Welcome back to another edition of the Frida Egg Podcast. Today's episode is powered by tdum or Trade. Every stroke counts on the scorecard and every penny counts in the market. That's why tedomor Trade is committed to straightforward pricing with no surprises, so you're free to swing with confidence. Visit tedomritrade dot com. Slash frieda Egg member SIPC. We are back with another episode and today we are joined by
Craig Moore. He is the head of Grounds at Marquette Golf Club all the way up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Craig is a golf course, architecture, golf history nut and takes meticulous care of the courses up at Marquette. He has both a Golden Age design in the Langford Moreau nine Heritage course at Marquette as well as the modern Mike Devreese eighteen holes at Gray Walls. So Craig is deeply into our architecture and also maintains a course in one of the most one of the harshest and
shortest seasons in the United States. So we talk a little bit about architecture of the courses and the unique challenges that he has up in Marquette, Michigan. Enjoy the podcast. 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 arid egg Frida egg, the dreaded Frida, egg Frida, egg Frida, egg bride egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off the course. All right, all right, Craig, we're here in Marquette, Michigan.
What's silly?
Yeah, what's it like living here?
It's like a fantasy, man, I'll just be honest with you. It's it's crazy good. You know, you got the extreme of all four seasons. Summers. You can't beat it. If you like winter recreation, you cannot beat it. Because winter comes, we get snow and it stays. So yeah, it's like a fantasy for me.
How much snow and how cold are we talking? I mean, you're almost the northern tip of the continent, all you guys.
Sure, yeah, yeah, we're I mean we're the north coast of America up here, we like to call it. We get right right around two hundred and thirty inches here in the Marquette area. And so when it comes and when it's winter. It's here, but we do have the lake that kind of moderates the temperature so it doesn't get brutally brutally cold. We do some stretches, but nothing like like you see in the Dakotas or Minnesota.
So it's say it's an air conditioner in the summer. The lake Superior is an air conditioner in the summer and heater in the winter. Yeah.
Absolutely, so we'll get our we'll get our ninety degree days in the summer, but it's usually not all day long. We get a little push from the lake and boom back down to seventies. So it's a glory. It's a glorious thing.
So you've been at Gray Walls. You came here right at the construction start. So you in Marquette Golf Club's interesting. It's a unique situation where you're semi private model. You've got members, two golf courses, one modern one one classic. You kind of have all. You have a nine building the sixties, so you got you got every type of golf architecture. Here. Tell us about your life at Marquette Golf Club.
Well, it started out my wife's born race here in Marquette Okay, grew up in Lawa, Michigan, and my father in law has been a member here for god probably going on forty years now. And so my wife was on this property when she was younger. But I started dating here back at ninety nine two thousand, started really coming up here a lot and and playing the course,
and by then I had done the Kingsley Club. So I got to know Mike obviously real well, and we hit it off, and he'd do sit visits up here, and if I was up here, i'd go on the site visit with him. Got to meet Pete Schevratt, who was the previous superintendent and project manager for the Gray Walls course when we're building it, and you know, we just kind of really hit it off. So that kind of got me up here. My wife got in to get her PhD, so we had to leave for two years.
We went down to MSU, she completed that. Then the job opened, the head job opened up here, and this was after the construction everything. We left for a couple of years. So two thousand and six I got a call from Mike saying, Hey, I'm Pete's leaving. You'll probably get a call from somebody at the club here and lo and behold, Kenny Roushill gave me a call and
came out up for an interview. And it was one of those situations where I walked out the interview walking out and I'm like, well, yeah, I just I know it's a good fit, and I'm pretty sure they do too. And it was kind of an how we're never situation for me is like, either this is the time to come up and and be and be up here, or it wasn't gonna happen in this area. So went back talked to my wife. She was just done with the coursework, she could do her dissertation anywhere, and and we had
headed up here. So made the decision, came up. She's a professor here at Northern Now and so everything worked out really well.
You grew up golf family, you know, family of golf nuts, and when did you decide that you really wanted to do the turf.
So, yeah, my dad was one of the just a great animateur player, and he was one of the best in the state for many years, and so our summer vacation kind of revolved around his his golf schedule. We spent a lot of time on in Potaski Charlotoy area while he was playing the Michigan am was his big.
Things that Belvetere every year for a really long time.
Absolutely yeah, And so that kind of you know, playing the courses back down there, you know, and then going up there and walking around to watch him play. It was just like, wow, this is different, Like this is really cool, Like what's different about this? So that got me thinking about it. So then I just started reading
on it. And then everything I could read on on architecture what I just started picking up back then and reading, and uh, it was I went over to my parents, moved to Traverse City, and my brother, my older brother Chris, actually went to look for work for us for summer. He went over to this course called Mistwood, went over there. They were doing another nine. Okay, they had eighteen. They built another nine, and went over there and did the
construction on that nine. And I worked for Dan Lucas, who's currently at the Kingsley Club, did the Kingsley Club. And that's what got me hooked. Like right then, like that summer of construction, I was like, wow, this is really cool. And from then I just I just stayed focused and and I just you know kind of person where well that's what I'm gonna do. I'm just gonna go do it, you know. And so I just went
and did it. So I went to Michigan State and got the Crop and Soil Science degree and turf grass management and yeah, so.
That's that's where you met Mike was at kings.
Yeah, that's where I met Mike Deres at Kingsley Club.
That had to be a pretty cool experience bill that course.
It was awesome, awesome. Yeah, I was able to another young man but the name of Tim Hall came over from Manchester and so he joined our crew too, and him and I h a lot of handwork with with Mike on the golf course, so a lot of the finishing stuff. Mike was so hands on with that project. You know, everything got got a landscape break at the
end before we seedd it. So we would do all that finishing work with him and then him and I was pretty much seeded the place, so behind every all the other activity.
So and then you were part of this bill at gray Wallace.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
So when I came up here in three Pete who was here before me, became the project manager and it was just too much for him to even do anything on the heritage course, so brought me up. He said, here, take this over. When you get when the guys are gone,
come over here and give me a hand. So that's why I did, so, you know, running the h and then at the end of the day, I was just coming over here and whatever Pete needed, whoever Mike needed, I would just come over here, and you know we'd work till dark.
So but uh, I guess, you know, being part of two bills, it's like, how would you compare and contrast the two properties, and and you know with gray Walls, is I think like one of these experiences like completely different type of golf course than anywhere in America, but in Kingsley is also just this wonderful place. But like what what do you would you say are similarities and differences between the two projects.
Well that you saw, you know, similarities just the way Mike's Bills is greens for instance, you know, with favorable locations and maybe not so favorable locations. You just gotta really think when you're going into the into the green complex where you want to be. Okay, So and you got to think in your previous shot as well, like, where do you want to put on the fairway? Hey, you got a massive fairway, but guess what, you know,
you might want to be on the left side. You might not alway want to be on that right side, but you have to think about it you go around. So those are the similarities. There's a lot of banks and stuff you can work with, backstops that you can work with that maybe make some greens that are already big, even bigger than what they actually are because you do have those backstops.
So that's uh, the I mean the routing here at gray Wallace is I mean, it's just unbelievable that there's able to get a golf course. I mean, what were your first impressions when you came to this site?
That that yeah, that is that is good. So doing safe visits with Mike this is it was a heavily forested piece of property, okay, and that you wouldn't even know that a lot of these rock out crops existed because they were just you know, covered in trees, buried in trees. And so you're walking through these areas and we're wearing the orange vest, you know, and he's telling you how to stand here. So you can go up here, up there and laser back to your orange vest and
kind of get yardages. And yeah, it was just I'm coming across in these areas and just shaking my head in my mind. You know, I get a lot of agronomic thoughts going through my mind, like, how the hell are we gonna go grass here? You know, how the hell is this gonna happen? And uh, and Mike was persistent, Oh, it's gonna work, It's gonna work. It's gonna be so cool. And I mean we worked. It was just it's worked out.
But it took the routing here. He had to be I don't know how many hours might put in on it, but he had. He had just been a major head scratcher for him and he had a lot of holes out there that just didn't work out obviously to make
things connect and keep flowing. But the end routing, the end result is is awesome because not only the geology the topography we have with the hills and the rock, but we also have the gas line that runs through the property that you don't even know who they are and if you're a golfer, and then we also have the Oreana which which separates the prior to two courses, and so he had those two environmental restrictions to work with to route around as well, So it wasn't just the rock.
What and in terms of build obviously your season is very short here.
Yeah, what what.
Was the building construction process like with such a condensed time to get eighteen holes done? Did it take? Was it a year? Year and a half? Two years?
So that that was a big difference from the Kingsley Club. Okay, at Kingsley we were the construction crew. Like we you know, we did everything. I mean Dan ran heavy equipment. Mike was obviously on heavy equipment, which he was here too, but just not to the extent that he was in the Kingsy Club. So we had a company called Northern Clearing out of Northern Wisconsin that came and did the construction. So that was definitely different. And they cranked it out.
I mean two thousand and three was the big construction year, and those guys humped it. I mean they got her done. Treeworks started, you know, the previous years. It did some small blasting previous years, but that two thousand and three was the big year, and I mean we were mowing turf by the end of the year.
So talk tell us a little bit about, you know, the for people that haven't been to Gray Walls, tell us a little bit about the unique the kind of the landscape of the area and the golf course, how it kind of winds its way through the property.
Sure. So Marquette, Michigan sits on the southern tip of the Canadian Shield. Okay, so you got this huge, massive granite formation up in Canada, comes underneath Lake Superior, and then it kind of ends here in Marquette. So you exit Marquette, you get through the Market Mountain range, you get past the ski hill and just flattens out and
it's just sand. Okay, So we just have this wild, just bizarre terrain right here all right, and full of rockout crops Okay, very weathered rock out crops, but there the scale of them is is just amazing. When you do get into an open area and you see it, it just you're like, Wow, what the heck is that? Yeah, it's really cool.
So so you know, with this golf course, you've got to you know, you've got Marquette Golf Club and Gray Walls, which Marquette Golf Club the original nine was built by lang from a Row. Yes, and then David Gill came in and and built nine holes. You know, before you got here, what did you know about lang from a Row? And and you know, how is that you know kind of changed, you know and educated. Obviously there's some spectacular golf alls out there. And uh, a little bit about
how Langford Morreau got up here. I just asked you like seventeen questions.
Yeah, okay, yeah, I'll take that run.
So yeah.
So obviously Langford Merur the Chicago district. You know, they worked their way north, okay, and as they started getting into northern Wisconsin into the up it's things back then they did things different back then, you know, they didn't they couldn't just go to a bank and get a loan to the build a place. So they had the raise of funds to do it. So and then up in the in the north woods up here, there wasn't as much money, okay, so they would just start with
nine holes, all right. A lot of them never went back to the other nine. They just stayed nine holes. So so Langford and meryal so they might have designed drawn up eighteen, but they just it just didn't get done, okay, and then a lot of the clubs just kind of lost the history of it, you know, and just didn't even realize what they had, which happened here for many, many,
many years. So when Mike got on the scene, okay, then all of a sudden, you know, he's a big obviously a big golf architecture guy, history guy, I am as well, and so we started kind of just bringing that here to the club and getting these people to read it, okay, And they actually didn't even they didn't even know they had the original routing from lakerd Bureau for all eighteen up until gosh, it was probably two thousand and two thousand and one when when Ron Woitten
actually found a copy of it and brought to the club's attention. Now going back in the Minutes, the history of the Minutes and the club, they did actually find a small copy of that, but they just didn't realize they had it. So then they started recognizing, wholl you know, we do have something really cool here. And and so it's kind of been a pet project to mind because we don't have much money up here, you know, to
just kind of blow things up. We can just they're here for golf, they want to play golf, and then and then that's super cool, and and so we don't we don't want to disrupt that much either. So kind of a pet project to mind has been that there was original nine holes over over on the heritage course to kind of one. It was the green pads a trunk up like always happened. Okay, so you had all those laws lost, the greens pad, lost corridors on the green so rowing those out to approach height was huge.
So you can see the pad, okay, and now we're in the process that, yeah, let's start getting some out to green height so we can get those pins back. So we got one back to green's height. The restaurant just mode at least that approach height. So it's pretty cool. So we're doing some tree work, bringing back some shot options off some teas that we had lost, and there's
there's a little bit of bunker work. They didn't do a ton of changes, like I said, they never had a lot of money, but there is some changes in the bunkers and it wouldn't be real tough to bring it back. But it's just not a huge priority right now because you know, the focus is short of golf season.
Let's tea baby, Yeah, talk about the short I mean, it's a golf crazed community here. What type of volume are you doing on the on each course and over the course of what and what's your season?
Like we always we always joked that we always call it the factory. Its place is just the factory, man, because people are just rolling. They love their golf carts and they love just going. And we've had seasons upwards of fifty five thousand rounds on the two courses, which is insane you think about it. But that was a season where we actually got we got going in March, okay, and it was a long fall we got. They played
all the way till into November that year. Okay. It's usually right around forty five or so in the two courses, which is still a lot. Majority of that play now is on the Gray Walls Course, okay, just because we get a lot of outside play and so a lot of the out of towners obviously they come up here to play the Gray Walls course, and and so it's just not as much on the Heritage, but we still do get a lot of rounds on the Heritage it
seems like every year. It kind of we're kind of keeps building with that.
With that volume in the short season, you don't have a lot of time, you know, you can't afford a one week shut down to do a project. So like like you illuminated too, you don't have a huge budget here, No, not a big staff. You've got a small staff. How what are the ways that you've been kind of thrifty, innovative, creative and getting stuff done?
So yeah, so we have our total budget is right around seven hundred for thirty six holes. Okay, not a lot, And if you play this place, you'd think no way, you know, because it's I got a great crew and we're able to We're able to get a lot of stuff accomplished with with not a lot our shoulder seasons some years they don't exist, okay, And that's when clubs do work on golf courses in the shoulder seasons, and there's some years we just mow mosters. We just don't
have it. So that's why we can't do a lot of that stuff. You know, when the snow melts, they literally want the golf course open within a day or two. Okay, So we are grinding it to get it open for him, because we understand because we want to golf too, and we all love golf too, and we want to see it right behind them. So we're gonna get it done for him. And and then the same thing in the fall. I mean, they want to play right up to till when when when the snowflies. So so that's why a
lot of that stuff can't can't get done. And it's like saying the shortest seasons. We don't want to disrupt their season either with a lot of projects. So so the treework on the heritage course that we that we wanted to get done, we decided to do that this past winter. Okay, Well, how are we gonna pay for it? Okay? Because the stuff in the Heritage course was all handwork, and so now you know spinding, like, how can we
make this work? How can we make this work? So we had some lumber, some lumbered acreage over here in the Gray Walls course okay, And we were able to get a logger in and they were able to do a select cut through these areas okay, And we were able to make some coin on the on the lumber, which was awesome. So now we were able to take that those moneyes those dollars and pay for the work, the handwork, the head to get done on the heritage course.
And so it worked out. So that was one creative way that we were able to get get some treework done in the wintertime, which I'm telling you right now it wasn't easy. Trying to keep an ice rode open in the middle of a golf course up here in the wintertime was not easy. Is trying my patience. But we we I knew the importance of it. So we we beer downing and got her on that first location that we worked on.
Well, it's an interesting thing where you're kind of restoring a classic nine holes. Yeah, and you're working on this restoration work, but then you've also got this modern golf course where you're constantly you're trying to mature it. And we played this morning. You said, this place keeps getting better and better. What what type of things do you do?
How do you take a golf course? And we see so many what happened to your nine hole Langford Moreau where green shrink, it deteriorates after opening, and you see it so many places like I played a place a couple May last year, which hadn't been open that long, and you're like, God, you already are seeing what you see. You know, usually eighty years later you're starting to see the first effects. So how do you keep a golf course? You know, playing to the architects intent?
So I kind of have I kind of have the advantage because I know Mike so well, okay, and just building on the construction for two of his properties with him, you know, so I kind of I know what kind of what I know what Mike wants, okay, And we talk a lot, okay about stuff, especially when it comes up. We're constantly just talking about things on the golf course. Okay. So when you when you first when we first built the place, you just don't know how everything is gonna
happen on the golf course, okay. You don't know exactly how the ball is going to react okay in certain locations, and you just have to watch. Okay. I play a lot of golf, and I play got a lot of golf for a reason. I'm I consider myself a surface manager. Okay. We manage the surface for the game, okay, and that's
then that's my priority, okay. And to me, it's like the best way I do that is actually play okay, and watch people play and see where they end up okay, and see some frustrations and can you alleviate those frustrations okay. So on this on the Graywls property here, there's a lot of areas, some of the native areas okay, that maybe grew in some locations that maybe we shouldn't have had it okay, So we made some adjustments there okay. Or maybe we want it there, but it's just not
growing the way we want it, okay. So we go in and we manage it differently. We do a lot of flail mowing and cutting just to kind of knock it back. So if your ball does go in there, boom, you see it, you can go in there, get some iron on it, get it out, move on. You're still happy okay. And you're not in there, you know, on your hands and knees trying to find it okay. So we're always trying to look at those areas okay. And then the other part is trying to keep the forest back. Okay.
That's you want to keep these you want to keep these corridors open, okay. That the original quarters that Mike opened up for the golf course. And if you don't do anything, the saplings are going to grow in. Saplings turn into trees. You know, trees turn into a lousy golf course. So it's it's constantly fighting that back and managing those locations and keeping it open so people can see those rock features and can see that with you know, on the golf course and have that to work with.
Yeah, I imagine with like a forest, it's a living thing. So if you say, if you had to estimate, I never thought about this before, but if you just don't do anything, how much do you think a forest would encroach on a yearly basis, like a number of feet? Like I've talked to superintendents in the South that say, you know the Bermuda greens. If you don't, you know,
there's a natural creep that are shrinking the greens. But like with a with a with a forest, would you you know, would you lose a couple of feet every every year?
Yeah? Maybe more? Yeah, you don't even realize it is amazing. A lot of photos. I'd look back at a lot of my pictures and kind of see where the lines are and see, Okay, well, we got to get back to that line. Okay, we might have lost them. It had some sapling growth in there, and so we got to get back to that line just to keep that, keep that in place.
Yeah, what's you You talked a little bit about uh doing making a change to the golf course, Like is there a specific one that comes to mind like that after watching people play or playing yourself or you know, you got three boys that all play, so you play a ton with them. Yep.
Big one was the right of number one green. Okay, there was a native area that kind of pushed up on one green and that was a frustration points. If you missed that green, it rolled in there. Now you're hitting not only are you hitting on this trying to lob it up there, but you got to hit on this hay. So that that went by by, okay, And that was a that was a big move, right A. Number two was another really big one. You miss right on that fairways kind of kick right into the natural area, okay,
and it was just two thack and too nasty. And so we just had a completely you know, change the way we managed that area and now it's much much more playable. You just get in there whack your shadow. You're still kind of penalized for hitting it right, but there's you're not gonna have lost ball that you go in the woods and and you can just get in there and hit it out. So those are two big areas.
On the Marquette course. On the original the Langford you've done a ton of tree removal, like you were alluding to. And how how have you with membership fought you know, Oh, you're taking out trees. You're making this easier, or you're expanding the green there's more short grass, you're making this easier. Has that been a struggle?
No, it really hasn't. There's there's some that kind of ask what's going on and kind of question it, you know, and they might think it might get easier until they actually get out there and see it when it's all when it's all done. Also, you got this gorgeous so that you didn't even have before looking across from one fair to the other and they're like whoa, whoa, Okay, okay.
And as far as the greens, no, I mean it's they've pretty much embraced it now for the most part that that this is really cool and this is the way way it should be.
So I noticed the the greens played really on that on that golf course, they're really firm and and I'm guessing that when you got here with the trees and the shrunken greens, was it a softer fee.
It you know, I wouldn't say it was softer it was. It's still played really firm back over there. We've always had some uh, some water issues on this golf course. They the water supply some years isn't adequate to keep things nuclear green, which obviously we don't want to do,
but some places do. So they were never they never had the ability to do that, okay, And so that was actually a good thing because over time, you know, they they'd run out of water in the summer, they keep just enough to kind of get by with the greens and teas and so things weren't you know, overly over really done. So that was that was actually a good thing.
Yeah, what's what's been your process with getting reclaiming those greens, because you've done a ton of it, and I think there's so many golf courses that fight this problem with shrunk and greens, and what's worked really well for you? What maybe that you've done hasn't worked that well.
So I had I had a backup mower that I was able to dedicate to lowering these lonely these areas down, okay, lowering the height down because they were at two and a half inches, they were motor at rough height.
Okay. And also like what are we talking from, you know, say ten years ago till now? How much? How much? How much green surface are we talking about mowing out that you were missing on a lot.
Of these Oh geez, probably some of them. You know, if you had a let's say you had a five thousand square foot green, you know, you might hit four thousand square feet that was gone missing. It was rough mode is rough and some of those big, big lank for greens. So yeah, so there's a lot and so we took it at rough. I did a lot of airrifying, okay, a lot arifying trying to get some of that thatch out, and then a lot of vertical mowing okay, and then
slowly you was just bumping it down. And then every time I erified, I'd introduce some some bank grass in there as well to kind of get that growing, get that going, okay, and then it was just slowly lowered down a little extra fertility to keep it going. And uh yeah, and it probably took about it takes about a year, i'd say, to get it down to a pro tpe where it looks pretty good. And then from there it would take probably another good year to get
it down to Green's height where it looked good, played good. Yeah, and the density was up where we.
Wanted, and then the bent started to take out.
And the band would take over. Yeah, And you can see all those now you go out to twelve where we reclaimed, you can just see the bent lines that right on the edge of the collar from where I stopped seating.
Yes, it's incredible how how much it's it's got, you know, and it looks really great because you can see the whole contours now. Yeah, and it's you know, there's so many great pins that weren't.
There totally lost.
Yeah, it's it's remarkable, Like especially you see it on like you know, the back of twelve, you've got those that you know, has it do you is there any you know obviously like a big thing is irrigation always and you said I saw on twelve, like you've got the heads just in the green. It is what it is.
It is what it is.
Yeah.
Yeah, we're not going to change that until we replace the irrigation system. It doesn't matter at this point. You know, it's not worth the club's money to go in there and move those when they when it's no big deal, you know, not right now. You know, we'll get there when we do one day, when the irrigation is replaced, we'll move them to the edge. Yeah, but right now it's it's not worth it.
Yeah, because I feel like so many people would would say, like, you know what, we shouldn't do that because then we'll have this irrigation head. But it's like, you know, how many golfers is that going to affect?
Yeah? Not many. In fact, every every round of played there, which is a lot because my kids play out there a lot, I can count on one hand that I've actually just moved them all over just a little bit, just to put around the head.
Is that the local rule?
Yeah, just move it over a little bit. It's no big deal.
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takes over eventually. And one of the things I found most interesting at at gray Walls was when you were talking about your guys' choice with the grass, and it's a it's a hybrid where you have you have fescue, but ninety six what ninety eight percent of your rounds or cart maybe more. It's walkable golf course. I would recommend walking in, but you know, I thought I had it. You feel like you get a workout in and it's it's not that bad of a walk.
No tea green proximities right there, which for me, when you're looking at a place to walk, as long as you have that, I'm fine. I'll climb a mountain, I don't care. But as long as you know you got that, you're not walking long distances between the two holes, that's what gets me. Yeah, And and that's obviously when Mike crowded the place, he wasn't gonna let that happen. So but you have to going back to the grasses on
the fairway. So when we seated the Greywalls golf course, it was a mix of fine fascue and low o Kentucky blue grass. Okay, thought process there is Okay, we know these people love their golf carts, they love cartballing, Okay, and that's fine, that's cool. I mean, it's it's their course, you know. So we had to come up with a grass situations.
That rescue doesn't handle carts right.
No, no, not as well as other grass, not as well as the bank grass wood or not as well as like a blue grass wood. Okay, But we did not want to go with bank grass fairways here because the cost of going the cost of chemicals, and the the inputs it would need to keep it really really nice, Okay, especially in the winter time up here with the snowbold pressure that we get up here, that would be a matrix bends to just spray those all those fairways. So going in, what can we do?
Okay?
So we started looking at all the antap trials and looking at you know, all the data on the grasses. So so we came up we wanted to go with a fine fast U for the low input situation. Okay, Well, what can we add with it? Okay? Ryegrass doesn't do well up here? Okay, So well, let's go the bluegrass, which is awesome with traffic. Okay, So now you sit back and you look at look at the golf course. You can sit back in the fairways, you can look and you can see exactly where the high traffic areas
are because that's where the lowo Kentucky blue dominates the stand. Okay, all your larger open corridors where there's a lot of room that that's where the fine fester dominates the stand okay. And so it's really it's been really fun watching that evolve from the beginning and see and it's doing exactly what we wanted it to do. So it's performing perfectly.
It's amazing. And then like you've got your your cart boundaries where they can't go around the greens and around every green it's just pure fat everywhere. Yeah, it just reacts perfectly.
Yeah, it's so around the greens, you gotta high population will find fascue. And then a lot of the bank grass bleed off that came off the greens. So combination.
So I've gotten some messages people people say like, ah, courses like the greens just got me. What what do you? What is that a complaint that you hear a lot with it with you know, I think one of the things is understanding architecture is a huge benefit if you.
Play here, right, huge benefit. You have to think, Okay, people don't want to think. They want to play mindless golf in between chugging a beer. Okay, that's not this place, you got it. You gotta think, okay, and if you do that, that's fine, But don't get upset about the result. Okay. You just have to really think about, you know, not only the shot in the green, but maybe the shot before you where you want to be. You know, where you're going to get that best angle to get in
and have an opportunity to get on the putting surface. Okay, because there's a few that that'll they'll get you, you know, one in fourteen or two perfect examples. I mean, if you're if you don't execute that shot, I mean, you're the bunker list greens too, bunker list greens, but they can get you. And those are two that probably hear about the most.
So yeah, it's it's interesting, like playing today, perfect example was too. It's on this back to her and you're hitting over a ravine to get to it, and from the pharaoeh. I just hit it like twenty five yards left of the pen. It is magical and it almost went in. And it's you don't even have to take on the ravine that the greens sitting over over you don't don't ever even have to, but you just I think that's you have to look away so much. And it's the same way at Kingsley, where you have to
aim a way to hit it close. A lot of times.
Absolutely, the direct the best approach might not be the direct line to the pin. You know, you think about it, and it's just it. It might not be so because it's a very visually intimidate any place. Okay, both golf cours,
kings Leanne and grey Wolves are both visually intimidate. You get over that, you'll that's step one, okay, and then step two is get creative, you know, get creative, look at the landforms, okay, and maybe work with the land a little bit, you know, just don't try to tack the pin.
Mm hmm. It's it's it's neat. It's such a cool place. And I think like the more you play it, the
more you get it. That's the other thing is that that first time around is it's like you can get sensory overload from all that's happening, the rock out croppings, this unbelievable golf holes that you've never seen before, but understanding, like if you will allow yourself to have this open mind of like okay, maybe I should look five yards left of a flag, yeah, and see, Okay, I could play it over there and it's going to bank in.
But or if you're going around a second time, you'll start to pick up on it.
Yeah, And that's exactly what happened with with our membership too. Yeah. So our Women's Association, they first few years when after grey Walls open, they still held their league on the Heritage golf Course. Okay, after a couple of years of playing out here a little more, they're like, whoa, we like that, Like that's what we want every league night, and so they move their league right over here. And so they play over here now and it's been and
they love it. It's wonderful. We get loads of women that play out here and just have a fantastic time.
Oh, there's so many ways for for a low trajectory player to hit the ball close out here, Like every pin's accessible if you understand where to play it and use the contour. You never outside of six, the par three up the hill, like that might be the only shot you have to hit in the air. Yeah, you know everything else you can run up on the ground.
You can play the ground. Yeah, so you got you always have that. You've got that option. Okay, So there's there's always, there's always the And that's the thing I like about Mike and Mike's course hits, and I preach just everybody, what makes the best golf course is a golf course that provides lots of options. And the reason being for me, is because that opens windows for all the different kinds of golfers to enjoy that golf and
all the different kind of golf swings that are out there. Okay, not everybody hits the same damn shot.
Right.
Some people play left right, some people play right to left. Some people hit a low trajectory, some people hit a high trajectory. Okay. And the fact that he can build these places that kind of cater to all the different shot options or shot to I guess the way they hit the golf ball. You know, it's just it's amazing.
So you know, we're we're here to August. We're recording it. It's wonderful. It's like seventy five wonderful. Man, what's the what's the idea if say we're you know, somebody in the Midwest coming up here, and I think after spending time, like I think, I'm gonna try and come up every single summer the rest of my life or every year because it's a magical place. But what what is like an ideal trip to to Marcatta or the up like
I should should it be just you know, golf? Like what are the other things you should do?
Okay, so you come up here to play golf, which I highly highly encourage everybody to come up and play because it's so cool. Don't just come up here to golf, though, absolutely do not just come up here to golf. Spend some time. Munising's forty five minutes away. We have pictured rocks. Okay, the other side amusing. You've got Grand Murray and the Grand's Apple Dunes, which are just mind blowing. It's two hundred foot drop of just sand down to Lake Superior
that you can you can walk down. It's crazy. The waterfalls all over the place. There's little mini hikes all around Marquette that you can just go on. You walk up Sugar Loaf, you can walk up hogs Back, presqu Isle right here in the city park here Marquette is mind blowing and you get out there and it's just it's it's so beautiful. This little peninsula out in the lake. It's got rock out crops that you can jump off into lake. You can go swim, and there's there's there's
some rocky beaches or sandy beaches, and it's it's really neat. There's. The other thing is is biking is huge up here. So if you're into single track riding, you know, with mountain bikes, you can ride the roads too. There's really good trails for road biking. But the mountain biking up here insane. It is so good, so good.
And good breweries and good breweries.
Yes, shout out to Black Rocks or Doc.
Yeah.
Absolutely, you can go down to Vierling they've been here a little longer than the others and get a blueberry beer if you want. The blueberries are locally grown here. But yeah, it's great beer. Absolutely. It comes from great water. You know, it's Lake Superior.
That's what they say. Superior water, superior water.
Man's that's why it's superior beer.
I had never seen anything like like superior. My wife and I pointed on a hike yesterday and it was unbelievable. You get we got to this beach. We hiked, you know, three miles to this beach and I mean, the clearest water I've ever ever seen in the sandiest beach, no rocks anywhere. Like we were talking, I was like, I mean, do you remember and you know the Caribbean ever seeing and she's like, no, nothing like this, Like it's it's absolutely unbelievable.
Yeah, we're so. You think about the whole shore of Lake Superior and you think rock, Okay, rock, it's a very rocky place because it's kind of engulfed in the Canadian Shield. But here from Marquette Dimunising, we're blessed with beautiful sand beaches and uh yeah, it's it's rare to find then the rest of the shoreline.
So when when's the best time for golf if somebody's coming to golf.
Well, all summer. Really it's a dynamite. June, July, August, September. It is unreal to me. My favorite month is September, that's my favorite month up here. Got cooler nights. And then you start getting into the color change with the trees, and that's that adds a whole new element to this property. When those leaves change. Holy cow, it's going from the third week of September into you know, first couple of weeks of October. It's just absolute beauty.
Yeah, it's a it's a special place. So we'll get you out of here on the last one. You know, Langford Moreau. When you get that fully like you've played how many other you've played Lasnia.
Sonzaki, Iron River, and then just just reading everything about you know, Langford Morrow and and and every picture.
You got to talk about your discovery. Yeah, yeah, tell us a little bit about it. So it's funny. I was telling Craig. I was like, oh, I got this Langford book, this really cool Langor book that somebody sent me. Uh, I gotta send it to you and and uh and sure enough tell us about it.
So yeah, so started getting the club really really into uh Langford Moreau. The Green Committee, you know, really getting into it. And and one where Green Committee members John Bordo came across this document that that Langford Moreau had had or Langford wrote on a short short document like sixteen pages or something like that, and there was only one copy of it, and it was down in the
ms U archive, okay, down in Michigan State. Well it was a really it was really rough shape and it was like in a safe and they wouldn't let anybody touch it. And at the time, my wife was PhD studing. So then I'm mag I got I gotta I gotta have that. I gotta see that. So she kind of looked into it.
And what was your wife saying saying to you when you were trying to course her, Go guy, then this is safe.
She she thinks I'm a lunatic. Okay, she thinks I'm looney because I talk about this stuff and that's like what I do, Like I I can't stop, you know, I'm addicted to like continue to like reading it on the subject. And she thinks I'm nuts. And so you got to get this for me, like I got to see it, like John found it. It's down there. I know you can get access to it. And so she went and talked to the library and that was in charge there, and they were like, no, no, we can't.
It's it's in too bad a shape. We can't we can't touch that. And she's like, no, no, you don't understand. My husband needs this. He keeps bugging me, like I want to get this for him. So at the end of the day she was able to convince them to pull it out and make photos copies of it. She
wasn't allowed to touch it. They could touch it, but they made photo copies and she brought it back and and I was like, oh god, just one of the but Jillian Readons is why I love that woman, Okay, And so she got she got it for me, and so then yeah, I get mug at copy and then we just started getting around and it's great. I mean, it's awesome. I'm so glad that that people do have copies of it and it's kind of going around and people see it because there's not enough really knowing about
Langford Morrow. I mean, there's just not enough. There's not as much talk. You know, it's you hear everything about Ross and and Mackenzie and and you know Cold Nelson, and you know, you just don't hear as much about Langford Morrow.
I think so much of it is where they did their work, you know, so much of it. Like you know, there aren't a lot of people that have been to Marquette and you know, Losnias.
My little Sony is like in my top five. Absolutely.
Yeah, this place is unbelievable, but it's remote. It's hard to go get to. I was a guy I know, he was texting me who's like a very well traveled uh architecture not you know, right stuff, And he was texting me he was at Lostonia earlier this summer. He's like, this splace is absolutely unbelievable. Yeah, and it's like that's it's a scale.
The scale of that place. It's so massive and open, and so you just see the vista across the golf course and it's just like, oh my gosh.
And the greens there are amazing. But part of me like looking at the greens that you have here, I mean there they there are some better greens here than they got at Lastonia.
Yeah. But by the time I retire up here, I hope to have it all back. Yeah, the Langford greens back.
So the Langford is intermixed in the course. Has there ever been talk about about putting it back as a standalone nine.
Just nine to nine. Yeah, I've talked about it. I've never really pushed it, but I actually kind of made a little scorecard one day on it and showed how it could work. But yeah, it hasn't past that though.
It would be neat if they did that. It would It's like, yeah, it's you know, that's the way it was designed.
Yeah, exactly. Then that's why they played it for forty years.
And it's got a cadence and a flow and it walks. That's that's something you start to think about, and it's really evident. Here is like the idea of walking the property, you know, where the routing's kind of naturally how you walk a property and how you would go up like you know, and and here's you know that it embodies it well, like it would be the natural way you'd
walk that property. The Langford nine, Yeah, where you kind of walk out and you'd be like, oh, then you come and you kind of zig zag over towards the other edge and it's interesting.
Yeah, and even the one hole you kind of gotta jet back just a little bit, but you just drop your bag off halfway there, you know, because it's part three. So hopefully you're on the green. You just grab your butter walk up there and you kind of walk back. So yeah, you know it flows really really well the original ninth.
Yeah, yeah, that'll be special and you get all the greens back and yeah, it'll be a.
Little slow process. Up her baby steps up patience.
That's right, man, you got all winter to think about it and read more about it, and yeah, yeah, how fired up are you when it like when the snow melts in it? You got your first day?
Oh god, I'm so excited. Man, I just want to like I just everybody says, oh, he's got a lot of pressure, get open. I'm like, there's the pressure I get from them is nothing compared to when I'm putting on myself to get this place open because I want to see it. Man, let's go always go time. You know, we got to get this stuff done. Let's he gets gets placed cleaned up. Let's play.
Yeah. What kind of stuff do you do all winter?
Well, so all winter long, a lot of preparation. So the equipment prep okay, because because when the snow does melt, we get out there, I want everything ready. I don't want to be working on equipment. It's I want it done all of it. So we're our one hundred percent focus is on the playing services, getting cleaned up, getting prepped, getting ready for for golf. So that's a big part of planning. Okay, we don't have a general manager at
the club. It's myself and and our head professional Mark Gilmore, and our clubhouse manager Maggie, and there's an office manager Bev. Between the four of us. I mean, we operate the club for the for board of directors, and so we have to do a lot of that obviously, that work that end and so budget, budget work, you know, planning work, just setting everything up for the year because it's a madhouse one of the years here. Okay, we don't have time to mess out around a lot of that stuff.
So the planning is key going into the season and having a dial. And then on the flip side, said, I have three boys. They're big into hockey, so I spend a lot of time in a hockey rink in the wintertime.
So it's a good place for hockey.
It is a good place for hockey. Snowshoeing too. I'm a big snowshoes so and I snowshoe the property two or three days a week. Just checking on it makes things sure, things are good, checking for ice snow, you know, digging down while I still can't. Then it builds up until point where it's it's hard to dig down, can't really get to the bottom of a.
Yeah, ice damage your biggest kind of fear on the golf course.
It is it is, and that if and that will occur if we get if we get a meltdown or a rain event or something in December, that's when I worry, okay, because then at that point it can take out a lot of the a lot of the bank grass as well. If we later on the year and we'll get some ice that say we uh lately late season, I don't worry about too much because it might just take out some pole, which is fine. I'm good with that.
So what do you have to do? You cover your greens or anything, or with sand.
I bury them in sand, bury them in sand and molrganite, and the morganite helps them melt off in the spring. It does really really well, kind of gets up in there. So it's on human poop, yes, yeah, composted human waste. Great product, great product.
I gotta get something from my own yard. You do. Yeah.
Absolutely, it works wonderful for the homeowner.
Yeah yeah, all right, So you gotta go. You got you got your boys in a golf tournament today, so we we gotta get cut you Lucy, you can go wash and play. So thanks so much for coming on. I hope a bunch of people come visit you in the next few months and then next year.
Absolutely, come on up. We welcome you with open arms up here. You'll have a great time.
So