Welcome back to another edition of the Frida Egg podcast and the final part of our episode with Colin she In. If you've missed either of the earlier parts, check them out in your podcast feed. Without further ado, here's the final part of our podcast with Yale golf coach Colin Sheen.
The fried egg requires a different technique. What you need to do is actually square the face so they'll dig down underneath that bad lie and propel that ball right out onto the green.
Here's the thing.
Playing out of a buried lion of bunker is completely different than playing out of a nice, clean lion of green side bunker.
You need to be aggressive on any show, whether it's sitting cleanly for its Friday Egg.
Well, we've all faithd it, the dreaded Frida Egg.
It's not to be feared, though.
It's actually a pretty easy shot to hit.
You. You're one of the three founders of the Outpost club. You mentioned it just briefly about trips to the UK. You guys started in twenty ten, and the whole kind of baseline ideas. You know, a country club without a course, you know a home course.
Andy, You're much too smart to call it that it's a golf society.
It's a well side well you know, I'm trying to called otherwise known as a golf society. I'm allowing you to present it in a lovely way. I'm just I'm just giving him the layman's description.
It is worth a brief prehistory because it's kind of cool. And in two thousand and I got I went to Yale with will Smith. He was a year behind me. We became fast friends. I used to sneak him out on the Yale golf course, you know, try to sneak pack, try to avoid the fourteen dollars you know, student rate. At the time.
He told me that you would tell them that you were a potential, and that he was a potential recruit.
No, I'd say, he's trying out the top put off the first t I'd be like, oh, this is go. But so we both fell in love with architecture and the golf courses undergraduates, and then we followed it. You know, he actually went to travel Leasure golf. We both agreed, we both were you know, we were both following golf pursuits. Wasn't There's no you know, they don't come to they don't recruit on campus. You know, the banks, and the banks come and recruit, and the consulting agencies and the
consulting firms come to campus. But you want to sort of cut a path in golf, you're on your own. And he and I were doing that out of college. And he was out working at the Prairie Club in Valentine and Cherry County and Valentine, Nebraska in two thousand and eight or nine, two thousand and eight, and they met someone who had land that was ideal for golf in the area. And it was on we had elevation undulation, it was in the sand hills, and it had this
beautiful pond on it. It had a chance to be a new kind of sand hills course because it was gonna have water. It wasn't gonna come into play, but it had a sense of you weren't just lost in the dunes. It really had a special site, easily a
top ten potential course in America. And we and it was like, I can't remember, it was like four hundred dollars an acre and it was seven hours from it was five hours from the Denver airport by car, and we had this ambitious idea to create the Outpost Club, and it was gonna be for twenty and thirty somethings. We're gonna build it on the cheap. We were gonna have one thousand members. We're gonna pay six thousand dollars
to join. Dudes are gonna be twelve hundred dollars. Family style meals, real sort of bunk house, kind of campground, accommodations. It was gonna be this new type of club. And
we spent a lot of time. We put together a beautiful deck, spent a lot of work on it, and I can't believe that we we actually thought we were going to try to go and raise like six million dollars in spring of two thousand and nine, when the credit markets were melting, the economy was in terror, there was a recession, and we were going around New York trying to pitch people on a golf course five hours from Bedford, and the more we and then when it
became a parent that wasn't going to happen. But one of the ideas though, is that we were going to get members by going all around the country. Because you know, from the moment you sort of broke ground to when you put a team in the ground is like three years.
We were going to have events all around the country and all the major markets and have member have outings and try to recruit members, and sort of the more we talked about that, sort of the advice we were getting in sort of where it was becoming obvious is why not take advantage of the fact that we're on the tail end of a thirty year build cycle with all the supply, and that participation is way down, and that it had everything had been sort of masked by
a housing bubble, and that there's all this inventory everywhere rotting, and that America was ready for sort of the first of its kind of an influence, a British influence of having unaccompanied visitor play an American golf needed it. It wasn't ready for it because clubs still have a hang up about who's actually coming. And we sort of pivoted in this idea of like we were going to take it.
We're going to have a golf society with events and access to all these great architecturally significant courses that would be willing to have visitors come and play their course at at times when tea was available and play quickly and there was just nothing wrong with golfers coming and enjoying a course and playing, walking, taking caddies and being grateful for the opportunity. And that's kind of where it kind of turned around and we will I had already
started the punch Bowl in two thousand and seven. It was this alternate shot event at Yale. It was supposed to be a thirty six hole event and it was to celebrate the end of the year. That was celebration of the end of the season, to play with friends, to play alternate shots. Stapleford did big carvery lunch, you know, real throwback kind of British event. The trophy is the
punch Bowl. It's a nice prosecco and some orange and cranberry juices and real stylish thing and mostly to also show off showcase Yale at that perfect week of the year in late October when the turf is just absolutely flying and every little nuanced break and the greens is coming out, and you know, it was this We had
success with it. It was fourteen people, and then twenty six, and then thirty and thirty two, and this past year it was one hundred and I think we discovered that having having events and and having sort of an unaccompanied sort of guest policy and a lot of private clubs for people that shared a love of the game was a really it was a really good sort of you know, you know, evolution of American golf. And so that's that's
how we felt about it. We always felt like we're just you know, encouraging people to treat themselves this real special occasion golf and really functioned like a like an American version of of a of a British golfing success of society with a captain and and a real sort of respect for the history and traditions of the game. We're I mean, we're just a bunch of daft golfers and we have our own tart and tweet and it's
a really cool thing. It's there's a real sort of you know, there's a lot of members support for the for this endeavor, and people feel really good about it, really proud to be part of it with Will and Quinton and we have. Honestly, it's the most ambitious event calendar in the five hundred year history of the game.
We put on like seventy five events a year, fifteen internationals, like insane trips like to be a member of the Oppos Club is to get an invitation every day to an event you can't go to.
It's it's pretty crazy. I mean, it's I think what you've tapped into is people like spending time with other people that share the same passion, you know. And it's all golf junkies that are you know, just wanting to experience playing some of the best course in the world together.
It's awesome. It's a community, it's you know, all society. It's like there's a thousand of them in the UK. There should be there should be three thousand in the United States.
It's what do you think about American golf and and it compared to say golf in the UK.
It's obvious we're the most We're so indulgent. If our golf is a metaphor for our behavior, then we are. We were guilty over maintain turf too fast one, you know, David Faye said on the air at Fox they didn't get any press agreed that the turf is too tight. We've our standards of expectations for greens are just unrealistic. It's insane. We're asking for perfection all the time. It's it's it's at a cost. It's enough. The fairways don't have to be so tight. Shots don't have what are
we doing? The cost per cost per square yard meter can get out of hand. One other thing that no one has ever proposed. I wish in America we were capable of getting beyond the con able to adopt the British concept of the artisan club, where people pitch in like for their time and get sort of discounted golf, and they were on the courses and they see places you can I have like a volunteer sort of aspect to a lot of courses.
You know, I was thinking about that one time. It's like, you know, if if twenty members just went out and did some work, they could probably make a lot of places a lot better.
You know, sure pitch marks, it just go seed stuff, like just pick the stuff that needs to get done. Anyway, that's a fascinating concept. I know we're not the classes society, but I wish there was a way that we could have more junior golfers maybe doing a little bit of a of a you know, it's a works project. You go out and you work on the course and you rake the traps and then get you get some money and you play the course. And I'm really one of the saddest trends in American golf is is that for
one hundred years there was a first team. There were first team programs everywhere. They were called caddy yards. I personally benefited from them, from having caddied at the country of a fairfield nineteen like eighty nine, eyeing to ninety six or something, and it was fascinating. I can't for all those virtues of first the first t you know, some of those are pretty offensive campaigns. There was a sort of patronizing streak to some of the first tea,
you know, sort of presentations. And what's more important than maybe some kids playing not an unsustainable introduction of golf, how about them experiencing a workforce opportunity, internship opportunity of cattying and carrying following golf and interacting with adults. And that benefit is incredible for teenagers, middle school kids to show up and be on time and take pride and get and learn and get good at their craft and
be incentivized. And that to me, I wish there was a way we could tomorrow five hundred courses could have a middle school high school caddy program. I'm like everything that only good things happen in those in those programs for kids, only like opportunities open up. Like I'm convinced of it.
Yeah, I agree. I I grew up caddy in too, which uh you know, I grew up caddy in a good country club in Chicago, And like, I think that's part of the reason I like golf architecture so much, too, is because I started. I grew up walking around a golf course that didn't stink, you know, I just grew up carrying bags for members. Like it helped me learn how to conversate with different types of people and read people and understand them.
You know.
When I when I got out of out of college, I started doing sales jobs, I understood how to talk to people and what people want out of you. You know, That's like the biggest thing I think, like the greatest caddies are able to do in one hole, know, like without asking the guy they're carding for, Like is this a guy that I should read their putt for him or not? You know, It's like the human skills that you develop as a caddy is just understanding people.
It's unbelievable, the opportunity. Like you're outdoors, you're walking, you're watching the game. It's the most sustainable introduction of golf is caddying. So while you're sort of watching how to do it, you're getting paid, You're watching people gambling, you're learning how how the different clubs are used. You're watching everything you could possibly learn. You're watching it in the course of ten twenty rounds. You're making money.
You're getting exercise, you're.
Learning the yeah, and I have so many by the way I caddied. I caddied at the Country Cup of Fairfield mostly Seth Rayner about as good as, of course, can get butchered. It got butchered, and it was still some because it's seaside and it still works. It's fabulous. I spent years of my life at that place. It was so charming par seventy seven sixty three hundred yards.
I saw Rainer kind of at this. I was first introduced to Rayner as an eighth grader caddying at Fairfield, and I couldn't believe the fact that they would let you if you caddied on the weekend and made money, that they let you play the course all day Monday. It was like it was this. I couldn't I couldn't believe that we could then play like thirty six holes on Monday afternoon. It was as great a trade as I've ever made, you know, I couldn't believe how pretty
Fairfield was. Like it had a it's not really a Lynx, but it's but it's got a It's got this beautiful ridge line from these mansions on the Sasco Hill and then it goes down to the Pequot Yacht Club and harbor and sensational homes, and then it swings around past their beach club to the to the Sasco Beach and then Long Island Sound. It's incredible. He to fall in love with the game.
Yeah, that's I mean, it's the same way I did. It's like that that it's I don't know, it's crazy. I hear people talk about how you should get rid of caddy programs altogether because they don't want to pay for it. But it's like, God, you know, how much worse of the game, worse the game would be without caddies, especially like kid caddies. Like that's the best best summer job.
I remember going back to college, like I caddied, and while I was in college too, I'd go back to college with just like a big stack of cash, you know, and then I'd be and then I'd run. I'd of course spend it, be completely irresponsible with it and spend it all. But you know that that that getting paid cash was something that's so awesome about a kid, you know, caddy and it's like you.
Cash on the barrel, and it was fun to be a good caddy. It was fun to help your man, like what it was fun to be in the conversation for the shot, you know, the club when they took your I got good enough quickly enough that they would they be like, what do you think I'd be like you need to fight the six. You know. It's like
kind of that's awesome. It's just interacting with adults, like looking people in the eye, like, you know, being able to sort of absolutely like we cannot underestimate the value of communication and personal interaction job interviews. This just type of being able to being able to sort of turn back and return a conversation that's important.
Having gotten to know you, it seems like one of your other your obviously biggest passions is the golf development and project side of the business. What else do you get? What else do you have coming up in the future, What are you working on?
I was thinking of this fictional essay about the dirt poor golf developer as like just metaphor, and I feel like I'm the other dirt poor golf developer. God nothing. I think, if you're going to have, like we mentioned earlier, if you're gonna have an opportunity being maybe a do a couple of projects, maybe only do a few, but but have them be really wonderful. And that's how I felt about my relationship with the first project that I was ever involved with, and it was Bayone. I'm an apologist.
I think along with Yale Bayone is I'm a member of two of the most criminally underrated courses in North America. Will does I think? I think Bayone is so sensational. It's yelled by the sea. It is got loaded with blind shots, quirk, like I challenge you, like I put it head to head. It has so many head to head wins against courses Bayone does.
I gotta go see it.
Oh, It's unbelievable. I'm going a total apologize. I'm in the tank and I love it. I love I absolutely love that course, and I love taking friends there. And it's seaside and it's views are sensational, and it's on like next to like oil, you know, refinery tank, you know, containers, and like it's unbelievable. It's it's so, it's so there's moments that are so genuinely lenksy that it's just it's
better than so much in the Northeast. And and then after Bayonne, I was at Castle Stewart, I lived in Scotland. I'd followed up with Mark Carson and and I really had a chance to witness one of the great another great course being made like full complicated muckshift like Gil and you know Mark and collaborating and and Jim Wagner's shaping and doing this amazing stuff and the and the incredible, credible like location of the property and the vision was
it was. It was such an such an incredible like project to witness, you know, I can't get over it. And so after that, I don't know. I one place I fell in love with Andy I was was the Hooper golf course in the Watkins Tavern. I failed to raise the money. I would, but but I'm telling you, listen, I'm telling you I spend I just spent enough time. I can't. I can't help myself. I can't resist. I
have my love of historic preservation. That that golf course which Dope made it in his Gourmet Choice, but a nineteen twenty seven Wayne Styles golf course virtually untouched, still like Parth, like seven three thousand and thirty three yards like Parth thirty five like. Its clubhouse was the Alexander Watkins House from seventeen eighty eight that became the Watkins Tavern in seventeen ninety five. It literally the clubhouse was
a tavern during George Washington's second term. It's incredible, and it's as close to the first team in the Ninth Green as Marion. It's literally joined at the hip. The most beautiful like first tea in America might be the first tea at Hooper of a rival reachable for sixty seven par five downhill to the left from in front of a historic eight teenth century tavern. It's unbelievable. It's so I still would love. I think it still could use a little rescue. They're they're sort of working it out,
but it was. It was. It has the chance to be one of the most exquisite golf properties anywhere. It was as if like the Myopia Hunt Club or where the Country Club had like a satellite nine hole location up there in the woods of New Hampshire.
That's not everybody could go play Hooper too. It's like twenty bucks. I think it's on my list of twenty nineteen steps.
It's amazing. It has it's greens have so much tilt to them. They're flying, and they're and it's and it's a there's, it's a it's a course that you could play between the ages of eight and a hundred. It is amazing. Hooper is amazing.
I think nine hole courses are so underrated. I think it's the right amount of golf.
I grew up on one South Pine Creek Parth Public otherwise ow it was the par three designed by like Jeff Cornish in the sixties. It was like a I'm not that old, I'm only forty three, but I have like I have one of those stories when things were cheap and when you had a town resident card in nineteen eighty six, when you were eleven. I think to play during the week. Might have been a dollar thirty five, might have been like nine holes.
That's I mean, my local course. It was just it was an eighteen hole kind of nothing golf course, completely boring. But the junior the junior card like for the whole summer, Like I could play as much golf as I wanted for four hundred dollars. Yeah, Like I could go there every single day and play golf for four hundred dollars a year. You know, like that's that's a great deal. I could play as much as I wanted to.
This course. This course is fascinating. It had uh it had a mix of difficult and the backups were always on the long holes, the fourth and fifth holes. I spent years of my life just waiting on teas at the nine hole par three course, just with friends in the shade at the bushes. There was a lot of seashells and seagulls and and a lot of marshy hole. It was in like the surrounded by fragmighty and stuff and the Nike site where you know, in high school the kids went to, you know, drink beers in the
parking lot. But it was it was seaside and it was, and there was a lot of downtime when it wasn't when it wasn't us whoer busy, But it was also it was a really good thing for ten year olds to play golf with people septagenarians and octagenarians. It's really good for a ten year old kid to play with a seventy five year old person. It was you don't act like a jackass. Yeah, you talk to them. It's like it was beautiful. It was beautiful. And we'd go
there in the winter. We played in the winter when it was just covered in just goose shit and and it there would be no pins and there would there wouldn't even be cups, but they'd run us off the place I played so much seaside. We had a micro climate on the coast in Fairfield in Southport. It's not like I didn't have miserable winners and get snow, but
like you'd have these temperate days in the winter. We would go out and suddenly be there'd be like some NFL playoffs, and earlier in the day we've been like hitting balls at the at the par three, or like up at the Fairchild Wheeler, the public course that's on the border with Fairfield and Bridgeport. Love with sneaking on winter golf is.
Do overrated, underrated. So I'm gonna I'm gonna throw some topics at you.
There might be I'm just gonna if there's if there's a course that I just I can't be honest with you. I'm just gonna tell.
You that that's fine. We're gonna start. We're gonna start with a We're gonna lab one at you. Alternate shot?
Oh come on, how there isn't? Like every club in America has at least three alternate shot events. The year is crime. It's the most tea, it's the most team. I spend so much time overseas asking people to articulate why they play alternate shot. I'm like, why are you doing this? Like miss you know you old Buffty at like yet another club that just does this, like I love it? Like could be anywhere pen Pen You're yeah, pressed Wick, Like could any all of those places in England?
And I got so many different answers. I got a million different answers why they loved alternate shots so much? And but Archie Baartt gave one good one. He said, every you know, every shot comes with double the consequences, double the joy, or double double the stakes, double the joy,
double the agony. You know, I love I love the dynamic of alternate shot where player A, you know, hits a shot out of play and player B does the best to kind of advance it, and then player AS a chance to avenge it with a great wedge, and then it's like player B converts the putt, closes it out. It's like such a team for that is like such a sensational four. And then and then at the pace of play aspect of it, and that's just the practicality of it. We're we're like, we only have time for nine.
How about we only have time for alternate shot eighteen. Let's do that, Like, let's go and play, Like, let's have events where the round is two and a half hours, which is nine with a hot dog, or you played eighteen, play an alternate shot with people? Like how we don't have courses where we're just like until noon on weekday mornings, it's two balls only. That would be another revolution in America.
Two ball only. Be like, that's the deal till either you and your friend could play, or you get four of you and you could fly and get get out of here. Go. I don't have to work.
It's like one of the biggest problems. Like hey, like I hate how you have to commit so much time all the time.
No one's got time for it.
Yeah, it's uh, that's.
Something that There was an era when Don Draper played his golf. He got he worked all week and then he came home and he was gone before he even got up on Saturday, and he played in the morning, and then he had three cocktails and played cards. He came back and racked out on the sofa while the golf was on TV, and it showered and got dressed up for drinks and dinner, and you know, that ship has sailed. It is. I don't know anybody who plays golf on the weekend. Nobody.
Yeah, yeah, that's uh. What about uh? What about driving ranges? Overrated? Underrated?
What kind like by the highway with netting or like you know some beautiful like you know field with just like you know, just some rope and some like scoops, you know, like wagons with full of balls that you you know.
Me any any kind of driving range.
Listen, I played so much golf in the UK and you never need him, never used him and never and it never hurt the round. You don't, you know, forget a range somewhere on the course you can practice. Totally overrated.
Yeah, way overrated.
Although, although although we were trying to raise a lot of money to build a fabulous range at the Yel course, we're going to reroute the road as you come in so that we can expand it and build a you know, four car garage of hitting days. So in that regard, it's very underrated.
It might be underrated. A good range is probably underrated for a college program. Yeah, we're trying to build the the build the college golf program. Yeah, I think drive range is important.
I don't think the people that make a big deal about their range. I say, have you ever been to Cyprus Point. It's it's like you're allowed to hit like four seven irons into the right rough that's the rage, And yet it's like it's a you know, it continues to be a religious experience. So all first time and every time visitors.
It's uh yeah, I mean like that's a lot of the great golf courses don't have the worst ranges.
You know, quaker Ridge, wing foot.
Short acres, Yeah, horrible range. Yeah, Chicago golfs is on where what used to be the polo field.
That's not bad though, is it.
No, it's pretty good. It's a pretty good, pretty good range. Last overrated, underrated, We'll go with the eighteenth eighteenth hole. Like the everybody, I feel like everybody complains about eighteen hole eighteenth holes all the way, all the time, like our eighteenth holes overrated or underrated.
I'm going to begin this answer with the fact I want to talk about Yale's eighteenth hole, which is one of the more controversial holes ever, which I happen to think is one of the greatest holes on the course, might be the best, one of the great holes in America. And it's a it's a it's a litmus test. It's an acid test for whether someone has an idea for golf is being adventurous and thrilling and strategic, but also you know, wild versus people that want, you know, they
want to be catered to. And I think that that hole, if you played one hundred, I am on record of defending it. I actually constantly arguing back to people that want to hate on it, like those Ivy League coaches I mentioned earlier, and I think the whole is as dynamics are strategically of any hole in America. I'm serious, because it is there, it's got If you play it five hundred times, you don't ever play it the same
way twice. It's and and yet there's still plenty of options and roots to the green and ways to make five. And but it's it's People really can't stand a par five that is both not a birdie hole and more likely more likely bogie than birdie. And as the eighteenth hole when a par five gives you basically it's a bogie par five to finish. Golfers hate it, so I
get that. But I'm telling you, if you, if you were to ever do a real deal sort of dive on a hole, one of your holes I should be on your list would be eighteen eight yell, because it is fair and it is playable. There is a way to hit two reasonable shots and have the ball chase all the way down to one hundred yards in the flat.
You know that that article exists on the fried Egg. It's been written.
I didn't I think I saw that once.
You're right, Yeah, Now I'm going to make it better because I'm gonna add a video to it. Yeah, so people are gonna be able to really see it. But that's what answer.
But to answer your question about over eighteenth holes, I do agree that a golf course has to be in some ways. I like those analogies to music and how it has to have a finish like it isn't it doesn't over it doesn't maybe way more than two other holes. But the idea it shouldn't less for sure. It shouldn't be a cliche either and be four seventy five and and like a like a hole that you know everyone bogies, but it can as long as it works. But I I think I actually we talked about eighteen holes and
they matter. There's they want what matters more? One or eighteen or one?
That's a good question. I uh oh, eight, I don't know. I think I think one matter is more.
It's interesting concept. I understand what you're getting at. That's true. I'm a big fan of one. I think want to Yale when it's properly restored. By the way. What I like about first holes I'm on record is that I like them when they state the theme quickly. Yeah, an overture. I want it to be like, Okay, here you go. You ready for this? This is a course with the following expectations, you.
Know, see eighteen. To me, it's one of the things that's tough with eighteen is like a lot of times just having to come back to a clubhouse and no song. If we want to talk about the songs, like, there are very few songs that end like absolutely going wild, like I mean, the best part of songs is never the end. The best part of the song is in the middle of it. That's where I want all the crazy ass stuff happened and around.
I guess you're right, yeah, but what if it's already happened and then it just turns around and just which is like a turned up to eleven?
Well that's some songs are like that. That's okay, but for the most part they aren't like that. So like eighteen, I don't I think technology has such a problem with this too, because like so I played with the that Hickory and ballata, and all of a sudden, par fives were like insanely hard like and usually when I play I expect to like be chipping or putting for eagles on par fives, and all of a sudden, I was like, holy shit, I got to hit really good shots in
order to make a par on a par five. And that's like the thing with with golf is like it's funny. I was talking to my buddy Zach Blair and he was like, when you play eighteenth at Cyprus with a hickory, it all of a sudden makes way more sense. And that's like the most dogged eighteenth hole in the world.
Sure, that's a great hole. It's probably overgrown a little bit that yeah that I'm like that hole as a gem. It's not onlikes Olympic. It's a little tricky hole. You've got what are you gonna do? That's where the hill is. That's where it comes back to the hill. Yeah, that's how it goes.
You got to get back.
You can't.
You couldn't finish on the ocean. You gotta get back to the clubhouse. It's fine, Yeah, it's fine. I don't know. Eighteenth holes overrated. That's my my, my, my pick though.
So I'm talking.
You're not a man of social media. Nobody can find you there.
I don't have I haven't sent a tweet. I gotta get better. I'm gonna have one of the freshmen run the Twitter. I'm not on Instagram. I need to do this. I'm not on Facebook.
You're better off for it. People can find you by emailing you. You know that's a great concept.
Yeah, yeah, it's like you know, I envy.
Your life without people being able to instantly access to you.
I've been thinking about this idea though. So I'm into Vinyl, as you know. I love to play music, and I love I love every I really love every kind of category. I'm trying to get all the other dads in my neighborhood we want to do a public arts project. We
want to I want to. I want to get them to raise I want to build like a Jamaican sound system with like wood, you know, wood speaker cabinets and just and and have it be able to just quickly load up into a van or out of a van and just play music around like the East Rock like New Hallville, like Westville neighborhoods and all around New Haven and just come and and play events of any kind, like play music of any kind, and and and be available for for sort of for free or for for hire.
And just oh that would be.
A you'd have to get on social media.
I'd have to get on social media to do that. I was just thinking that.
Yeah, I think that there needs to be I talked with Shane Bacon about this on a pod. There needs to be a music festival. Golf outing be great, Like find a golf course that routes really well where you could have like one or two stages and when you're on different parts of the course you hear different different music.
Well I have I have always said I tried to. I raised money from the new from the Study hotel developer. We were going to I think the third the Bowl, the natural Bowl that is the downslope of the fairway and right off the clubhouse. It's the perfect amphitheater for a music venue for an evening for like a for like a brass quintet or an orchestra or or a you know, a sound system or whatever it could be.
It's I'm telling you right there, you play at Twilight Round at Yale and then you come in and then they have a concert right there in the fairway where you you know, like with blankets and stuff and hear music as the as the sunsets. How good is that?
It would be awesome?
Yeah?
You know, I have on the record for saying I want to move so I can play Yale every day.
Nice we do and have a summer twilight concert series.
Yeah, this would be a cool event. What uh what is speaking of it? What's your what's your favorite stretch of holes at Yale? Like if you if you were going to just pick out like one eight, it's it's the best part.
There's a tree that needs to be removed. And I regret having to say this, but you know, we've the grill has to The best thing for the eighth and ninth holes is to remove the grill and relocate it somewhere between the the ten tea and the range, just kind of in that area. Service that kind of while
people are kindind of like in that section. And the eighth Green and Yelle is eighty yards long, and I think it's for the first forty yards it's a redan and for the next forty yards it's a reverse ver Dad.
It's actually when they when we eventually mow out the final high left corner and the back right and the front left, and there's going to be it's it's gonna almost there's gonna be a big high left and a big back left, a big high back left and a big low back right, and it's I don't know if they've ever built a double like a reversible double reversal overdad or whatever you want to call it.
Yeah, that green is absolutely nutty.
Two of the craziest bunkers.
Yeah, and then then need to have a beast Berretz And then you.
Know, it's a shame that I you know, we we have the pin. The majority of the time is in the first half of it. It's pace of play. It's just getting people through and the back is pretty steep and it's just hard and everyone hits it. They hitting some horrendous places, and so the majority of the time
it's in the front half. But like it's robbing the average visitor to Yale, like a really critical like three wood brass seat two wood, three wood, four wood like hybrid sort of shot that a lot of that doesn't know that that is already pretty rare on the golf course these days. And it's a shame because we really need to get all that turf improved, because the dimensions of the full back of the ninth Green are amazing and there'll be there will be flatter pins in the
back left, and it's it should be there. It should be there way more than it currently is. And because it's it's once, it's the wholes especial, especially once the wholes restored. That's one of the most incredible landland shots in golf. It's it's right there with five at Pine Valley. It's what name another Andy Utube? Tell me your short list of of great inland par threes in America, and within the first three you're probably naming five Pine Valley at nine.
At Yale, Yeah, sand Hills, Uh, seventeen, that's.
Come on, that's just a good hole. That's your average guard variety, just really good hole.
That that one that's a one hundred and thirty or part three. I played it like four or five times, and I ended up in the same place every time, even I hit some just great shots. That's just allowing natural elements to just kill people.
That hole is beauty of great your guard. That's a that's a you're great, that's a great like kind of lynxy par three hole that there's one hundred of those.
And scar it is it is a you're saying maybe unique is uh you could associate with that I would say, Uh, I got to think that you're putting me on the spot here. Yeah, well start, Yeah, I'm supposed to be asking the questions. You know.
Did ever tell you about the time my first time I ever interviewed a pro in my life. I was twenty two years old working for the Golfer magazine and I got to I was assigned to go interview a forty three year old Bernard Langer at the Rye Hilton while he was there for the Westchester Classic.
It's crazy.
I'm living at home in Southport, and I had you know, I left early for traffic on the Merit And even in spite of leaving an extra sort of thirty forty minutes, I was late. And I'm ready to meet Bernard Langer patiently waiting for me in the lobby of the Rye Hilton. I can't believe it. I'm late to an interview with a German Bernie. He's gracious, anyway, he's cool. We sit down, I start the tape. I'm using one of those old fashioned micro cassettes on a little little tape recorder. Just
and the interview begins, and I'm very interesting. Did in his sort of early days of the European Tour. I wanted to hear about when it was just sort of like the panhandle air of the late seventies and the early eighties, when they'd go out and measure courses themselves
with like the rolling wheel. Imagine that a tour player like marking the yardage of a course that he's playing in some European Tour event, and it's going great, and then it's going well enough that I was like, I was debating whether to ask him if I was about about his history of the Yips, and I felt like it reached a point where we should And he starts to answer, really and he gives this fabulously just smart and concise, you know, or smart answer, But and he
goes through, he spells the whole thing out and he's like, well, my first bout to the Yips was in nineteen seventy nine. And he lays out and I'm like, I'm realizing, like right around that time, like this has been about fifteen minutes. And I looked down on the cassette had stopped, and I had to stop Bernard Langer two thirds of the way through his history of the Yips to flip the tape and started so he could begin the ant, he could give me the whole answer again. He did it.
And then what was really cool about about you know? I was nineteen years later, so he was tremendously. I was grateful he was. He was tremendously. He was very gracious to me that day. Of course he could have he could have I was, he could have let me have it. Nineteen years later he came, I'm his son. Is is a sort of recruit eventually goes to Penn but he the son, comes on a visit with and he brings his family, brings his mom, dad, and his brother and sister, and dad is Gerrard Langer. It was
really cool. We spent a couple of hours walking around campus and I was able to thank him for the kindness he tended to me nineteen almost nineteen years earlier. It was really cool.
Full circle. So, uh, well, uh we're gonna wrap this up. Uh it might be might be a three part podcast. I don't know. I might have to just extend it out.
So give the people what they want.
I know, just that's the beauty, and then we'll have to do it. We'll do another one when the when the time's right and just talk about something else. You know, maybe we'll do one all about a project or something I want.
To do a I want to I want to make some lifestyle contributions to your website. It's just it's it's it's so one dimensional lead or two dimensionally uh PGA tour and just sort of nerdy architecture. You need some other keep killing you. You're killing me. I can't, I can't, I can't. I can't go through your website. I got to. You gotta have some more things about just aspects of style out there that are happening. You give it, give give those people some love.
You know, Hey, yeah, we're a well, we're a small team here at the Friday Egg. You know't gotta do what you do well, right. I don't want to go on going to areas that, you know, wade into different areas until you're read.
How this is? This is? This is how sad a commentary it is on on the value of sort of golf editorial. Is that in nineteen nineteen ninety eight, when I began at the Golfer working for a you know, a crook, I was getting paid three hundred dollars a week, I would. I would, I would, I would consider that. I'd be great. I'd be grateful for that from the Friday for you to be your as a weekly, uh your style editor at this twenty nearly twenty years later, so.
You be getting paid the big box around here with that. So all right, well, uh yeah, you can follow along with the with the Yale golf team and uh Colin. Colin will maybe get on Twitter or Instagram or something at some point, he's got to get one of his players on it.
Yeah, no, no, I'll be on it soon enough. I'll capitulate.
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