Welcome back to another edition of the Frida Egg Podcast. This week is the US Senior Women's Open, a really exciting event being held at the historic Chicago Golf Club. Chicago Golf Club is one of the best golf courses in the country and also one of the most private, especially with coverage and different things. So really exciting to get to talk to both the historian Chicago Golf Club, John Moran and the golf course superintendent Scott Bordner. I
hope you guys enjoy this podcast. The first thirty minutes or so is with John, and then the back half of it is with Scott. If you're in the Chicago area, be sure to come out to Chicago Golf great opportunity to walk one of the best golf courses in the country, no ropes, right with the players, and see some of the greatest architecture in the world. Without further ado, here's John Moran and Scott Bordner. 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, the dread Frida Egg, fridaggg bride egg Lie.
I'm about ready to run off the golf course. There's a lot of confusion I think in the world of golf with the first. You know, Shinnacock was the first established club. I think there's a course in Charleston that says or a place in Charleston that says they had the first golf I know Saint Andrews and Yonkers claimed something Chicago Golf is the first eighteen hole club.
Right correct. In fact, the first eighteen course was at the original Chicago Golf and I have contemporaneous newspaper articles about it. It was built at the Belmont Course which is now the Downers Grove Park district before we moved to Wheaton. So that, in fact was the first eighteen old course in the United States. And we have an old letter from the USGA getting testament to that.
So you guys have you're the only one with proof that is the first eighteen hall course.
Well, we have a letter. I'm taking that as proof whether it is or not.
The founder of Chicago Golf Club, Charles Blair MacDonald, among others, was really instrumental in bringing golf from abroad and the first what sparked his interest was around a golf in Lake Forest, which is north of city. Right a field golf really kind of what today would be called pasture golf.
Right He actually McDonald went to university, and university he left when he was sixteen years old, but he went to university in Saint Andrews and there he learned the game from old Tom Morris and actually competed against young time Morris. So when he came back at the Chicago fire had just happened, and you couldn't be in business in Chicago and have some past time. They would look at you like your nuts. So he went twenty years without really touching a golf club unless he went overseas
on a trip. And they had the Colembian Exposition of the World's Fair in Chicago in eighteen ninety three I think it was, and the had a contingent come over from the UK and they were going to be there for two or three years and they wanted something to do. And so the organizer of it, Hbart Chattfield Taylor, heard about this and knew that McDonald knew something about golf.
So Hobart Chatfield Taylor took them up to his in laws state in Lake Forest and McDonald laid out a six holl golf course for the guys from the UK to play. I think I'm not sure he'll feature later in the segment, but one of the guys was actually HJ. Wigham, who ended up being the third US Amateur Champion in the United States, second and third.
So McDonald's got he's one of the most interesting characters. I think him in tilling Hast of the old, you know, beginnings of American Golf. If you were going to describe the way that you would portray McDonald's personality and in a few words, how would you kind of describe what the character through all your reading, all your research that Cebe McDonald was.
Strong willed, competitive, feisty, in charge. I'm right, you're wrong. Did that? Did that capture it?
Yeah? I think so. Famously, he he protested the first Amateur Championship.
Actually Andy the first two Amateur championships that he had agreed to play in, and he only protested them after he finished second, so it actually took one of the one of the reasons the USA was formed was because he had They had decided they needed a national championship and Newport and I think it was St Andrew's we're going to stage this, but they're going to stage at their own and after if he had won, I'm sure
he would have recognized that as the first one. But since he lost, then then he said, oh, we have to form a proper one. And that was actually one of the beginnings of the USGA, was the move to form formalize something that could anoint an am or champion.
And he couldn't protest it anymore once it was formed, right.
Can you imagine the pressure on him the third time because he absolutely couldn't positively couldn't protest the third time, could he?
So the original course, they say, was, you know, it was built around the boundary boundary lined and McDonald famously hit a left to right shot and every single hole is a hook for out of bounds. So do you think there was any credence in him designing a golf course that would be really hard for him to hit anything out of bounds? Oh?
Absolutely, I mean he was obviously super competitive and if you remember in those days, if it doesn't make sense to folks listening why a hook would be bad, Remember in those days they were playing in jackets and ties and no matter the weather, and so today the propensity is to slice the ball. In those days, it was hooked the ball unless you were a McDonald. And he
actually sliced the ball in his bad shots. So he certainly would have thought about that, I'm sure, because he did that at Belmont too, it's my understanding, and he did it here. And the urban legend, I don't know how true it is, is that the origination of an out of bounds role was actually at Chicago Golf because all of the members at that point got tired of hitting hooking their balls into the farm fields because he had rided the golf course that way.
Quite a dude. When did you become a member at Chicago Golf Club? And I think one of the most is one of the most fascinating stories, how you became a member.
So it actually begins as a twelve year old caddy. So my dad worked for Sears for forty plus years and we moved around a bit, and when we moved to Wheaton and in the early seventies, we used to drive past this place and we knew it was a golf course and there was one hole, the only hole you could really see from the road. I remember my dad saying, oh my god, that hole must be six hundred year old. Long, Look how long it is? Well, it was actually our fourteenth hole, our k holes, actually
the second shortest part four on the course. But anyway, I had some friends who are older than I was, who started caddying. And I was eleven and they were thirteen, and they had caddied and I couldn't caddy. And so the next year I was big enough to tell them I was thirteen, I was really twelve, And so I started caddying here and I caddied here for four years, and then I was the caddy master for three years after that. And during that time I was not part of the history, but I got to be here for
some of the history. I got to be here when Ben Kreueschau shot sixty two, which we may talk about later. I got to caddy in the finals of the seventy nine US Senior Amateur for a guy named leu Emmeig, And so I was here for a long time. And interesting enough, my dad called somebody in the club and they knew me. I had been around so long, and they knew me, I knew them. I was probably the safest junior member they ever had who wasn't part of
the family. And one thing another. My dad called me and said, if you want to be a member Chicago Golf, you have to call this person. And I had no inkling that this was in my future. So I was actually a junior member here when aged twenty one and have been. I milt the junior membership for a long time, but so I've in effect, with a couple of summers off for college internships. I've been here since nineteen seventy seven.
So there's a few people left that have been here longer than I am, but it's it's getting fewer and fewer. I'm sorry to say.
If if you were coming out here spectator, never had been here before, what would be your advice to that person?
You mean, like a spectator for the event, for the event. The coolest thing about the event, well, I'm sorry, not coolest. One of the cool things about the event is that there aren't going to be any fairway ropes, and there's not going to be any grand stands. They're going to let the They're gonna let the fans walk along with the players in the fairway, which if anybody had been here for a walker Cup, or has been to a walker Cup that's or en amateur too. I think that's
how they do it. You're actually gonna walk the fairways with Joyan Carner and Sally Little and Julie Kster and Laura Davies, so that by itself will be super cool. If somebody asked me, gee, is there one place I could go to see a lot of action, what I would tell them is that our punch bowl green, the twelfth green has has like a hillock that runs around it, and if you stood at the top of that, you could see them play the twelfth hole. You could see
them play the thirteenth hole, which is the edenhole. You could see him tee off there and really play the whole hole. You could see him putt on the eighth hole, and you could see him tee off on the ninth hole. That's probably the one central point I think for architecture nerds, who who you've turned my son into. Thank you. His grades have suffered because of the Friday podcast. But if for architecture nerds just going along and finding, Okay, where's
the Redan, where's the Redan? Oh my god, that's the Redan. Look at that thing that's cool all by itself. And then even for people who wouldn't be in that of that elk, if you go along and you see you see the radean hole, you see the beer ritz hole, people get a sense that wow, that I've never seen anything like that. That's really unique, really and how do they build that in nineteen twenty three. I think that
all by itself will be really cool. Of course, the real story or the players, we're just a backdrop for the story. So I don't want to overplay the golf course, but I think for people who are really into it, the combination of seeing these famous players play our golf course will be really, really amazing.
I think another thing that's kind of neat about the event that you're hosting the Senior Women's Open. It's the first one, the inaugural one, which obviously carries a lot of weight. But the other aspect is the game that the senior women play versus the game that you know, a traditional say traditional US Open would play. The game is far closer to the game that this golf course was built to host. It with a you know, lower trajectory, shots, less spent, you know, a running shot more often than
you know, a high spinning shot that we see. So the golf course and the architecture should actually show better and more representative of what they intended when they laid it out. Not it's not going to be perfect because I know some of some of these ladies still hit the ball, you know, pretty long distance. It should be a lot closer and we should see shots using the contours more so than than in most USGA events.
I'm really excited to see a few things. I'm excited to see them play. They're a dan and see if anybody's gonna kind of try to run it up around the corner of the dan. I'm excited our punch ball hole every day every day play is a part four and they're just gonna play from a back tee is a par five. And the interesting thing is that there's there are two cross bunkers that go across the fairway.
And I had a qualifier from Wisconsin, Maggie leaf out a couple of weeks ago through a friend of a friend, and I didn't say anything to her, but when we got to the twelfth hole, I was watching everything she did because I was fascinated to see could she drive it past that. How would she take that on? And then as a part five, she wouldn't, you know, Laura Davies maybe long enough to hit it into We'll see. But from that back teep, I'm sure she will be
but I knew Maggie couldn't. And but the layup area is pretty complicated because there's a there's a crossbunker in the fairway, and then there's there's a central bunker right in the middle of the fairway, so you've got to navigate that, and depending on how you navigate that, you could have a blind pitch into the punch bowl green. I'm really fascinated to watch watch the players take that on and see how they do it. I'm also really fascinated to see where the USJ puts the pins and
how the women navigate the greens. From a short game perspective and from a putting perspective, it'll be really interesting. The other cool thing is it's closer not only to
what Rainer did in twenty three. You know, we had the twenty eight Parker Cup, and my guess is they might be hitting the ball some of the same relative same distances that Bobby Jones and Chick Evans would, but it's also probably closer to what I play to what the normal MEMBERSHILD play and so seeing that for us I think will be really cool.
There's a lot of uh, you know, famous pros that are into architecture that prefer watching the women's game because you get to see so much more of the architectural preatures. That's what I'm really excited to see is to get out here and see how they how they play the golf course and see different shots like even the first hole, which is a quasi two shot ra Dan playing into that green with a with a long iron. It will
be really fun to watch. And you highlight that punch bowl is a great spot to watch from, and you could see everything from eagles too. If you don't hit a good drive all a sudden, that's a tough part, right for a part five. So when you were a kid caddying here, did you know how special this place was?
No? I knew pretty much immediately I twelve years old. I wouldn't have verbilized it. I knew pretty much immediately that it had taken a special place in my heart. And really the first inkling I had of how special it was when Ben Crenshaw started staying here during the Western Open, and we obviously had a cottage, so it was a convenient place to play and he could come
out here and practice. But he was here my sense anyway, he was here because he wanted to be here and because this place held some some uniqueness for him, and I knew he was into history. And that's the first really inkling of I knew. The members talked about, gee, this is the beer It's hole, that's the red An Hole. But the linkage to no that actually means something, and there's way more than just Chicago golf, and there's an
important historical linkage. That's the first point at which I really got a sense that, holy cow, this is something, this is something really cool. And so I probably got a sense of that in the eighties or something like that.
And we had a significant agronomic upgrade and around two thousand when John Jennings came here, and at that point, all of a sudden, some of the features really took on a sharper edge, I'll say, and you could really see, holy cow, that spine running through the middle of the leaven hole or leaven hole, whichever is. That's amazing. You know, I used to hit the ball up there and it would just stick. Now it bounces anyway under the sun. You really get got a greater appreciation of it.
Yeah, that green is unbelievable.
I cherry picked that because I know it's your favorite.
Yeah, I just I love that green. It's a source of so many bogies, of people hitting it into and just shutting on the wrong side. It's fine. So what would you say during your time catting? What was your most memorable loop? You touched on? Crunshaw sixty two finals of the Senior Am.
Yeah, you know, certainly the sixty two. The crunch out came out after a round after a tournament round of the of the Western Open, and our pro at the time, Don Stickney, had played college golf with Nicholas and Weis Goff, and so they put on a little exhibition, the three of them and Ed Snead and I got the kart caddy for them, and it was really just me and them, and there was probably twenty members watching or something like that. And Ben finished three three three, which is eagle, birdie,
birdie to shoot sixty two. Unfortunately, somebody flipped him a second ball at the first tee that he hit. We didn't play it. We played the original one, but that made it not count. But to me, that's the course record and I'm standing by it. But just watching him go in the zone. But also, you know, he is my number one golf idle Chick Evans who was another member who was also a member here would probably be
number two. But to be to have that memory of my golf title and to see him like right up close and personal, that certainly is the most memorable around. I mean, I other memorable things are helping. You know, Missus Brewster had make a whole in one, you know, rest in peace, Missus Brewster, But that would certainly be the number one. He was like a rock star then, you know, he was a rock star. Well in my house he still is. My kids aren't quite sure why, but he still.
Is in my house.
Gentle, then you bet you so? When did you so? Now you're you serve the role as a historian at Chicago Golf.
Yes, so we have a small history committee and it's not a new thing necessarily. I mean, the biggest thing that had been done is in nineteen ninety two was our centennial and one of our members had gotten Ross Goodner to write a centennial book, which is a really fabulous history book. About seven or eight years ago, our board decided to take what had been an old ladies lounge that hadn't been used in how many decades and turned it into a history room, which was a good thing.
What it also did, though, it created a deadline of oh my god, we better that thing up with things that are compelling, and frankly, we've made a lot of progress with saving our history and things, but it's going to be you know, it'll keep me occupied and out
of my wife's here for many years to come. But there's a lot of there's a lot of great history here that we don't know we have in the building, and I'm sure we'll touch on that and or we need to seek out a newspaper, articles and things like that,
so we really understand our history. And it's part of the reason for that is sure, this is a historical club, but we want Chicago Golf to be Chicago Golf fifty years from now, one hundred years from now, and who we were in our history and the culture that we've had over all that time is an important part of keeping it that way.
So You've been diving into all different types of sources of information, the stuff around the clubhouse. What's been the most rewarding aspect over the years of being in this role. Is there a moment or you know, a find.
Well, Actually, the thing that's sticks out is I had a mental list of things I wanted to do for many, many years, and one of the things I wanted that was on my to do list was to create some kind of a document or some appreciation for what I think of as the architectural lineage of this place and the fact that we have the template holes, the fact that there are other instances of the templeate holes, and here are pictures of the other template holes, and someday
I was going to do this when I'm retired, and this stupid blogger from downtown Chicago beat me to it. He saved me a lot of work, but he beat me to it. He took my copyrighted idea and he made it his own.
It must be a smart guy.
Really sorry. I actually got his autograph on the printed copy that I made from it.
Yeah, we gotta we gotta get back into those. So it's they've taken him backsteat recently, but we gotta I mean John cavalieric gotta get in there and a few of those. But it's they're so cool.
It's interesting. You know, the members of our history committee, like in most club you know, have different interests and different available amounts of time. And one of our members, Jeff Kelly, is really into old clubs, and so we've
got a lot of old clubs. My passion really is the golf course, and I think if you ask the typical Chicago golf member, the golf courses what this place is about and increasing my so I really appreciate the chance through Andy, what you've done and other people have done to better appreciate our golf course in context has been a great thing for me. And you know, not every member is into it the way I am, or
that you know you are. But if I get two or three of them to appreciate it more, and I know I've got more than that, you know, through those things, that's fabulous because that you know, our biggest asset is out there I'm pointing out out the window at the golf course.
I tend to believe that there's kind of a changing tide in golf with more and more people are getting interested in golf and architecture and the courses, which I think is very healthy because it's you know, that's really the root and the soul of the game is in the golf course. It's not it's not an equipment, it's not an and and uh it it brings back, it
brings a different type of you know, enjoyment level. Do you feel like you've seen, especially since John Jennings came in and you know, got the golf course playing more true to its original self. Do you feel like the membership's uh, knowledge and understanding and excitement around the golf course has grown.
I think so. I think they're Maybe the best way to say it is that I think the pride, the unique pride uniquely in the golf course is much higher than than when I was a kid, you know what, because I can remember the people I caddy for and they appreciated the golf course. And that's and and that's great. But I think the holy cow, did you see where they put the pin or I didn't know they could have put put a pin there? Or did you see this bound so I got off off of this mound?
Or and we have not Maybe I'll get into right now it kind of what has happened to our golf course, but I'll finish this spit up. The appreciation of the golf course that way, I think is significantly higher now than when I was a kid, and I could have been an oblivious to it too, so I could be wrong. But we've had the benefit of having the golf course
be pretty untouched since nineteen twenty three. So we had an original golf course that when we moved here in eighteen ninety five that McDonald built, and with you know a lot of nips and tucks here and there by among others, the Fallis Brothers. You know. It really stayed that way until until Rainer redesigned it and opened in twenty three, and from twenty three until two thousand it pretty much was the same. We had no tree planting programs, fortunately,
we had no big restoration projects. The biggest thing that had happened, which which is still happening. Scott Bordner are fabulous, Superintendent fights this every day. Is is a living organism, and so trying to keep them awing lines the same, trying to keep the entrances to the bunker the same is a chore.
Is a job.
But so it's been pretty much in touched, probably really just for lack of anything as a small membership, of being too cheap to put money into it. Frankly, but that's a good I said that to somebody else recently and they said, no, no, that's your I think you're probably more onto it than you know. So the golf course is pretty much the same. Tom Doak started consulting with us in I think it was two thousand and really his consultation, and I hope if he listens to
this that he that he thinks this is right. Is really around the edges of Okay, how are you maintaining it? And are their maintenance practices helping or hurting the original design construct and are there things that we've lost over time that should be restored? Really fortunately not very many things. But we certainly I know you were looking at old picture picture before we started. We certainly recaptured green space.
We certainly have our greens really now go right up to the edge of the phillpad in some cases will tumble a little bit over. So we've had the fortune of not having much done to it. And but even the even the nips and Tucks have done, the membership appreciate so much better. So that was like the longest answer you could have ever imagined to your simple.
Question, that's that's good, that's good. What would you say of what's your favorite like interesting fact about Chicago Golf Club if you had to just distill it down to say, we'll give you one or two or three?
Yeah, okay. So maybe what I'll do is i'll i'll I'll use as a judge what I consistently put in my rift for when I have guests here, what I have to tell them about the golf course. So my second golf hero is Chick Evans, and not be And sure he's a caddy, and I did not have the fortune of being an Evans scholar. But Chick Evans first came here in the nineteen oh three US Amateurs as a caddy, played in not everyone, but most of the event the major events that were held after the fact.
But there was a period of time where, you know, Chick Evans, he was an amateur. He had to work for a living, but he also wanted to play good golf, and so he started to come out here to practice. And we used to have a lot of cottages here, and we also when this the clubhouse were sitting and opened in nineteen thirteen, there were rooms that members subscribed to that there were their rooms, and one of our
members let him stay in that room. And what he used to do was he would practice in the morning and he would catch a seven or seven thirty train into the city. He would work all day at the First National Bank of Chicago. They would catch the train back out and practice at night and get up the
next morning and do the same thing. And so I point out to everybody, Okay, I'm not sure which of those two windows it is, but it's one of those two windows as the room he stayed in during the period of time when he won both the US Open and the USA Amateur in nineteen sixteen. And in his autobiography that he wrote in twenty one or twenty two, he actually credited the ability to have the freedom to practice here and stay here as one of the things
that was really instrumental in that. So that's one of my fun factoids that I that is always part of my riff.
What would you say is the most missed to understood, Like, what's the biggest misconception about Chicago? Golf to the general public that maybe like is something that people think that isn't true about Chicago golf.
Well, I think the biggest thing, the biggest in general you know conversation, is Chicago golf did not start in Wheaton. Chicago golf started in a town called Belmont, or by a train stop called Belmont, which is present day Downers Grove. And so when McDonald built the first Chicago golf club, it was at the farm of Ahado Smith. It was a Scotsman and that was actually the site of the
first eighteen golf course in the United States. Pretty much the same time that they he laid out the eighteenth toll, they started looking for bigger, better property and they bought the Patrick farm here in Wheaton. But that's probably the most misunderstood thing. The other cool thing that I had known about but I hadn't really internalized or taken the time to really get to know, which is shame on me, is that that golf course still in parts exists and
it's the downers Grove Golf Club. It's owned by the downers Grove Park District. And I get goosebumps. I've played it five or six times. I get goosebumps when I stand on the first tea because I know where I am.
Yeah, I might go over there this afternoon just.
Because it's a great place.
Yeah, it's a fun little spot. You know. What I'm surprised about is how good the land is there? Do they wanted to move over here? Like that's a really great piece of land over there.
It is, And I don't I've not found a lot of dialogue. I don't know. It was just too small or what it was. But the other thing that it did share a common characters. Stick with this is that it had easy access to rail and like a lot of the Cloak clubs, at least in Chicago, they're on rail lines. And you know, in in Chicago Golf's case, we had both a Roar and Elgin railroad line and then that is now the Illinario Prairie Path, as well as the existing train line that runs thro Wheaton.
So what would be your advice, say somebody's listening that it wants to start to dig into the history of their club, Like, how would you what would you start? And I know you have a you prioritize stuff because there's so much.
Oh I try and I fail It's like every time I prioritize something, I'm onto something else in two seconds and I forget what the priority was.
I know you don't have that problem, Andy, Oh, I have that problem in spades. It's a huge problem of mine. So what would be your piece of advice to somebody that would say they wanted to start to dig into history at their club or course they play that's got you know, say it's a you know, an older place right right where? What would you start by doing? So?
The first thing I would do is I would just rummage around. And it's an old place. Likely it's an old building, And I would rummage around the old building because you probably have things that you don't know you have. The best example i'd give you here is one of our longtime staff was working in some room I didn't even know existed, and there was a filecab, and behind the file cabin then he found this thing and he brought it to me and he said, you know, I
don't know what this is, but it looks significant. What it ended up being was the commendation from the USJA for holding the nineteen twenty eight Walker Cup is signed by Prescott Bush, who, of course is George Herbert Walker Bush's father. So first thing is you probably have some things that you don't know you have. The second thing, and I've come to Don Holten at Exmore is the
one who's really pushed me, is figure out storylines. So I started, you know, a handful of years ago, just pulling down every I was on newspapers dot com, and I was going year by year pulling every instance of it. There's there's just too much stuff. And they used to follow a lot of newsprints, so there's really is too much stuff. But pick a subject area. So for example, we just talked about the first eighteen old course of
the United States. So for me, it was worth going out and researching, finding articles contemporary articles that said, oh and McDonald's here are the scores in the eighteen the whole course, or mcdonaldly these eighteen whole court the holes around to build out a storyline about aspects of your history that you kind of know you have, but you want to make into a fuller story that people would appreciate.
It's kind of like pulling the thread and the uh exactly clothing, you know, just keep pulling down stuff and you can find more and more I know, like a buddy of mine was like fascinated by the statue out in front, and he spent like three days in the USGA archives and he's convinced it's HJ. Wigham.
He shared. Peter has shared that with me and and we I think we've come to the agreement that since nobody else has a better story, and by the way, the statue and he's referring to as the foreign sure golfer in our logo, that since there's no other story that we're going with, Peter's story is the official urban legend.
All right, well, John, thanks for coming on. We're excited to watch the coverage this week. We'll see we'll be out here and fans can come out.
We encourage them to remember that I think it's eighteen and under is free. Yeah, so it's a fabulous place to come and we hope you come.
Yeah, get to walk right down the fairways. So definitely worth coming out if you're in the area or even a couple hours away and you want to come see it. So thanks for coming on and look forward to watching this week. Great.
Thanks Andy.
Now for part two of our podcast with golf course Superintendent Scott Bordner. What do you do when you're not at Chicago Golf Club.
I have two little boys, six and eight, are energetic as can be, so they keep me busy fishing tennis, watching their baseball games, and try to sneak some golf in here and there.
I imagine that it's actually a pretty good gig for like you're getting off right when your kids get off school right. Not so much.
No, it's usually a five to five shift.
I feel like I'm on your guys' schedule this today it's I couldn't couldn't handle it. This morning. I was sitting at home during lunch and I was like, I need a nap.
This is easy. Tournament time is next week and the first shift starts at four am, so we got to be here by three point thirty.
That's a how's it set up? You know? For an event like this? Change? You know your year? It has everything been geared towards this.
Or Yeah, normally we make our calendar more based on weather. This we have to implement. We almost have to start at the tournament and work backwards with some of your spray schedule and some of your timing of things, and also pay attention to weather at the same time.
So did you do like erification earlier?
Just pencil tiny greens, letting them breathe at the right times, like this morning, even though we've had a little bit of rainfall, you know, having to do a application that we water in just to make sure it's in the soil leading up to the event.
How many other big events have you put on as either assistant or a head super.
I was part of the two thousand and five US Amateur at Marion and then ran the East Course under a Director of Golf in two thousand and nine for the Walker Cup.
That's you like working with you? Jay? Good people?
Yeah, it's good time. They're actually they're they're a lot more careful. Everybody's fearful of making a mess or what are they going to do to the golf course. They just take over and and that's completely the opposite. I mean, the team that's been on site here has we only have one set of ruts out there, and it was for me trying to drive a lift out to fix the flagpole. So I did more damage than they did in two weeks just by operating one piece of machinery.
I imagine that this event is kind of like the ideal for like low impact on a golf course. Because there's not a ton of grandstand you know, people are going to be able to walk pretty close to players. It's not you know, versus like a US Open or even I mean a US am you get decent foot traffic. I imagine.
Yeah, I mean, we hope for a little bit drier weather. Anytime you're slashing around in wet soil, it could make a little bit of a mess. But the fact that the fans get to come out and walk down the fairways with the players, it takes the traffic from one concentrated area and spreads it out. They have the little mobility scooters that they ride around, and they asked me what the restrictions were leading up to the event. Spread it out. Just don't drive on the greens please.
Yeah, you know, you touched on the fans so they get to walk down the fairways. Awesome experience opportunity for people. You know, it's one of the hardest golf courses ever to get to see. If you were a fan coming to Chicago Golf Club for the first time, what would be your advice to that fan?
I would wander around to the corners. I mean, the biggest, uh, the most exciting holes out here are some of the part threes which are tucked away in the corners, and you could hit the punch bowl on your way by on number twelve. It's there's not a lot of elevation change on the property, so it's a pretty easy walk, but there's a variety of elevation as you're playing, so walking is it's a pretty easy walk, but there's still some interesting topography.
It is interesting is of all the top you know, there's a top tier of golf courses, you know, say it's fifteen to twenty courses. I feel like this is the one that's got the least desirable land, but it's also the one that's arguably got the most incredible greens.
And then the way it's routed where how they use the land is absolutely I mean, you don't feel like you're in Chicago when you're out here being a Chicago and that's played pretty much everywhere everywhere, so flat and even with the modest elevation, they just use it so well out here.
Yeah, they didn't they didn't move a tremendous amount of soil, like you said, and It's interesting how they just carved the template holes into what they had to work with. And fortunately they didn't move a lot of soil because there's really good top soil right on the top couple feet.
For me, the rainer was an engineer, and I've noticed with a lot of his courses they seemed to drain. Does it drain really well here?
Yeah, So we're still trying to figure out how they installed six point seven miles of claytile pipe in nineteen twenty three when he did the redesign, and some of it's as deep as twenty eight feet today with high powered equipment, we have a hard time doing that same work, and they had steam powered equipment at best. So that's one of the biggest things I would have loved to see, like pictures of how they installed all the old drainage.
I mean that's and is still that drainage. A lot of it's still being used today.
Yeah.
We went in and did a directional bore for the mainline. So we did an eighteen hundred foot directional bore, which was pretty cool to see how they could pull a pipe across there. And we're slowly working our way around the golf course to any areas that the clay Toyle pipe has failed, but a lot of it's still in pretty good shape when we dig it up.
I mean it's crazy because you hear about like courses nowadays, like ten years they have to get their drainage reworked. And then it's amazing some of the older stuff how well it holds up. You know, whether it be buildings and different you know, all over the place, but you know, for drainage to be that's sophisticated in nineteen twenty three is it's unbelievable. With the USGA and the Women's Senior Open. So it's the first one ever, do you and it's
the first time they've hosted event here. Do you think you'll have input in daily setup with the USGA agronomy team.
Yeah, I mean they've already had questions on these greens are severely slope and if the wind starts to blow, there's not a lot of trees out here to stop that movement. So there was a green chairman who made a map and it has under different wind conditions where you should not put pins, and I didn't follow it a few times and balls would roll into bunkers. So I made sure to give that to the people in charge.
The circle depends that you've you've had your own personal disasters with if.
If you don't learn from your own mistakes, you're doing something wrong.
I mean sometimes I you know some clubs you've put off the green all the time, and it's like, you know a Crystal Downs that's a place that I think every member out there sputted off the greens once or twice. But that's that also goes to the stem speed. Do you with all the history here and you know they have a great library, do you do they have records on what green speeds used to be versus what they are today?
Not that I've found. And one of the people from Golf Week actually sent me an old article on what the stimp used to be at all these different clubs, and I guess Chicago Golf decided not to take part in that survey, but then he had what it was. I forget the timing twenty five years ago versus what it is now. Pretty interesting data.
So Chicago Golf's one of the one of the places that you know, it's a more closed off place and a lot of people don't know a ton about it. What would you, you know, being somebody that knows everything about it was the most common misconception that people have about this place.
When you think of a high profile club, you think, you know, a lot of money they spend in unlimited budget and you know, snooty members and all that, and it couldn't be any more opposite here. Uh, It's it's a group of members who appreciate the history of the game and what it is and what this place means to them, and they understand that they're here to keep it intact and have the same experience for the next generation of membership. It's it's pretty refreshing, but it's not
about the frills and ah. You walk into the clubhouse and it's the old metal lockers and old older carpet, and you go out to the you go out to the first team and you just look across and it it reminds you of Links Golf the way it should be.
I didn't really know that much about Chicago golf until I started doing this, And it's you know, I came out here last year and I had been out at the Walker Cup, but I hadn't been back in a long time. And you know, you looked at it completely different Lenes and you know, come back when you're older. And I came back and I like, I was like, God, you know this place gets it because it seems like there's just no you know, expense that's like an unnecessary
expense like doled out. There's nothing like ritzy about it. It's just like it's what you need to be a really good spot to go golf.
Yeah, and you start to understand, like when you meet with the memberships, when you when you meet with the different members so you go into a green committee meeting and they understand that that is probably the most important committee at the club, and they understand, you know, they're not trying to put in a bunker here because they want it there, or build a new tea box because
they want it there, and leave their stamp. It's more of let's do the right thing and keep it preserved like somebody else did before us.
I imagine. I you know, Tom Doak on one of our pods said that there is a one point there was a plan drawn up that had houses on the inside of the property, like they had a housing plan. But thankfully that never happened. And for the most part, there's never been like a drastic change here. What was you know, what were the biggest changes that you kind of made that were made since you've been a superintendent.
The greens had shrunk over time, but John Jennings had done a lot of that work to bring the greens out back to the pads without moving soil, to get them back to where they originally were. Changes that we've made. We've fixed a few bunkers that had bad drainage and found, you know, some old cinders in the bottom that these
these bunkers are the original since nineteen twenty three. So you know a lot of clubs are replacing sand and fixing their bunkers every ten to fifteen years twenty five Max, And you go out there and start digging around, and there's still the original cinder that they trucked in on
a railroad car for the bass layer. So it's we're currently, you know, looking into redoing bunkers and to be able to take them back because you have all the cinders at the base, it'd be kind of a fun little archaeological dig to see what was originally there.
I find some crazy stuff. I was down in Richmond last fall. I was walking around this place called Belmont, which is like an old tilling ass ross was there and they have like just these horrible bunkers. I mean they've decayed over time, and I mean it's the biggest complaint at this it's a municipal course. They're going to
do this bunker project. And it's funny because you'd walk around and you look at the wach bunkers were really bad, and it was all the bunkers that were built after nineteen sixty and all the original bunkers were actually the bunker in their best shape, so like they're nineteen you know, sixteen bunkers were the best bunkers they had there, and anything that was built modern, you know, with what we
would call modern equipment, was actually the worst bunker. So it's amazing how you guys have bunkers that are you know, still i mean extremely playable, still in really good shape, and they're as old as they get.
Yeah, And it's interesting to also listen to golfers' perspectives. Any time you're at a golf course, you can ask somebody, you know, what the biggest complaint they hear, and it's usually bunkers.
Here.
I have a lot of members that have already said to me, why do we need to fix them? They're supposed to be a hazard. And it's a good point, like as Superintendent's we spend so much time and labor on fixing something that was originally intended to be a hazard. Fortunately to the members here understand that, and we've been able to cut back a lot of the labor in the bunkers and they still end up playing just fine.
I mean, It's one of the things that like bugs me with what's happened with golf is like how I mean, bunkers for a lot of pros now are much easier, Like a lot of times I'd rather be in a bunker than be in a you know, in a bad
lie and the rough. You know, like if it's going to be in the rough or the bunker, you usually rather prefer the bunker because, like, especially with that new like really bright white sand, the ball just like pops right out of it and you can get spin on it, I mean, and it's like not the way it's supposed
to be. And you saw it at Shinnacock, Like you know, if people be short sighted and you know, they hit in the worst spot, they could possibly hit it in and then people were so upset that they couldn't get up and down from that spot. And it's like, well, you're in a horrible place. Like if that was water, you'd be taken a drop and hitting for versus. And I think, like, I think that's something that golf. It would be so much better if bunkers became more penal again.
And it would also save a ton of money, I imagine.
Yeah, And there there was an old CB McDonald's quote that said I would rather run a herd of elephants through the bunkers each morning than rake them every day. And it's in Scotland's gift book. And and here we are to the point where there's a lot of clubs out there that if you don't rake bunkers every day, you know, it's well, I didn't get a good lie. It's kind of a it's I don't know.
CB was was a real hoot with some of the stuff he would say, is what's the kind of funniest thing that you've are the best historical thing you've come across at Chicago Golf Club that since you've been here.
I mean probably digging into the drainage system and seeing what they actually did in nineteen twenty three. Historically, I'm trying to think of anything else going up in the clock tower and seeing the old it's one of the oldest, if not the oldest, operating mechanical clocks in the United States or in the state of Illinois. Sorry, but going up there, and the chef would go up there and set the weights properly so people wouldn't tee off too early.
That's gonna be one of the super intendent's biggest s. Gripe is like the guy that teas off before he's supposed to tee off at a country club, be like, you know, they run around, and that's never the guy that's considerate of like the maintenance guys. You know, they're just trying to get their hour fifty.
In the Golfers play fast out here, but fortunately if somebody's planning that fast, usually there's a gap behind them. With a small membership not quite as much play.
What's the toughest aspect of managing this place.
I would say there's a lot of people, and I completely understand it. If it was my one chance to play Augusta National, I wouldn't care if it was raining and lightning and I had to keep going in every three holes, it wouldn't bother me. But that's the biggest difference between here and a lot of places is the weather doesn't matter as much when you have a member bringing three guests out because they could be they might be in town from far away and this might be
their one chance to play it. So that's the hardest part is even during rainstorms or something else, you still have to try to get it in the best shape because somebody's bringing guests out and you want them to be proud of their golf course and keep it as playable as you can, even in some pretty bad conditions.
Yeah. I mean every time I've seen this place, I feel I was out here in February walking around and I thought, I was like, I, you probably could play today.
We try, We try. The guys work hard, get a great staff.
Yeah. How big is your staff here compared to and you know, for the listeners that wouldn't know how big that staff is it, how is it compared to you know, other staffs around the area.
It's it's hard to compare because I have a really unique layout of staff. We don't really need maintenance Mondays as much as most clubs. Because of the low rounds, we try to do things more based on weather. We don't need to top dress or do some other things on Mondays because we can probably get it done in between groups on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday if there's rain coming.
So I have a staff of thirty four this year, which we hired a couple extra just with the tournament coming case a couple guys didn't make it through the summer, and they only work Tuesday through Sunday morning, and then they can play golf on Mondays, and we find that we get people who actually appreciate the golf course more when they're playing on Mondays, and it never really dips into overtime. And we have a pretty full staff on
the weekend. So it's the full time equivalent is probably twenty four to twenty five guys.
How many rounds do you get a year?
Last year, I believe we're just a little bit above eighty five hundred rounds, So it's a it's pretty quiet.
What do you do with all the when people aren't around? Do you ever go out and play?
Trying not too too much in the middle of the day, I can kind of sneak out here at night and play a few holes, and I like to at least understand the conditions that we're putting out. So I like to play ten to twelve times a year just to make sure I fully understand. Okay, this is where we're at, not just from a superintendent's eye, but from a golfer's eye.
What's your favorite, say, three four whole stretch out here?
Three to four hole stretch. I'm a guy who likes when people are challenged, so I'd have to say one through four. I like to make sure everybody that plays out here, they're handicaps travel well.
So it's about as hard of a first three hole. You know, four you can you can go score on, but you can it. Also, you could be chipping from the front of that green all day.
Yeah, but if it's me playing thirteen through sixteen is a pretty good stretch where I feel like very playable holes for you know, ten to twelve handicap like myself.
I love that cape hole the fourteenth. That's one of the coolest greens. That little little triangle corner he.
Got out there on the front and nobody can ever read that green, and it's probably the most consistently pitched out of all the greens. But nobody ever thinks it's going to break as much as it does, so.
It breaks more if have players listening.
And I don't give away too many hints right before a tournament.
So we talked about what the toughest part about managing here is, what do you think in overall look at the turf industry, what's the biggest struggle out there for superintendents and people in the industry.
Right now? I mean, we're all pulling from the same pool, landscapers, farmers trying to get workers. You know. I wish there was more high school kids that knew that this was an industry, and there's a lot of superintendents out there talking to high schools and letting them know, hey, we're here. I mean, I was fortunate enough to just trip across
this industry at the age of sixteen. And you know, once you start working outside and get to watch the sun come up, especially at a place like this, it really gets in your blood and it's it's I can't imagine doing anything else.
Where'd you grow up and did at sixteen? Did you start working out? Of course?
Yeah, so I would. My brother, my older brother was working at the golf course, and when I was sixteen, I was like, yeah, I want to do that too, So we would work at Park Hills Golf Course, thirty six whole public golf course out in Freeport, Illinois. And we came from a town of five hundred people. So the fact that we didn't have a golf team and two of us ended up in the industry is pretty comical. And my dad's probably played ten rounds of golf his
whole life. So my brother was good at golf, so he is now a golf pro at Irondequoit Country Club in Rochester. I wasn't good at golf and kind of fell into the maintenance side of things and really enjoyed it. And now I get an office like this.
And you hang out at one of the one of the places that most golfers would just kill to get a hangout at all the time.
And it's yeah, and it's it's hard because you're at work, so you're constantly focused on things that most people wouldn't see. And it's nice too. We get a bunch of interns and assistants that come into town and aren't used to seeing this, and it's kind of refreshing when you get new people out here, where you see guests come out here and they're just flabbergasted by what this place is when you're normally just thinking about it as oh, I'm going to work today. So it's kind of it kind
of keeps you in check. Like you'll see a fog roll over and start to look at things out on the golf course and you're like, wow, look at that.
I was talking to one of your guys who's from South Carolina. He's a summer intern, and he was telling me. He's like, yeah, man, I it's crazy. I got out here and I was so used to dog legs and water and cart pass and then I got out here and I'm like, oh, this is this is completely different. This isn't anything like what I'm used to at home.
Yeah, Tommy Rayner hasn't touched this place yet.
Tommy probably would love to go his hands on this place.
He could do some amazing things with her cart paths.
I feel like he'd have fun with the water. The water has are out here. You'd get some fountains in there.
Yeah, we have bubblers to help with the algae. No fountains yet though.
That's it for the Alco blooms. Right. Yeah, that was an environmental science major, so a little bit I know about it. So if you say, say you hadn't gotten into turf, what would you be doing?
Oh man, I don't know. It's kind of hard to get it out of your system. Now, dream world, dream world. Uh still turf related, but uh, taking care of Wrigley Field. I'm a diehard Cubs fan. Just give me any job at Wrigley Field.
Pretty awesome.
Yeah, that'd be a cool job.
You probably get that job now.
Nah, Justin does a great job down there.
How old you see?
He's pretty young. He's a Cardinals fan though, So.
That's how you got planned. You gotta get him out of there. You know. I'm actually, you know, as a Cubs fan, I'm a little upset that he's a Cardinals fan.
Well he's not anymore.
He might be mowing the grass different when the Cardinals come to town.
He grew up, he grew up a Cardinals fan.
Yeah, that's Superintendents are known to be some of the most resourceful people in the golf industry. What would you say, is the thing since you came here that you've kind of figured out that saves you either the most time or the most money or most resources.
I would say taking walk mowers off of approaches and sometimes even greens. I mean, the technology is so good now that you can triplex screens and not really tell that much of a difference. Golfers can't really tell where before you somebody said you triplex screens and it's like, oh, they're going to be slow because you couldn't get to the same heights. But the major manufacturers have done a fantastic job at getting us to the same point with a walker versus a triplex.
I've heard that the you know, you have a lot of squared off greens here, and I've heard like always like, you know, maintenance, maintenance is so hard with you know, the squared off edges. Is that a myth or is that true?
It has its challenges. We constantly my assistance and other guys are really diligent about marking where the collars are and then we have really good operators who can get to those points, so you can't really tell. But it's yeah, they're not they're not easy to maintain, but it's it's not bad.
Is that is it? Are green edges like one of the toughest things to maintain throughout a year or throughout a number of years.
Collars are more one of the first things to decline. But I'm also saying this with eighty seven hundred rounds of golf, so you can take if you have a lot of traffic, Well, if you have a lot of traffic trampling those edges, walk offs, walk ons, we just don't have that here as much.
Yeah, I was out at a course last week and I couldn't believe how much, Like I droned late at night and I couldn't believe how much car traffic I could tell. And then also like off greens, how much walking traffic. Like you know, it's just stuff like as I talk to more people, and you know, my golfer IQ goes up, Like I just start to notice more and more things, and like those are two things I don't think the regular golfer would ever notice. But I
mean there, it's incredible. Once you see it, you can't unsee it.
Where That's where a lot of UH technology is starting to help us out. I was looking at a computer program a couple months ago, and they actually are coming out with little bits that go on each mower, and you can tell exactly where your guys are driving, and you can start to sync that up with wear patterns, and you know, we're getting to the point where you can really just make guys drive where the golfers aren't.
Because even at a golf course with a lot of cart traffic, I'd say twenty percent of the cart traffic is still from the maintenance department. So if we can start to get our staff going in different directions than the other golf carts, I think I think that'll help the overall cause.
It's something like the traffic. And then something that's crazy to me that I had never really thought about until I started noticing, like how Mackenzie and a lot of the Golden Age architects would always have these clusters of greens. And I was talking to Sean Tully and he's like, oh, well, yeah, part of that's maintenance. You know it would be it
would be so much more efficient. And then you start to think about like what happened in the seventies or the eighties where all these holes are like siloed off into like far reaches. Is like the gas bill difference between like a very compact like this is really compact property where the holes are all pretty close to each other,
and it's gotta be pretty easy to get around. But if if it's stretched out and you know you're having to drive a long ways, I mean, the gas over the course of a year has got to be pretty significant.
Yeah, And the hardest part is you get out to that farthest point. Oh, I forgot one of the five tools that I needed. You gotta drive all the way back to the shop.
It's brutal.
It's a good excuse.
Yeah, I know you could kill a lot of time. You got a bad hangover, Yeah, just be driving around all the day. That's when I when I grew up working at a country club, I would go. I'd be like, I'm gonna go pick the range and go go take a nap.
That's that's where those little bits come in handy too, that they're gonna put on golf carts. You can see a golf cart that hasn't been moving for five minutes, busted.
Ran out of battery. So let's do some overrated underrated Oh all right, everybody's favorite subject at say the doors.
Ah, not a big music guy, you mean, like like screen doors music. No, not big music. Nah, I'll go neutral on that one. You got, you got to pick one, all right? Overrated? Sure, I don't like music. I don't like movies.
You don't like music or movies? Now, how do you not like music or movies? Just don't.
I don't have the patience to sit there in a movie.
I actually kind of agree, since I've gotten really busy, I can't. I can't sit through movies.
So I was I was getting I was getting engaged. And I was shopping for wedding rings after work at Marion, which we'd work till dark every night, and I was so tired because I was going out, trying to shop quick before the stores would close, and I fell asleep in the middle of a movie. And my wife doesn't get mad at me very often, but she was like, not angry, but you could tell it was just like, seriously,
we don't get to spend that much time together. And then she found out that I was actually out shopping for rings and she felt bad. So it got some brownie points back.
Yeah, it's a good one. She figured it out, but hopefully she didn't figure it out before you ask. Now, that's uh overrated. Underrated. Downer's Grove Golf Club.
Oh underrated. If you go there and see the land, I hope they go back and do a renovation or restoration to take it back to what it was. I mean there's some holes that you can't get back now because the road's through there, but the land is all still there.
It's unbelievable. It's a yeah, that's that site. I mean, you think about this site and that site. That's that Site's one of the best pieces of land in Chicago I've ever seen.
And I mean as overall golfing experience. I went over there and played, and we got me and a sales rep from the area got paired with a guy in jeans and a white Sox jersey. So I knew it was gonna be a great experience if the guy's going to play golf in a White Sox jersey.
It's for people that don't know Downers grow this original site of Chicago Golf Club, and they got a couple of the original holes. But yeah, you walk up there and nobody knows any like, nobody knows anything about the play Like you know, I asked some people at the front. It's it's uh, but it's actually a pretty cool little place to go play. It's a nine hole or you can get around quick if you go there.
Only it's fantastic. The greens were really good. Yeah, it just if they could take the pads back to what they were and make the Greens bigger. I mean, the template is still there.
Yeah, it's uh, it could be really cool. I hope they do something one of these days. But I have I hear otherwise.
When you said overrated, undergraded downers Grove, I thought you meant the town.
Well, what do you think about the What do you think about the town?
I love the town. Underrated town, Yeah, underrated for sure.
What's the most overrated Chicago suburb?
The most overrated Chicago suburb? Wow, there's a lot of people listening. I don't.
I'll tell you mine. After you say most.
I'll go most underrated Warrenville got big Al's Pizza.
See, I'm going to say overrated Hensdale. Just my my wife's from there. I think I think it's overrated. So that's my two cents. She doesn't listen to the pod, though, so I don't have to worry about any backlash. Perfect, all right, Scott, thanks for coming on. Excited to see the golf course this week on TV. All your hard work and uh and uh yeah yeah.
The staff's done great. We're ready to go, so come out and see it.
You've been listening to the Fried Egg podcast.
We do the digging for you.