more, and I would have stopped looking
at the turf. I would have looked at what I call the skeleton, the tops of the t's, the top of the fairway and the top of the green, and I would look at what angles are presented by that, because I think that that is ninety nine point nine percent of what allows a golf course to be strategic, but also what allows a golf course to be played by the average and less than average player, but what allows a golf course to still be mentally stimulating for
an excellent player. To me, it's all its angles and almost nothing else. And so this age of the Internet, Google Earth is my favorite site because when I get called, hey, this is so and so from such and such country club, I'm on Google Earth doing my homework before I get out there. And and the funny thing is, you know, they'll they'll say to me when I'm walking, of course,
so what do you think of the conditions? And I say, look, I'll tell you what I think of the conditions, because I kind of you know, I have a turf degree, I have a master's training and plant and soil sciences. I was a USDA agrantoist. But I said, I'm really not here to tell you about your turf. I'm interested in, if, if you'll forgive me, I think you should be interested in the design character of your golf course. Does it present angles, does it present alternate routes of play? And
so on and so forth. So those are my those are my influences? In a long answer, Andy.
Uh so, I'm curious. I'm all about angles and strategy and and I don't think it's really possible to have those without wid Do you agree with that? You?
No, I couldn't agree more. And being that I'm an old card I'm going to tell you secrets I don't normally tell. I used to. I used to teach a two day seminar, first with Bob Lowman and then Jan Bell Jan for the Golf Course Superintendent's Association. And it was on golf course renovation, restoration and construction. And one day during the seminary, a kid said to me, how why do you clear your corridors when you're building a new course through the woods? And I, you know, I
I was honest. I said between one hundred and eighty and two hundred feet. And at lunch Jan said to me, did you misunderstand that question? And I said no? And she said, well, Brian, how do you do all the things you want to do on a golf hole in such ant carder? This was before the light bulb went on with the aerial photograph of PGA West of all places.
You know what I mean, you know, most people would think of PGA West and some of the pot bunkers and railroad ties and think it's not a sound course. But you see, that's the trouble today. They're looking at the superficial aspects of a golf course. They're not looking at the skeleton. Don't tell me about the skin, which is the turf, and don't tell me that much about the muscles and tendons, which are some of the railroad ties. What angles does it present? So Jan said that, and
that kind of had an effect on me. And then there used to be a trade magazine. Jeez, I can't remember the name of it now that we're talking about it, but a law had been passed in Hawaii that said you could only clear cards for golf holes like I can't remember the number two hundred twenty your whatever feet wide. And there was a comment from Nicholas that says, well, I don't see how we can build golf courses anymore, and his gosh, I credit Jack with something that's very
out of character. But Jan, because I really admired gence, she was really a good friend of mine. And then I saw this aerial photograph and I said, I can't do what I want to do. It's like the tire commercial wider is better, I can't do. And that's what people used to say with the courses of mine. From a little bit later time in my career. A guy would play at friends of mine. They'd say, gee, you could hit fit three of your original golf holes in
this golf hall. And I said, I wasn't doing it right. It's got to be wider to allow the strategy and the different angles. And you know, I used to do lateral fairway bunkers like everybody in the sixties and a lot of people still today. Now I turned most of my fairway bunkers perpendicular shot, so they bite into the fairway. Now I like the fairway to swing out to the side the opposite side, so it's still the same with
pretty much going all the way down. But you know, it's like I remember I saw Shinnecock when I worked for the USGA, and there was something going on there. I wasn't sure what it was. And when I read articles about Shinnacock, it was, well, Shinnacock's a great course because the fescue is blowing into the breeze and blah, blah blah blah. That isn't it. It was because of its sinewy fairways that moved to the right and then back to the left. It's set up on the same
golf hole. It's set up fade drive zones, it set up straight drive zones, it set up hook drive zones. And when you it's the same as the s turns that Pete puts into his fairways. So those things all other people are able to coalesced these inputs quicker than I did. But once I did, I knew it was wider and that I really wanted to try to get some of those turns into the fairways because they so impacted strategy.
Well, I also imagine starting your career during that time, it was common practice for penal and tight. You know, hard golf was great golf, and it people wanted to go out and struggle on the golf course. And that's what you know the developers wanted were hard golf courses as opposed to fun, playable and courses that really infuse thought.
Yeah, your kind and the honest god to suggest that, I just think there's a million reasons for someone to say why they weren't designing more strategic and thought provoking golf courses. And I think the only good one is they hadn't evolved at that point in their thinking, or
they just didn't think that way. I think that, you know, there was thought, but Pete was still Pete was building hired golf courses with tremendously sinewy fairways that were very strategic that I could go to and play the sixty three hundred yard marker and play to my handicap while the pros from the back markers were having trouble. So if you'll forgive me for saying, and I'm I am a piece of evidence number one that it's just it's
a little bit of a helpful excuse, you know. I think that I think that people could have sold their developer on Look, we're going to make a great golf course.
Here.
Here's the eighth hole from Shinnecock that everyone raves about. Here's the sixteenth hole at Chhinnacock that everyone raves about. And I've taken out the hay down the sides so you're not distracted by that. The reason this is a great hole, well, the reasons this is a great hole is the green points in a particular direction. The fairway has lots of movement. If you want to set up a shot a drive, so your approach shot works with
the angle of the green. You either need to drop it short of that hook bunker, put it as close to the right of the hook bunker as you can, or hit a draw around that hook bunker and that sets up the angle. And that's what makes it a great golf course. And that's what I want to do on your golf course. So you need to give me a little more within the corridors between the houses going down both sides, and that we could achieve that kind
of thing. So I think I think even today, you know, there are visible people out there who were putting these characteristics into their golf courses.
But I.
Think they could have put them in even in courses in the eighties and nineties. They could have convinced their owners that this can still be an interesting difficult because I mean, look at PGA West, It's got sinewy fairways and angles seven days a week. The pros played it. The first year was open as a Bob Hope as a courser in the Bob Hope Tournament, and then they wrote a they all put a petition. They never wanted to play it again, and they've never played it again,
although I think they played it this past year. Yeah, part of the Bob Hope. Well now they played it and they shoot sixty threes because they figured it out. See that's the interesting thing the PGA West of the world. Just forget the deep bunkers and the realities and all that external stuff. You have to think when you play. And that's what those holes that Hinnacock did. They did what Ben Hogan used to say, on the best golf holes,
you have to think one shot ahead. And the trouble is all golfers have played ninety percent of their rounds of golf on courses that don't require that thought, so they can often reject a course where you actually have to think a little bit and kind of like tack your way from waypoint to waypoint. In the winter, I play a lot of golf and I'll say, look at how this hole is set up. You should set up on the right side of the tee. You always hit fade that allow you to end up in the fair way.
It would be better if you were on the left hand. And I've had my friends turn to me and say, well, I don't want to think when I play, And I say, yeah, but wait a minute. It's five seconds a shot. You shoot a hundred, it's five hundred seconds. You need to think for eight minutes. You can do that. I know you can.
Yeah, it's a It requires a few, like brief seconds of intense thought every couple of minutes.
No, and and people reject that. And you see it in the poor average players who are hit and hook every single shot, hit and fade every single shot, and they tee it up in the middle of the tea and they aim right down the middle. It's just if they gave it a little more thought, you know, that kind of course management when I sometimes think when someone takes a lesson, you know, they should do it half an hour on what are you having a problem with your grip, let's work on your grip and we'll try
to improve that. And then the next half hour they should it down and say, look at the golf hole on the computer screen, where do you want to try to hit it? And you know they'll say, well, I'm not sure I want to hit it down the middle. And then the pro would say, well, yeah, but look at how that green, it's kind of what we call a fade green. It it moves to the right from front to back. You if you if you play a fade you can fail positively. If it doesn't fade, you'll
have a longer put. But if it does fade, you're closer to the pin. And by playing fade, because it's a fade green, you'll take those nasty bunkers that play a role in making it a fade green, you'll take them completely out of play. So if folks could read holes a little bit better, but again I don't, I'm not giving them a hard time because the majority around in their life, they haven't had a hole that was set up so it could be read and played strategic.
And also that education, it's it's hard to learn about that stuff. It's you know, I think it almost takes an awakening and you hit on it a little bit about not having a hole. But I see so many of my friends. They they when they finally play a great golf course, they that has the width and the angles and the strategy, they finally realize that, wait, golf can be different and there is like this better golf that exists.
Ye, And when we make a change on an existing course. I generally find that a good percentage of the players find out something's going on by mistake. They hit it down the left side, by mistake, they pull it, and when they get there they see the green is completely open to the next shot, and they start to connect the dots, and then they start to look for that more on the next hole and the next hole after that,
and the next hole after that. And the way that it manifests itself sometimes is they'll say, oh, that was fun, and I'll say, what do you mean by fun? I said, do you mean easy? And they said, oh, no, how could it be easy? You not go ahead? You put one hundred and thirty bunkers out here. It's not easy. But if we look at it, we see the route we should go. And a lot of times it happens
when I play golf with them. I don't hit it very long, but I don't miss many fairways, and I can go down on one side or the other, and they say, oh god, you can't hit it out of your shadow. But I see how you look at the holes and how you play them. I'm going to try that, so you know. Unfortunately, I think most times people might get to a shin a cock and it goes right over their heads because they're looking at the hay and the distant views and stuff like that. But there's stuff
out there. And then you know the other thing, Andy, and and you know this, many of the courses in the top one hundred don't have a shot value in them. They're just in the top one hundred.
Yeah. Well, I mean the top one hundred rankings are flawed in the sense that it's not really about the golf course. It's more about the experience, the aesthetics and the Yeah, it's the window dressing. Really is that beyond the experience.
The conditioning, it's it's it's all that stuff. And really the contest should not be called best New Golf Courses that that is the wrong name. They should be called the golf course that was lucky enough to be sighted on the most ridiculously foolish natural golf terrain ever conceived by the Lord above.
Or had enough money to make that.
Yeah, it's interesting. You know, they're the only contests that compare a you Goo versus against a Ferrari. Yeah, it's so, but you I couldn't have said it better. You said it it's all the externals. It's oh god, they came out with cold towels for us to wipe our face and put on our neck at the turn. And I mean, look at most of the evaluation sheets the raiders fill out. I think on one shot values is twenty percent.
What the hell?
What else is there?
Well, that's like there's no playability, there's no there. I think it's I wrote a whole article about why, you know, people shouldn't even pay attention to Golf Digest top one hundred lists, and it just you know, the the rankings would be fine if if it was called the top one hundred golf experiences, but they call it the one hundred greatest golf courses, and it's it's so it's it's misconstrued. I've played a lot of these, a lot of courses that are ranked above other courses that I know are
a lot better. And and but then when you read the criteria and you and you start to look at and understand the criteria, you understand why certain courses are ranked in certain spots, and it's because, oh they have a giant maintenance budget, or they have.
Comfort and history there. You know, that kind of thing. I had a chance once to speak to a group of raiders and and so I gave my history of golf course design, and two funny things happened afterwards. One was a guy got up and said, you kept using this this was a raider. You kept using this term and I've never heard it before. What's a radan?
Yeah?
And then the coordinator of this of the panelists said to me afterwards, he said, Wow, that was awesome. You should write a book. And I have to give thee some of the guys credit and gals because afterwards at the cocktail how they said, could you give us a copy of your PowerPoint? And I said, you know, I really as much as I wanted them to know something about design so that they for what they did. It
was just fascinating that those were to comment. And so the next day I attended a seminar where one of the they had various raiders get up and say, well, how do you actually do your ratings? And this guy got up and said, Tom, I'm a three handicap, and when I rate a course, I bring my son, he's a plus two, and he brings his wife, she's an eight. So that way we get three distinctly different calibers of golfers evaluating the course.
Kind of the same bucket.
You can't you can't make you can't make that stuff up.
Yeah, that's pretty awesome. So i'd love to talk a little bit about more about Rainer and McDonald. I'm a huge Rainer fan and we've got a lot of Rainer fans that listen, and I would love to hear a little bit about what your favorite template hole is of all the template holes.
Uh, Andy, I I don't think I can. I don't. I don't you mean, uh, this hole on this specific course, No, just in.
General of like, you know what what overarching strategic you know, uh, strategic hole template hole like from a strategy standpoint, or just the way it sets up, the way it makes you think is your favorite?
Wow, that's really really hard, you know. I would say the the Radan, the Radan at the National, but I just go out of my mind about the Alps at the National. I'm really hard pressed. I think what I really love, Andy, is I love to see the different versions of the templates. And I think this is really important, and this is something that's often missed, is that it's the template holes are not like every rat Dan is not exactly the same. Maybe more obvious to some people,
every Beirits is not the same. You know, every bes Beirits is not the full three level Beirits. But I think what they did so great was they had their template holes, and they adapted and adopted them to various pieces of land. Their goal was not to make each version of the template exactly the same as every other version. For example, if you play the seventeenth hole at Point of Vidra at the Players Club, it's got a certain
look to it, so on and so forth. Well then you play the seventeenth hole at PGA West, It's got almost the exact same look to it. Where each radan is different, each punch bowl is different. You know, when I'm driving up the driveway, I wonder if they have a punch bowl, and I wonder if it's a natural punch bowl where the land was like that, like many of them are, or is it more a contrived or constructed punch bowl, which some of them are. So I
think I'm not really answering your question. What my favorite thing about the templates is is to see how they are different from course to course. I think that that is really really fascinating. Look. A great one is Alps. Look at Alps at the National there is a huge bunker where you bite off as much as you dare and then your second shot is blind up to the top of that hill. Well, that bears no relationship other than strategically, which is of course mildly important to nuts
like you and me. To the Alps at your acres or Fox Chapel where there is that bite off bunker on one side or the other. But at both of those courses there are mounds where if you bite off a lot of the bunker you have a view of the green. If you bail out, there are mounds in the front and side of the green that block the view of the green. So there are two completely different versions of the template. Yes, and it's like each one of them is very cool.
It's like Fisher's if you hit it, if you take on the water down the right side, you get a small sliver of a view of the green.
Yeah, it's very very cool. So I think that's one thing, and you know it, as you said, it's a real external thing. When when somebody writes an article and God bless them the night that Yale was always pictured as one of the templates. Yeah, or some other really really famous and maybe more outlandish version of a template is what is pictured. But again, are there are Alps? I remember one time we were talking about an Alps and the guy said, you explained to me what the Alps is.
And he said to me afterwards, a friend of mine, you have no idea what an Alps is. And I says, what do you mean? He says, well, what you described is no relationship to the Alps at the National and I said, well, forgive me, but the Alps at the National has no match in other Alps by Rayner and McDonald, I think what you're missing is the lay of the land can be. It's not the lay of the land that really made it, it was how they set it
up strategically. So for me, I think that is the coolest thing about Rayner and McDonald is the presentation of each template is different from course to course, and that's what makes it so much fun. When you're driving up the driveway, you're saying, I wonder if it's going to be like the National where I can actually kick a low shot off that right front corner of the radan and have it go kind of diagonally to that tuck left pin. Well, not all of them work that great
in that regard. The Redan at Fishers doesn't work quite like that. The Redan at Yeaman's Hall, it isn't quite like that. But that's what makes them interesting, because it's just not one golf course repeated seventy five times mm. Each one has its own interests. I think that is the nature of their brilliance. And the other thing was it doesn't appear that what they were doing struck them as outlandish. They just thought they were building a good
golf course. Whereas today, if I do a lot of punch bowl greens, people say, well, what the hell is that? Or a radan I couldn't hold my ball on the green? Why does it pitch away from the shot? See, today
it appears outlandish. They just they just were going about their business building cool golf courses that were you know that we're based on When you go back and you read, you know, I'm just thrilled if people are able to recognize a template, if they would ever go back and read Scotland's Gift and and see how McDonald came up to selecting the templates. It's just it couldn't be more fascinating.
You know. One of my, uh, my favorite things about the template holes is exactly what you said, is like, I remember this winter I played Mountain Lake and driving in you see the burits and you're like, oh wow, and and you I think that's one of the things people why people love watching the Masters year and year out is that they know what's coming.
It's familiar to them, no doubt.
And an understanding of templates. And and I love like, you know, when you play a Rainer course, you're you're waiting to see what's around the next corner, and you know, you see these different versions of it, like like Mountain Lake's road hole is completely different than say Shore Acres road hole or National's road hole, and it's it is unique.
And I think that's where it's so misunderstood is people think that it's just, you know, a replica course, but it's it's not a replica course in any way.
No, it's it that's a real good connection. Andy. That's that's what they think it is. And it's it's unquestioned. Uh, it isn't that. But you know, on the other hand, you could go to a contemporary course where an architect copies a hole and it's exactly like the other version.
You know, it hasn't been an adaptation of it. And you know, I read an article once where one the more famous contemporary architects said, well, why would I want to repeat themes on a golf hole when there are so many new themes still to be designed or practiced, And you know, it was just such a ludicrous thing to say, especially if you investigated the body of work that you know he's talking about. Yeah, it's hard to
charge two million. It's hard to charge a million or two million on a course when you tell the client I'm going to base this on the work of Rainer and McDonald's.
So we got a lot of questions from readers and followers. I put out that you were coming on, and so I wanted to get to a few of those if sure. So here's a question. And so everyone seems to and this is from Michael Wolfe, everyone seems to now agree getting back to the GCA principles of nineteen hundred to nineteen thirties is best for golf and restorations are where
the work is now. He wants to know what about the hundreds of golf courses, hundreds and thousands of golf courses built in the eighties and nineties, and what do you do with all them? Like, can these residential courses that were built with narrow fairways be retrofitted in any way?
Or I think they can? And Andy, you know, we all have to be those of us who are betrothed to the nineteen hundreds to nineteen thirties. We have to admit not everyone that was built in was great. You know, there were a lot of eighteen steaks on a Sunday afternoon that were not tremendous golf courses. You know, we think of a place like Seminole that to me has the greatest alternating shot shapes of any ross course I've ever seen, spectacularly well done. I think, the greatest angles
of any ross course I've ever seen. But you know, Donald and aw and all the rest of the gang, they didn't do all the courses built. But I think you can still do a good job even without a three hundred foot wide card, or you can still well, let me say, I've worked on those courses. I haven't seen one where you can't get some twist and turn in the fairways where you can't get the fairway bunkers to more significantly impact the twist and turn, where you
can't think about angles on the greens. In all honesty, I think the narrowness of the car is I don't like it, but I think it's a little bit too comfortable an excuse to use for why a course couldn't be made more interesting to play and more fun to play.
So how would you go about, you know, kind of working with narrow corridors now that you're kind of awakening. Say somebody said, hey, we want to bring you back to one of your courses in the early days where you built with narrow fairways.
Well, I am I would still if I went back to one of my courses where my fairways are thirty yards wide, I would still put bunkers in that. There's always room in the original tree planting to let a bunker stick into the fairway, say on the hook side, and let it swing out more and narrow the amount of rough until you get to the trees, so you get that sinewy type. I guess, I guess that's one
of the first things I think about. I was just doing it the other day on Google Earth, where someone had called me and I looked at their golf course, and I was already trying to think of how I could get more movement. Now, Andy, I don't mean movement like contour mowing, where the fairway is thirty five yards wide for the shortest hitter, twenty yards wide for the guy who hits a two twenty and then ten yards wide,
that thing from the eighties and the early nineties. I mean a fairly consistent with the fairway that just twists and turns on its way to the green. So I think you can do it in narrow carridors and narrow fairways. And because usually when I did narrow fairways, I had a good amount of rough, and I would see some of that rough being converted to fairway.
Yeah, widening out. I think that's a good strategy, is getting turning a lot of the rough into fairway and getting.
A little week I said that I would not mention names of golf courses that I work on, because it's kind of the club's business, and I know that's what everybody likes to do. When I worked at so and so, and I worked and such and such, but we worked at a nineteen sixties designed golf course on Long Island last year, and I would say one of the main things we did was turn the angle of the bunkers and make the fairways bigger and there was room to
do the twist and turn. And I would say that they range between pleasantly surprised to completely stunned how they have to think on their golf course now. It was just the typical sixties golf course, dead straight fairway edges and bunkers that were parallel to the center line and never impact play. So I think you can do it even in narrow card is. Obviously you can't do it as well, but you can still get that feel of the flow.
Yeah, yeah, that it makes sense. It's so David Grady wants to know how kind of renovation and restoration has evolved over the past twenty years.
Well for me, you know, it's hard for me to
speak for everyone. You know, I've never been the mouthpiece for the craft, but I would say at the very least there appears to be more appreciation for as a first step trying to determine what that golf course was like originally and then seeing what of that you could emphasize in your work and what to me, if this is an older course, what vintage of character, what vintage characteristics you could put into the course and put them in in a manner that people think that they were
always there if they weren't there originally. So I think there's a little bit more appreciation for what might have been there originally today. I think there's a little bit more appreciation for what was there originally and what may have been taken out. But you know, you still hear about this course or that course fill in the blank here designed by a golden age architect, that the club is not entirely appreciative of that, and who they hire is not totally appreciative of that, and they get a
course in the fill in the architect's name mode. So I think folks like you and me, Andy, who like that stuff, think that it's everywhere and it's it's fire from everywhere.
Yet, So, what what's the course that you'd like to see host a major championship that hasn't or isn't hosting major championships?
Oh boy, I Andy, I I don't know off the top of my head. You know, I'm trying to kind of factor in. I'm kind of trying to factor in, uh,
the way they set up these major championships. You know, I find it interesting that, you know, the major golf associations pick some of these out of the box sites that kind of don't fit into the wing foot Oakmont, Southern Hills, Pebble Beach, you know what I mean, the typical ROTA, and and they pick them five years before they play them, and then they spend three or five million dollars getting the course ready for the event. There's
a degree of standardization that I get discomforted by. I'm not doing very good naming courses that I think should be uh, you know, major sites.
It's okay, it's a question.
I always always think about it. Yeah, but one of the big problems is the ball. You know, it goes just too far for a lot of these courses. And then you also combined the infrastructure needed.
You know, it's really the it's the great shame of the game that it's broken into two armed camps. There's a camp that loves the game of golf, and unfortunately that's the small camp now. And there's a camp that loves the business of golf, and the camp in the business of golf has so directly or indirectly intimidated the ruling bodies of golf that they won't take the step that is absolutely essential, and that is to slow down
the ball. It's really a shame. It's the game's unfinest moment. Yeah, that this continues.
I was out at Skochy yesterday. I was walking with a guy and he was like, man, how great would it be to see a major championship at this place? And It's like, it would be great. The greens are unbelieve but you can't because the ball just goes too far.
I think that's part of my answer of my inability to answer the question. There are dozens and dozens of courses like Skokie that I would love to see if we could just turn the clock back to the late sixties and the players had to hit into a green. What Nicholas and players like that were hitting into a green? That would be my dream to see that happen. But you know that will never happen, And so that makes it hard for me to answer which one would you
like to see a major event at? Because I'd like to see a major event at hundreds of them, but not with today's equipment. Yeah, I believe that. I believe that working the ball is part of the game, and I'm going to go to my grave thinking it should be part of the game. And like on the tour,
now it's not. It's just power golf. But I think a guy standing up on a tee reading the hole and saying I want to cut this one, or standing up on the tee and I want to turn this the other way, and and here's an angle of a green. I can fail positively by hitting a fade, because if I fail to hit a fade and hit it straight, I'm putting. It's a longer put. But if I am a successful hitting a fade, I'm putting for birdie. So
the equipment thing is just just overwhelming. I mean, I have clients say to me, why are you worried about the angles and and this stuff? These these young kids and our good players, they never even think about that. And I say, well, I think we still should think about it, and we should try to, you know, make it a part of their game as much as it's a part of players who don't hit it as far.
And I think the restoration thing is maybe refining itself a little to either moving some bunkers down a fairway so that the original intent of the design is recaptured, or maybe adding a few more bunkers in the correct style so the original intent, the intent of the original design is captured. Because just if you think of it, andy, just taking a plan or having an old aerial and putting the bunkers back the fairway, bunkers back exactly where they.
Are, isn't Yeah, I had people.
I've had people say to me, are you really restoring the intent of the original design? And I have to I have to admit they make a good point.
Yeah, it's I agree with that because like the tents, intent's been lost with a lot of the technology, so you'd need to move bunkers into different places in order to regain that intent.
And see, that's why I think that one of the more important rules about design is sit down and breathe deeply and think a little bit about it. Sometimes it's right to put original bunkers back exactly where they were, but to just stick on that goal probably doesn't restore the original intent of play. Just like go into an old course and saying, ah, this place is old, I'm
just going to do the modern thing here. That probably is too quick of a knee jerk reaction, you know, just like the players who need to think for that five seconds we determined standing on a tee, the guys with the pencils in their hands need to think for a few minutes. Where does some of the original stuff work in terms of bunker placement? And look, if I could do a course a third and eighth a tenth as good as any of the Golden Ages, I'd be
very proud of myself. But I don't think it's wrong to say that original set of bunkers just doesn't work for the modern game. Is there a net? And then the job becomes how can I find a natural spot? Because a lot of times they were placing their bunkers in nice natural spots for bunkers where there were up slopes where they could just cut a hole in the ground. It became a good bunker. It didn't look artificial, It
looked like it's set into the landscape. Is there a spot where I can recreate that same feel by putting it into an upslope, whether the grade works or can I build an up slope that when it's grassed people will think it was always there.
Yeah, I would that nothing looks better than natural bunkers. And so we do this.
My test, my test for my guy and the bulldozer is I just say to him and they laugh. Now they're used to it, but I say, is that a comfortable bunker? And I say, what do you mean? I said, well, does that? And you know, you go to these courses where bunkers have been added further down holes, or you go to courses built in the sixties what I call the age of golf course engineering rather than golf course architecture. But it continues today. There are people who still follow
that inspiration of the sixties. They may disguise it by ripping the edges of their bunkers, but they're still basically sixties golf courses. You know, fade bunkers are all the exact same distance from the tee. Hook bunkers are all the exact same distance from the tee. And you'll see some of these bunkers where they're built on a reverse slope. That reverse slope just happened to be the right distance from the tee. And you know, there's a berm that's
twelve feet high behind the bunker holding it up. Hopefully, if you're working in a restorative manner, you can get a comfortable bunker. Or I'll say to the guys, does that bunker look like it's supposed to be there? I think that's the other thing. It's not only put in the bunker in the same spot that the Golden Ager had it on the plan, or putting it in a spot that has the same impact on the whole is
what the Golden Ager was thinking. It's can you detail it so it looks like it's been there for a long time and wasn't built three weeks ago last Tuesday?
Yeah, naturalness. So we have this segment that we wrap up these podcasts with called Overrated, Underrated and all. We'll give you a couple of topics and you just say if you think that are overrated or underrated, and you can give like a quick, short kind of.
Explanation as to your answer, Andy, you haven't been listening if you think I can give a quick and short explanation. But I'm gonna try my best.
Yeah, it's so Herbert Strong the architect.
Oh, I'll be honest with you. I'm gonna go in between overrated and underrated.
You're going properly.
Yeah, I would. I would just say he's an in between. You know, That's what I think.
Okay, grass bunkers, I.
Think they're a little overrated. I have a lot I have clubs. I have clubs that want to convert sand bunkers into grass bunkers, and in most of the situations where they want to do that, it's not an even trade visually or strategically or helping players recognize the angles and so forth. You know, there's been a lot of I'm going to there's just one more paragraph. There's a lot of talk about bunkers today, maintenance costs and all
that kind of stuff. But they're a part of golf, and I'm not sure that everyone can be replaced by either a tree or a grass bunker.
Yeah, I would agree with that. I do like grass bunkers. I think that are they're really tough for the good player, and they're a little bit more playable than regular bunkers for the average and beginner.
Yeah. I think it's just it they're positioning and maybe they're part of a bunker group or something like that is kind of an important thing to consider.
Yeah, So how about the blind t shot.
It's dramatically underrated. It makes me insane how the degree to which they're rejected and considered a bad thing. And I would say the same thing for the blind shot to agree. It makes me crazy that they are so rejected and disliked. It's a shot in golf. I got to tell you Andy, when I reviewed. When I read a review of a course that starts out with this is a great course. Everything is right out in front of you, I rarely finish the review. I never have any interest in seeing that course.
You like to have a little bit of a thrill. And there's that feel of a blind shot or rolling up to like a punch bowl green that's blind on an alpsole and wondering where your ball is that can't be replaced.
No, tell me that. When you're walking and you hit a shot to a blind green that's a punch bowl. You don't throw the iron back in the bag and then double time it up the hill. Yeah, Or if you're forced to, you get in the cart and you don't floor it to get around the corner. Two or three years ago, four years ago, I went to southern Scotland and I played a course called Nairn that has about twenty blind shots. It is one of my five
favorite golf courses in the world. It was unbelievably great, and I would think that most people would say, and it's only because I love blind shots that that that that's not a good thing. You know, you got to love it. If it's a blind shot to a green, more often than not, there's some degree of punch bowl character to one side or all of the green, and so a hack like me, I can miss the green and it ends up twelve feet from the pins. See,
that's one thing that we've forgotten. Golf is supposed to be fun, and I think blind shots are wicked fun.
It's yeah, I like blind shots.
I'm a fan, and I can't believe the percentage of better drives I hit on a blind shot because I have to concentrate. You're making yourself concentrate so much more on somehow picking a line, And I would say, more often than not, I hit one of my better drives of the day because it's made me focus. There's nothing wrong with something that makes you hit one of your better drives of the day.
Yeah, I agree. What about ocean and water views.
I think they could not be more spectacularly overrated.
I agree, I think they take they take away from the architecture. They're awesome when combined with great architecture, but they make average holes very perceived great.
Right before I take my last breath, somebody's gonna hand me a piece of paper, and it's a rating of pebble beach that got after the course got moved fifty miles inland.
It wouldn't be as good.
Huh, Well, I would think it might be different. Yeah, but I feel that way about you know, courses set at the base of mountain, uh, set in sand dunes and stuff like that. I And I know they can't do it. I know they can't. I know it's too
hard to do. And I'm not even being a wise guy, But if the raiders just looked at the tops of the t's, the tops of the fairways, the tops of the greens and the ankles, and the variety that they introduced into the round of golf, I'd like to see the ratings in those circumstances.
I'm curious. I played Fisher's Island in Chicago Golf in a week span for the first time on each of them. How would you compare the two of.
Those, Oh, I'm I. I don't like to directly compare. Ye, And if if you were gonna, if you if you told me that you were, how how did you want to play golf at me, at my at my selection? Out of the those two, I would tell you to pick me up at O'Hare.
Yeah, that's why I feel the same. So I think, like I always look at these courses and if I have to compare, is like dividing, you know, dividing ten rounds. How would I would divide ten rounds? And I've thought about that one more than almost anyone. And I think I'd go six or six four or seven three Chicago Golf.
I would just say, pick me up at O'Hare.
Andy, that place is one of the most architecturally sound golf courses I've ever seen. Probably ever, it probably is the most.
And and and when nuts like you and I say things like that, we should say, and it's on a non descript site, is that correct?
Yeah? I think it. I think it's I think the site that is on is underrated. I think people say it's a bad site, but it's a pretty good site.
But you know, relative to these other world fare sites.
Andy, relative deficientcy Island. Yeah, that has water views on every whole.
Yes, yes, yeah, yeah so. And that's another thing that I find interesting is someone will go to a course, well it's not much of a course, and I said, well, what do you mean. He said, well, the site, it's just flat. I think sin Andrew's a fairly strategic golf course. There's nothing really special about that site. I think the site is too often an easy excuse on flat land. I honestly can't figure out why for Arda doesn't have five hundred great golf courses.
Well. I think the thing I noticed is you can really tell the skill of an architect with how they what they do with flat land, like.
No doubt you. I won't try to say it better, you just said it great. And I think too often things like well the developer wanted this, well, the developer wanted a hired penal golf course while the land was flat. I just think sometimes they're excuses that are too convenient because you're on a flat piece of land. These holes I'm talking about at Shinnecock, they're unrelatively flat piece a flat piece of land, and they're great golf courses because
they have the angles and the strategy. And in Florida you could do any degree of angles, any amount of sinewy fair way, the green angles could be anything. And basically, what do you see. There's a fade bunker at a certain distance, there's a hook bunker at a certain distance, and then at the green there's a green or a bunker at three o'clock, nine o'clock and twelve o'clock. Well, they're just, they're just they're golf course engineering and not golf course design.
It goes to your whole adage of when it was developed. It was developed. Those courses were developed from nineteen fifty, primarily nineteen fifty through nineteen ninety five.
Yeah, it was the age of golf course engineering.
Yep, not architecture.
So no, you could never you could never say that it was. It was let's slap it in quick and get to the next victim.
Yep. So, Brian, I really appreciate the time, and that was a lot of fun. We'll have to do it again sometime. I feel like we only touched on about ten percent of the topics I wanted to get to.
Yeah, my answers that go on and on forever will limit the amount of questions, so I'll just tell you one thing. I'll be looking at that phone call to telling me when I should get to O'Hare to play the course I chose over the one that's on the island.
I'll be uh, I'll be trying to figure out when I can get out there again.
All right, big guy, Hey, good talking to you. Thank you.