Welcome back to another edition of the Frida Egg Podcast. Today, I'm excited to welcome on Curtis James. Curtis is the head superintendent at the Old Elm Club in Chicago, one of the premier golf courses in the country and the Chicago area definitely one of the least known great courses in this country. It's a Harry Colt Donald Ross design and Curtis has been an influential force in the Chicago
superintendent industry. He is credited by his peers largely for kind of changing the tides of how courses are maintained in the area. So he's done a great job at Old Elm kind of changing the culture and the conditioning of the club and making it one of the premier courses in the country. So, without further ado, here is Curtis James.
I miss the 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 bright egg Frida Egg, the dreaded Frida Egg, Frida Egg Egg.
Brid Egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the.
Brian Moore was on this pod and uh, he told me he told us like the pet peeve. His pet peeve was people that dropped the flag, you know, from like they don't place it down. He's like, you could, you could just place it down. You know. We spent a lot of time. And it's funny because, like I had, like probably a dozen or two dozen people tell me that they listen to that, and they've like it's completely changed the way they put the flag down.
Oh I see yeah, yeah on the greens, yeah, taking the flag out. Yeah, and the people just you know what my pet peeve is people that pull the ball out with their putter or their wedge out of the cup. Drives me crazy. I'm like, what are you doing? They just mangle the cup, but they'll pick it out with their putter, or they'll pick it out with a wedge if they chipped it close, or you know, it's I just think, what are you doing.
It's funny because golfers complain about the cup so much.
Yeah, and they don't even know what they're talking about.
They're like, it's crowned. You know, that's why I didn't go in. This guy cut the cup wrong.
Oh yeah.
But then they're so quick to wedge or putter remove it.
Yeah, and then they don't fix their ball marks either. You got that.
How do you feel about the end of the putter device?
Oh, you got to be one hundred to be able to have that. You got to hit the century mark. If you got the little suction cup on the end of the putter, it's got to be you gotta be ninety plus.
It's better than the all it's better.
It's better than sticking the end of the putter itself and chopping up the cup that's apparently crown because he missed his putt. You know, it's my fault. It's always our fault.
Yeah, that's what.
I don't ever understand. You have golf professionals. They never blame the golf professional for shooting a hundred. It's always the superintendent's fault. But the golf pro give the guy less than ten times, he won't get any better. So how could it possibly be the superintendent's fault. I don't ever get it. I'm like, go into golf shop and try to get your game better, learn some new shots.
It's uh, they got golfers. Golfers always have to blame somebody, So it's the hardest thing in the world. Is playing the finger at yourself. So how'd you get into turf? When did you know that you wanted to have, you know, kind of work at a golf course.
I grew up in a very small town of three thousand people in central Ohio, but we had two public golf courses, believe it or not, and I decided to between eighth grade and ninth grade join the high school golf team. And part of the deal was you to practice golf at one of the courses is you had to work twenty or forty hours for the guy that owned a golf course. So I started doing that and the owner needed some extra help, so he kept me on for the summer as a job. I think it
was three dollars an hour. But you got all the golf you wanted to play in carts and hot dogs, pepsi that you could have in the shop there.
It's a smart business. And then we.
Wait nightwater like everybody's always said, oh have you ever nightwatered? And you go out and put the quick couplers in and running on the fairways and you'd be up all night. And then you go cut greens in the morning with a triplex and cupcutter and national to tease and that's how I got started and just really enjoyed being outside more than anything and thought that was the way all golf course jobs were. It was the best job I
ever had. Little did I know that would be my funnest job, and then it all go downhill after that you had to get serious and really work.
So I think back to cadding. I like a lot of times, I'm always like, God, I wish I could just go back to when I just caddied. You know, you wake up, I know responsibility.
I tell people that story and I'm like, that was the best job I ever had. Was between fourteen and eighteen years old working at Wyandot Golf Course and Center, go Ohio night water and then we would work from like six thirty in the morning till twelve thirty, and then we'd play in all the pot games because there was a lot of golf. It was a popular golf course, and I just thought that was the greatest thing since
slice spread. And little did I you know, at the time, I thought, oh man, I could do this the rest of my life, just work at work at wyan Dot. But then I went to school and moved around quite a bit and learned that the Wyandot days were over and if you wanted to, you know, do well or make any money at the business, you had to you had to get kind of serious and took a lot of the fun.
You know.
I never played golf after that. Really, those were the last days of my golf for the most part, you know, because just never had time play golf once you got started doing all the other stuff.
So you go to school, and then where'd you get kind of your start in the golf industry from, you know, a turf side.
Post graduation, I was going to school at the two year program ati a high state and I started an internship at Chagrin Valley Country Club in Cleveland. And Joe Volk at the time, who was a longtime superintendent there, just retired a couple of years ago. He kind of took me under his wing, and I did my internship and he liked my work ethic and invited me back
to being an assistant. So, you know, I graduated school and I had an assistant's job, and I liked living in Cleveland, so I went back and I worked there for three or four years, and we never had an employees, so you really, you know, you worked all the time, and you learned how to work. And it was a nice, you know, middle of the road country club, and he taught you how to stretch a dollar. You know, we never had you know, it wasn't a big budget club, but we did a lot ourselves, and you know, he
really taught me how to work. And then then I ended up moving out of there to bell Air and working for Brian Sullivan, and I really, you know, we did a lot of construction. That's when I really started getting going in my career. Was that was the game changer, moving out to California and working for him.
I imagine working at a club with a lower budget. When you move up into like a into a bell Air where the budget's so much bigger, it's like a shock. But also that upbringing of a small budget has to help so much.
Yeah, I think, you know, that was some of the greatest things I had, was, you know, being at a public course. I did a growing in high school at Beaver Creek. It was a city course. I worked at another little mom and pops kind of little country club in Gehanna one season there in high school, and and they you know, we had a budget. It was a private club, but we had a budget of three hundred thousand dollars. So you know, you spray hawk the greens
by yourself. You know, you drove the tractor and you you were your own hose guy, and you just learned how to make it work on nothing. And then when you get to a club that has the resources, you understand how important it is, even though you have the money, is to still spend it wisely and still stretch it to get twice as much done, even at a big club. And you know, it's not like you got a free pass here and we're going to give you all this money. You know, hire it out right. We still would do
a lot of the stuff ourselves. Even at bel Air we were we would strip and prep and lay all the fairways ourself. You know, we never contracted anything out, but we had the money to do it. But we just think all superintendents feel a responsibility to try to you know, be you know, pretend it's their own money and be a good steward of the club's money and try to stretch as I think that's just you know,
we're dirt farmers and that's ingrained in US. You know, is doesn't matter if you have three hundred thousand or three million. You're going to spend that money the same and get as much as you possibly can out of it. Now, it's it's nice, don't get me wrong. It's nice to have those extra funds in case you make mistakes and everything. When you're at those smaller ones, you really can't afford to make any of those kind of mistakes, can't afford to go out and spray and then it rains an
hour later. You know, you have that happen to you when you're at a big club and how we got to get to spray out and then it rains or like I just wasted you know, five grand, and it doesn't bother you near as much as when you're at those kind of smaller clubs. But I think, all in all, no matter where you're at, you're going to take that money and try to get as much out of it as you can, even though you might have a surplus of it, you know what I mean.
So at bell Air you were doing a lot of construction and just knowing you from getting to know you here, I can tell that working and doing projects on a golf course is a passion of yours, Like the thing you love most is that where you kind of developed that passion and love for the construction and the project work at a golf course.
Yeah, I mean I was young there. I mean I think I was twenty two years old, and Brian Sullivan did a great job of just opening your eyes and taking the blinders off and letting you see the big picture. There was so much more than just cutting grass and how to organize trucks, and especially at a place like bell Air, it's very difficult with all the neighbors and the small roads, and he just really had to be on your a game to get things done there. And he know, he gave me enough rope to to go
out and pretty much run the things by yourself. And you know, he let you make mistakes, but he was he was just really he was the guy that that you know, Joe taught me how to work, but Brian taught me how to think outside the box. And and
he's the one that really changed my life. That move changed my life, and that's when I decided that was really that kind of level of maintaining turf and doring projects and everything that was something that I really enjoyed, and he let me, you know, to his credit, he let he let his assistance do a lot of it. And he you know, he watched us, but he lets you cut your teeth and make mistakes and and he
was hard on us, but he was always fair. And that was kind of what my you know, all the guys I've worked for, you try to take the best that you know from each one of them, put together in your own recipe. But that always you know, tough but fair Mentality's kind of always been pretty good for me.
And work for me with my guys is you know, I'll push them to the limit, but I'll be the first one to thank them and say good job, and you know, take them to lunch or whatever to you know, you know, give them, give them a half day off or working hard that week. You know, just yeah, just take care of your people.
You know.
He always he always gave us, you know, working in California, work three hundred and sixty five days a year, so he'd always give us a day and a half two days off every week. Man mandated it. And that's where I also started to you know, work for several guys where you work, you know, ninety days in a row without a day off, and you just you start making mistakes.
It isn't that you can't do it, but you just get tired and you start making mistakes and learning from Brian, I always try to get my guys, you know, every other weekend off. I got twelve good days of you that you're going to work, you know a lot. But that break they get and then they come back, they're just that much better and then they don't make mistakes. You know.
Yeah, I imagine managing people as like a big part of the superintendent. Like, as you grow and you get more responsibility, that's probably one of the toughest things to you know, adjust and learn.
Right, Yeah, for sure. I mean because you just in our profession, there's just such a variety of different types of cultures and people that work for you. You know, you have you have retired guys, you have Hispanic Dominican, you know, Cubans, whatever, you get some of that workforce. You have young kids out of high school or you know, college kids, and you know, you have you just have a variety of
people from all different places. So each person is totally different and you got to learn them and you know, you got to know what they do good, and you try to put them together with the right people to get the job done. So managing people and motivating them. You know, we're not everybody likes to work outside, but we're not a you know, a high paying for a guy that just goes out and cuts screens. It's it's not something you're gonna You're not gonna get wealthy off of.
So you gotta find ways to keep the guys interested, motivated and uh and I think giving them some time off and and trying to be a human being to them and and managing them as a person instead of as a labor is a way that we have been able to keep guys coming back year in and year out and then try to get these young interns to get motivated and move on. And so we've been pretty
successful with that, you know. Then and but uh, yeah, I mean Brian was really the one that got me out there, and then I got a chance he let me go and do the UH. I was a construction superintendent for year out in Palm Desert, Palm Springs, but I also came back and built the UH with Peerless Golf, built the practice facility at Bel air. That was my
first big project as a construction superintendent. So you know, I got I got the best of both worlds out there, the agronomy, doing a doing a big old course like that, restoring, and then also taking a hiatus and being a construction superintendent and and growing in golf courses from start to finish and doing practice facilities and bunker work, and so it really rounded out my resume at a young age is you know, learned how to grow grass, but also
learned how to build USGA greens and bunkers and teas and and do it the right way too. It was lucky to work with some really good shapers and and guys that were with landscapes unlimited for a long time that just broke off and had a little niche down there in Palm Springs. So you know that that rounded me out to to kind of have that passion to
do that stuff. And I just always thought, you know, I think my guys they like a change of pace, and mow and greens and projects is a way for them to you know, you want to keep them motivated. It's given them something else to do than mow and greens every day.
Yes, it's like just changing up some mono any change, you know exactly, and it's exciting and it's stuff that you can see, like as opposed to just cutting grass, Like I imagine you cut the grass and you can see it's shorter. But seeing the work day and day out and feeling the impact of like adding a bunker or something like that, there's there's more of a sense of accomplishment.
Yeah, it's it's a it's a visual gratification. You know, it's esthetically pleasing and gratifying when you build a bunker or you change a hole or you you know, you redo greens or whatever. You can see all that and you know, planning shrubs and doing the landscape around the clubhouse. These guys like that because they see it, you know that, Hey I did that, you know, And and that's cool for these guys to feel that because cutting you know,
you can cut straight lines, but who cares about that? Yeah, I just want the grass cut. I don't care if they cut it in a circle, you know, just get it done. And these guys don't. These guys, you know, they'll they'll be like, well, I cut the straightest lines, but that doesn't do something like redoing twelve green and sidding it from your own nursery that you grew the
whole summer. And you go and you cut the side, you haul it over there, you lay it, you level it out, you do all that stuff, and then you come back in a couple of months you're like, man, that green's you know, they that's stuff. My guys take a lot of pride and that, and they enjoy doing projects. You know, they know they're in for It's hard, it takes the hours, but they're always is a change of pace, and I think that's part of the way we've been able to keep them motivated too, and not you know,
get that monotony boredom of maintaining grass. It's like verification. It's pain in it's pain in the rear, but you know what, it's a change. You know, Hey, let's go Swiss cheese this place, and Okay, we don't have to cut today. You know, It's just it seems to kind of work that way.
So after bell Air, you went to Wingfoot.
Then after bell Air, I spent a year with Peerless Golf. Like I said, we did the range at bell Air and then we did Lakita Country Club and some work at Traditions and the Reserve and Vintage Club down there in Palm Springs. And I love the construction, but I
hated the traveling all over the place. And Brian actually had called me, and you know, Brian had interviewed for Wingfoot, and we thought we were going to go to Wingfoot and and then mister Latshaw got the Paul got the job at Wingfoot and Paul was out at Riviera at the time. So Brian and Paul had a you know relationship, and he had called Brian and said, you know, I need some guys up at Wingfoot. And Brian called me, He's like, you gotta yata go work for Paul up
at Wingfoot. And so I did, you know, I packed up and it was closer to home. You know, my family's still based in Central Ohio. It's kind of tough out to talk about.
Uh So you go Central Ohio to Los Angeles, Yeah, to Springs, yeap, to New.
York, Maronick to Mamernick, New York, not knowing what the hell I'm getting into. So I went and worked, you know, and and you know, I had you knew what Paul was. You know, he was probably one of the more respected guys in the business at the time, well known, and I you know, I didn't even see the place. I just over the phone kind of told him I'm coming,
I'll be there, you know, I'll do it. And shit, boy, I tell you, not that I don't love the course or anything, but it's just a hard area to live up there if you don't make any you know, we didn't make any money. I mean, we couple of us got an old, one hundred year old house the upstairs, you know, and split it. And it was expensive. I mean, we didn't have any money.
You know.
We we ate hot dogs and drink Budweiser. That was our big dinner, you know. I mean we scrounged some change left after rent and we worked a hundred hours a week there. I mean, it was it was like robots. You know. You got up at four and you got the spray hawks out and you sprayed all the time.
I mean, it was crazy. And there was a union crew there, and that was difficult cause you know, there was eight or ten of us AI ts and assistants and interns that would do all the walking and raking of the bunkers while the union crew just set they didn't do anything except a writing job. And that's the way it was, you know. And we accepted that. And you either either bitch about it or you use it
as motivation. And I took that as say, I'm not going to let those guys get me down and try to motivate the other guys that were We were all in this business to move on, you know. And I mean we cut a couple thousand trees down ground, all the stumps ourselves. I mean there was a pile of mault so high at Wingfoot that it about catch on fire. We had to put a sprinkler on it. And you know, it was just crazy there. It was the preparation to
get it ready for the amateur and the open. And there was good ten guys that put in a lot of time of sweat equity there that you'll never forget, you know, we'll never forget that. We called it the foot.
It was.
There was no fun about it, but we're all better for it.
You know what. How what years were you there for?
Just I was just there a year two thousand to two thousand and one, and Paul had come to me and there was some opportunities in New York there for superintendent's jobs. Or he said, you'd go back home to Cleveland if you want and work for Matt Shaeffert Country. He's looking for a guy. And I had talked to Matt along the way, met Matt through a friend of mine, and and you know the opportunity to get back to Ohio and be close to my family, and that that
really tripped my trigger. And I was still young at the time, you know, I was still only like twenty four years old, but I had been to California, New York, Palm Springs. He could, you know, pretty good resume, getting started, a couple of good clubs.
Think about the architectural lineage. You had a Thomas, you had a tilling Hast and then Country to Flynn.
Yeah.
So, se, how did you you know, start to get into architecture and start to you know, understand how to get you know, maintenance and construction, and but then you know the kind of the those are so hingeent on, you know, architecture being alive.
Yeah. I think at my stage at my career back then in the late nineties, early two thousands, like I look at all these younger guys that are soups now there's so much in tune to the architecture then My generation was at our you know. Yeah, I think I know a lot now about because where I've worked and I've engulfed myself into it because it's just something I enjoy.
But I could you know, like you talk about Brian Moore and Brian Palmer, Scott Bordner, all these younger guys that are they just that worked at started off at great clubs, you know, across across the country. You know, Drew Barnett, you know, these guys worked at great clubs where they were restoring all these historical architecture and everything back. So I think this generation is a lot more in tune than what might. You know, we were still kind
of like maintained the grass. Okay, this is the architect You're gonna have Tom Fozzio come in and fix the golf course up.
Yeah, you know, and it was much more of like a greenness.
It wasn't It wasn't a golden age of architecture by any means. There wasn't the gil Hans, Tom Doaks. They were just they were just learning under Pete Dye and there wasn't anybody back then that was doing that rugged. You know, when I was at Beller, I met Kyle Phillips and he was the first one and he was doing Kings Barnes and he was the first one that I met that really had that kind of rugged, natural mindset.
The lay of the land put in. Not to say that that Tom Fozzio didn't do a great job at bell Air at the time, but it was more of a more of a green and possibly prettier golf courses at the time. So my experience, you know, when I went to Wingfoot, I knew Wingfoot was pretty special because I had played a lot of golf and it was a hard golf course. You know, those greed complexes are diabolical, so I but I never got to you know, I played twice when I was there in a year because
we just never had the opportunity. We worked those guys, you know those and that that's the guys I'd worked for. They never let you hardly play. How Brian liked to play and he would encourage you to play, but Paul wasn't going to let you play.
You know.
And uh so when I went back to Country, you know, I think Matt was Matt Schaeffer was one that was okay. You know, he was a trailblazer for down and Brown. You know, try to push that plant right on the edge, and we killed a lot of grass. I mean, I'm not gonna you know, he'll say the same thing. And Matt was good because he let you push it and you screw up and you have to go fix it. You have to go plug some parts of the greens.
And but man, he just never let your water and he had I think he had the grasp on the cultural part of it is the way that a hundred years ago, the Golden Age architecture of the Flynns and and all those guys, the Thomas's and McKenzie and Colt whatever you want to say, those guys wanted it hard and fast and just play the ground game. Because like you said, you had the hickory clubs, you had the you know, the balls that didn't go very far, and
you played the ground game. It's just that much better. And that's the way they designed the golf courses.
You know.
It wasn't fly it to the green and hit it as far as you can.
What's ironic is it's that game is now like the Lady and senior player game, whereas the lower trajectory players play the game that was like the great Golden Age players.
Game, absolutely, you know. And so when I went to Country and it was a William Flynn and and it was good. It was good. It wasn't something that you're going to walk and remember every hole, you know. And I'm working for Matt for a couple of years there, and he came to me and said, you got a decision making. You can go to Marion or you can stay at Country. And he said, you know, once you have the opportunity to go to Marion with me. And when he got the Marion job, he's like, you know,
he knew I was. You know, I was really starting to get into the architecture kind of with him because just the way he maintained a course, I started understanding why the architects did what they did. And it's from a cultural program too.
You know.
You could have the greatest Old School goal, of course, and if it's wet and soft, it doesn't do it justice. So when I got to Mary, and that's when I was just like, holy cow, you know. I I walked that place the first time and and I was just like, now, this is this is architecture, you know, even though Bella. And when I went out to bell Air and I got it and I did my interview, I was like, well, man,
I've never seen a place like this. You know, bell Air was breathtaking, and uh, you know, it just had so much character. I still do this day. Out all the places I've worked at, it's it's right up there with number one that I worked at, because it just had so much uniqueness and character and how he routed it through the canyons and it was genius, you know. And and that's why, you know, bell Air is really special. And when I got to Marion, it was just it's
just pure golf, you know. Not the member were all about the club. You got the wickers got you got the you know, the white faces of Marion. You know. Man, I got there and we just we kind of did all the grass ligns and kind of let the fescue
and whatever. Kentucky thirty one grow, you know, just had the guns rough, you know, and we gave you know, just with those grass lignes, we made the golf course just a totally different and then we turned the water off and it was brown and rolling and fast, and then if you really hit a bad shot, you were penalized.
To me, it seems like, and I don't want this to sound like a stereotype, but so many supers get hung up like their job is to grow grass and because of that, they're very cautious with the grass, with the watering and you know, making sure it's lush, rather than going the other end of the spectrum and pushing it a little to get the plane. Could you know, where's the how do you come up with the kind of line?
Yeah, the happy median line. So you're talking about, you know, it's a lot of it has to do with your board and your membership. You know, some clubs and boards and membership, that's what they want, and as a superintendent you kind of got to give them that. But sometimes if you break the mold and go into a club and say let me let me try this, you know, let me let me show you what I can do what I think, you know, you're gonna get more role. You're gonna have a lot more different shot values by
just drying up the place. And I'm not saying kill the place. You don't have to kill the place. I mean there's there's certain times a year where you can get away with a lot more than you know, like like right now, you know, you get you get in the end of August September, you can ride a little bit harder, and you know, the nights get cooler and you can come you know, you play the weather. You know, mother nature has a big part in how your conditioning
a golf course. And you got micro environments on the golf course and all that there. You know, there's a fine line that and I think I think guys like yourself and people that are into golf that are in the supportive movement of restoring the golf in all the architects have done a good job of Hey, we're going to store these golf courses, but we want your superintendent to get on board with us. Is let's get this little brown and dirty boys, you know, and let's see
where we can take this. And it helps the architecture people. You know, it takes members. You have to educate and you have to you have to be on the ground with them and explaining exactly what you're doing. And once you educate them and they start to see the different in the playability, more than likely they're going to get on board with that, yeah, and they start to get it. And I think that's what's happened in Chicago, you know.
I think that there's been a lot of there's a lot of good superintendents, and there's a lot of good architecture in Chicago. I think these architects have come in to try to restore these golf courses back to the original designs, but they've also said, hey, let's let's firm
this place up a little bit. And I think as long as the architects and the superintendent are explaining that to the boards and being communicative and educational to the membership, I think they start to buy in and then they start to enjoy it more.
You know.
But I think it's a process. It's got to be a process. There's still going to be clubs out there that want it, that want it green, and it's not necessarily have to be soft. You can keep it green and keep it firm, but they just they don't want to see any brown whatsoever. And and if that's what and you know, in the eighties, eighties and nineties, that's what it was, I mean, that was that was what it was for the most part, probably ninety percent of it was like that. But you had a few guys.
You had a few guys like Matt and Dick Batter and Pat Lucas and you know some guys that were you know, the guy at Huntington Valley in Pennsylvania. That guy is extreme, you know, he really pushes it. You know, I think was it Anderson, Scott Anderson. I can't remember his name, but that guy's been outside the box for a long time and they love him there for it, you know. They he's he's got that membership to buy in that we're going to spit on these fairways or you know.
So when you came to Chicago, it you know, it was a much different culture of conditions. I think in speaking to all your peers that most peers, you know, consider you as the guy that started the movement towards
you know, faster less trees. I love. There's a there's something on one of my Tom Doak podcasts he talks about how in Chicago in the nineties everybody had the Medina effect because they squeezed in the necks of greens and there'd be rough, you know, for five yards between bunkers because that's what Madna did, and everybody did that, and it's almost like what you've created is like, well, this is what Old Elm does, So this is what
everybody's doing. Talk about a little bit about, you know, kind of what you came into at Old Elm, and then how you've been able to change the culture over a number of years.
Well thank you for that. That's pretty nice compliment from peers and everything. But uh, when I got to Old Elm, I just I knew it could be really good. I just didn't know how good until I engulfed myself and all the architecture. And I don't even think Old Elm knew what was a cult when I got here. You know, everybody had said it was a Donald Ross And then I just got into the archives and started looking at everything, and I'm like, guys, you know, we got one of
the only two cult courses in the United States. And I mean, these were conversations I had with the board and I'm like, this is this is something we can hang our hat on. This is something that can bring Old Elm. Not that we care about ratings or anything like that, but it's it's something besides the fact that it was an exclusive Men's Club.
It's like a uniqueness in finding the you know, kind of the character and the uniqueness of each course. Because that's the beauty of golf courses and architecture is every course is so unique from the other one.
That's right. That's right, and some are better than others. But any superintendent that goes to his own place and can make that unique or you know, fire that diamond in the rough character or feature that's out there. I mean, you know, you could go to you know, it's like going up to Lake Geneva and he has all those little hershey drops, and you know, he's got a double green and you know, he's just got some quirky cool things. And he found him and he and rediscovered him. You know.
I came to Old Elm and it was it was kind of a combination of I need to get rid of some trees first of all, just to grow some freaking grass, you know. I mean it was like and it was like at Windstone. I went to Windstone. It was only you know, it's belt in eighty nine or whatever, and we're mowing te's with cottonwood roots and the mower had shaved them down so much that you could just
roll mow over the roots, you know. So it started at Winstone and went to Winstone and as did a thousand trees out of there just to grow grass, you know. And so that mindset came over here. And the great thing about being at Old Elm is that my GM Kevin was one hundred and fifty percent behind me, and he was all supportive and really led the way for me. You know that we really kind of really do work like a golf club should. Here is that Kevin Brett
and Jason they deal with the members up there. They're they're my communication piece. I'm kind of behind the scenes doing the dirty work. They're you know, they're supposed to be polished, and I'm not always politically correct, so it's probably a good thing that they deal with the members and I just go and do what they tell me to do. But we got on board as a team and explained to the board what we wanted to do.
We brought out the original plan. I think Old Elms probably got one of the best archives of original drawings and everything, so it actually kind of made it pretty simple to say, this is what we're going to do, this is what Colt did, We're going to go with this because you know, we we think Colt's one of the you know, the most prominent golf archt especially overseas, he's the man. He's the man overseas.
That's a funny thing.
I mean, you might talk about Rayner and mackenzie and McDonald here cold is Jesus over there, you know.
That's the funny thing is like in America he did so little work, but if you look abroad, like the way he's regarded in Europe and the UK, and then you look at some of the clubs and and like he got called in to talk to at Pine Valley, like to consult the Pine Valley, like you know, the greatest architects in American golf working at Pine Valley, and they, you know, bring in Colt. You know, he put together he made Royal County down what it is like it
was a mess before he got you know. And and just like I think his his his work goes so under the radar in America and that people don't understand.
People just don't know because not very many people have gone over and played his courses over there. That was a great thing. I was here a year or two and uh, Papa Daka set up a trip for us to go to Europe, England, and that was that was my game changer. That's where I knew what I had to do. When I came back. After I went and played all you know Sunningdale, Swinley, you know Rye, there was just such you know, Royal Saint George, Saint George's Hill.
I mean I got to play so many awesome golf courses there, but it was just so natural and rugged, and it was such a you know Colt was There wasn't any templates. Yeah, I mean you could. Every course looks different. There's very few courses that have the same type of hole. I mean he's got you go to Rye and in Royal Saint George's it's links, it's pot bunkers deep, and then you go to Swinley and it's
just like torn bunker faces Heather. I mean, he just took the natural environment and the plant material and made his golf courses. His greens aren't big and bold by
any means. You know that he doesn't need it. I mean they're so I mean I can take you out here at Old Elm, the number three and be like this could be one of my favorite greens I've ever worked on, and you'll be like, you look at the tea and you're like, it's not much like Number eleven is the sneakiest green in Chicago, I think, you know, but it's flat. And that's that's what I think is
really cool about him. Not that I don't you know, go to Chicago Golf and think those are probably some of the best green complexes in the world, but they're big bold. He was more of kind of a small and dainty kind of guy around the greens, but was just magical the way he blended him in and he
wanted it short and tight around the greens. You know, up to the greens and you know it going over there and coming back it gave and having the original drawings, it was a pretty bulletproof plan to go to the members and say it was according to the plan, this is what we're going to do. They can never come back at me with it, like why'd you do that?
Why'd you get now? I think every superintent I'll tell you that you're going to have tree hugging members that I think you're killing their kids when you cut down trees. But more unlikely those trees were not there originally, and you and I both know that forties, fifties, sixties, seventies there was a movement to not see one hole to the other and have a tree corridor, probably thanks to USGA.
Sorry but uh you know the uh it was. And but you know what, it's just like everything else, those are t you know, Well, that's the thing is that it's just like hairbands in the eighties and nineties, you know you had hair bands. That was a fad.
Well J BLOSEI once I was walking around with him at a course and he was talking about how you know, it coincides with like house architecture. If you go into a house that was built in the sixties, all the rooms are closed off, but if you go into house now, they're like open floor plans flowing into one another. Just like a golf course where you know, you're playing a tree lined like you're on that hole and you see
nobody else. That's where you are. But now you you know, like the really great restored courses, you get out there and you just see everything unfolding. You see, and I think that's part of the psychology of the design, is like where you're playing one hole and you're looking across at what's you know, four holes ahead, you're thinking, you're already thinking about, oh man, look at that green, like it's going to be that pins tough spot, you know.
I think it's part of competition too. I think it's good. You know, there was a you know, back in the day you play golf as competitive, you know, and it was good to see guys from hold to hole what they were doing and kind of ras them a little bit. I think it's great for golf, you know. And I mean the perfect example. Probably my favorite golf course, one of my top three is Pine Valley, one of the probably one of the best golf courses in the world.
And there wasn't hardly any trees there when it started, and now they're going back to taking a lot of those. You know, when I played it, there was a lot of trees and it was almost hold a hole, you know. But it's still unbelievable, don't get me wrong. But now to be able to sit up there and see that place in the natural landscape, I just it's so simple, but it's so right.
I saw a picture of like that, the par three. It's a long par three. I can't remember what hole, but you know it's got. It was all tree riddled right around it, and it was like you're hitting into this this green that looks, you know, pretty inviting because of the trees. But then they took all the trees out, exposed all the sand around it, and then the tree
looks the greens look so small. Oh yeah, And it makes the shot psychologically so much more difficult, not to mention the wind and the airflow, and it had to help with the greens condition.
Like, oh, I think, I think all the tree work that I tell guys that, they asked me, well, how'd you get started? I said, well, I took the green complexes. I said, we've got to get air movement around greens. And at the time, we had bent a little bit of bent and poet greens and they were fantastic. And when we had that winter in twenty fourteen or twenty fifteen, a lot of the greens just didn't make it very good. And that's when we decided to gas and grass the
greens here. But I can tell you this, with this newer bents, you really need full sun almost all day, especially in the morning. And that's where I tell guys that come to me and ask me, how do you get started? You know, how do I get started with the membership? That's just you know, tough and doesn't want
to hear anything about it. And you can do all that arbor calm stuff and was waste thousands of dollars on it, or you can just have common sense and go out there at nine o'clock and if the shit's in the shade, you know, you need to cut down. I mean, we have so many oaks.
I mean.
It was kind of a joke with our board was, guys, if I've got nuts on the greens, you know from the acorns, I think the tree is too close, you know, and you know what, those guys laugh. But then they chewed on that for a while and he's like, man, he's right, he goes, we got to go clean those nuts off on Saturdays and Sundays in the fall and it drives the snuts. Yeah, well yeah, it's because the damn trees too damn close to the green guys. You know, I don't care if it's one hundred years old and
it looks great, you gotta cut it down. I mean, it was just it so it kind of got comical, you know.
So it's I think that's a great piece of advice, is I think where so many people and I'm like guilty of it myself. I remember I was a member of a club, and like I started focusing on like the trees I knew I hated the most, and they were, but they were also the trees that members loved the most because there were controversial ones that were like greatly impacting the intended strategy the whole, but focusing on the functionality and the ones that like are dependent on grass growth.
Oh yeah, like it.
Where you have a functional thing that people can understand, like there's no sun, get this tree out so we can grow grass and you can have a better putting surface. That's that's I feel like that's where so many people go wrong. And this Andy, it almost starts more controversy.
Andy, you can't put on dirt, buddy, you know. And I'll go to so many places and they'll have one or two grains that they've got the back left or you know, it's been in the shade all year. It looks like shit. And it's not Superintendent's fault because he's been begging to get that tree down. But mister and missus havishammer can't cut that down? Oh God, can't cut that down? Well, what you want to put on dirt? You know it. It's not a bad thing to cut
a tree down to allow turf to grow. Because guys, you know, all superintendents I know are agronomous and their job they're paid to give extreme high end quality putting surfaces, rough fair ways and anything that minimizes their opportunity to succeed to that. You got to get rid of that. You got to get rid of the problem. It's a very simple, you know, cause and effect. And we had a tree left of ten green, left of seven green, and they were probably two of the biggest trees on
the golf course. But even when I had poe growing in the shade there, we struggled a little bit with them. They just just you know, tree roots in the greens, you know. And once I once I got one of those down and they saw the difference within a year, it was like, Okay, this kid is actually telling us what we need to know. Okay, we's got he's got street cred. Now we get it.
So the besides the tree removal, one of the big things that you've done here is like, is the short grass expansion, the you know, cutting the rough down to shorter to get the ball roll. You have a you have a much older membership than most most clubs. You know, how how have you been able to effectively expand fairways without just killing a budget, because that's always the pushback that yeah, that's.
It's we we're lucky, we have enough room. And we've had about an acre nursery that we pretty much have, you know, taken and flipped once or twice a year for the last six years. We took fronts of fairways that weren't necessary and flipped and flopped side from here to there. You know, our fairways are enormous and they were originally so when I got here just scalping a lot of them down had bent and pohen the rough and scalping them down and verifying and slit seat and
dragon plug poe plugs and verticutting. And it's been a combination of probably four or five things that we've done. But my whole goal to the membership was I wanted to restore the golf course for golf, for the architectural part of it, but I wanted to restore the golf course for the members because I I'm trying to lead a movement in making golf fun again. I worked at so many places where it was our goal just to
make you shoot a hundred. You know, we wanted to make it as hard and tough as we could, you know, and working at you know, Wingfoot and Marion, you work at us open course, and that's what people expect. You know, I get it, But you come to hold down with an older membership. Let's face it, we don't have a whole lot of We probably got ten single digit handicappers.
So my goal was to come up with an idea that I could still make it a challenge for those guys that are good, but also make it more playable and enjoyable to the member that was the fifteen to
twenty handicapper that was older. So by expanding all these fairways, lowering the height to cut on the rough, just by doing that, I was still that enabled me to keep the approaches in green banks really tight and the greens firm and fast, and that's what I wanted to keep because they were getting to the point where the guys are like, oh, we can't chip, can't put blah blah bah.
So I said, all right, well, I'll I'll cut the rough down to a half inch three quarters of an inch step cut, and if you miss these enormous fairways, you can take out your hybrid. And you know, these guys still can play golf, but for them to get through three inch rough, they just don't have the strength and it's frustrating for him. So my thought was, I want to make the funnest golf course in the United States.
How do I do that? And that's why I told Kevin, I said, you know, because Kevin's a scratch golfer, and he's like, oh, you're going to make it too easy. I said, keV, you don't hardly miss the fairways anyways. Okay, yeah, So if you're in the rough and you get to the green, you still got to chip and put on these diabolical green complexes. That's where it is. The defense of Old Elm is the greens, in the surrounds of the greens.
That's the magic of it.
That's the magic of Old Elm.
Is where what with the short ruff and everything, it's made it so much more negotiable for the average golfer. And it doesn't have anything any impact on the on the good player, because where all the challenges is finding the right angles to come into these greens that when they're going firm and fast, it's it's you know, you're you're you're just terrified hitting wedges.
Well and andy, that's why taking these you know people are like, this kid's nuts. You know, he's got seventy five acres of ben and he's taking his fairways out to there's you know, I got like twenty acres of rough now when I used to have close to fifty sixty. And but it's brought all the angles that Colt won.
And now you understand why Colt did that is because you know, if I'm far left on number two now where the fairway is, it's I can actually get it on the green without it rolling off the back or to the left or the right and getting an eight. I can you know, I can get a four because that's so hard, you know, it's such a hard green to hit. But all these angles that are you know, the right four. You know, these old guys don't want
to go up between all those bunkers. They can bail out to the right and they've got a great angle into three green. So that just kind of happened for me. Is like, and I would take keV and the members. I'm like, Okay, I know this sounds crazy, but I'm taking this fairway all the way out here like it is on the plan. But I go come over here
and look at this angle. So if you're good enough to try to get your ball over on this side of the fairway, you're going to get rewarded because you're gonna have a way better opportunity, you know, almost double the area to land the ball on the green as if you played it like every Tom Dick and Harry and try to go straight up the gut.
You know.
So I think golfers have been it's all been about the power game and flying it as far as you can. But you know what I love that about Old Elm is you get on the tee and you feel like you can just hit it where you know you can hit it as hard as you can. But that's fun. Yeah, okay, Yeah, should you take your three wit or hit an iron? Should you hit an iron on nine and just skinny
it up there and not try to go for the green? Yeah, that's probably the way you want to play it, but guys are going to take their driver and if you hit the green grate, you're rewarded, but if you miss the green, it's tough up there. Yeah, you know, So trying to bring all the clubs back in the bag to play here, trying and I can tell you this, the higher handicappers over the last five year have gone
down and my better golfers have gone up. And that's a combination of doing what we've done, adding some te's for seniors, and you know, I've always tried to give and take. If I take away something from you, guys, I'm going to try to give you some I'm going to try to give you a bailout area.
You know.
So my mindset's kind of screwed up, probably and crazy, but I want to make it as I want people to come back here and bring guys back and be like, that's the funnest golf I've played in years. That's the funnest place I've played in years. And quite honestly, don't you want to come out and get a birdie or two instead of a bogie and a triple and a quad?
Well? Who likes that? I think the best part about it is for the good players is that you can make a ton of birdies, but the double bogie is lurking on any shot because of the greens and the surrounds, and you give the wrong spot, you're playing ping pong.
You give them all this area to hit from. You can keep your greens and approaches and banks as tight and fast as you want. Now that being said, we have been, you know, judicious this year of measuring green speed and trying to find what everybody likes. And you know, we all like to get them super fast, but quite honestly, people just can't. It's it's not the putting, it's the chipping. It's the chipping. Here they chip a ball in the green and just rolls off. And that's that's just cause
of the firmness and the speed. And it's not fair because you hit a good shot, you should keep the ball on the green.
And the green the way the green is exactly the repellers.
Now and there are army helmets. And if you roll off the green, you're not two feet off the green, you're twenty thirty feet off the green. So this type of golf course, it's a give take. Okay, I'm going to give you all the fairways and all the rough to hit out of. But I still want a fair, firm, fast speed up around my greens and on the greens.
So let me ask you a question. Say you're a municipal you got two hundred thousand dollars budget, you got your your shoe string, you're overgrown, you've got trouble areas. How are you starting and what are you doing to stretch the budget to get you know, being maintaining somewhere like Old Elm for that, for that, that's unrealistic and it's got the municipal golfer. You want to get people around the golf course, but you want them to have fun.
And I think you know, where do you start if you inherited a situation similar to Old Elm overgrown, you know, narrow fairways, small greens, but with a municipal budget.
Okay, so you're at a municipality and you got a a two fifty to four hundred thousand dollars budget. So there's you. You have to be creative, you know, you have to have a superintendent that's willing to get outside the box and be creative. You got to determine what your grass type is, you know, if you have that budget, maybe you have blue grass fairways or blue rye blue fescue fairways and you don't have to spray those very much, you know what I mean. And the way you mow it.
You know, we mow up and down just because it's fast and it's quick as far as treework goes. Okay, what kind of trees do I have?
What?
You know, there's a lot of guys out there that are looking for good lumber and they'll come in and cut trees, or you drop them, they'll pick them up. You know, you you use every resource you can. You got guys that need wood for firewood. You know, it just depends on what area you are. You got to explore every option, turn over every stone that you can. That all right, I want to get rid of some trees. I don't have the budget to do it. Okay, Okay,
can you burn there? You know? Can you burn? Cause you know you can buy a chainsaw and if you got to, you know, or you could rent a skid steer with forks or grappler or whatever for a certain amount of time. You got to be creative and then all right, can we You know, we were at country and we could burn. We dropped, We dropped fifty willows, those black willows in a low area, and we stack those things on top of each other. You know, let's just say it was one thousand bucks to cut that tree
and haul it away. We cut them down and burn them for whatever it costs the chainsaw oil in the labor. You know, So if a fifty thousand dollars job was probably a two thousand dollars job that we just did. And we took the buffaloes and put the diesel on them and burnt the crap out of them. You know, you got to look at every option you have. Can I burn? Do I have people that are Do I have some lumber? Actually, guys will pay you, give you money to come in and cut it down and take
You got black walnut, you got white oak? You know, what do you have? Do you have some good maple?
You know?
Do you have cherry? Guys will come and get that. And okay, if they are not going to pay you, or they're not going to do it, if you cut it down, make them come and pick it up. You know, there's there's where I would start. As far as trees go, I would I would try to grow grass at a municipality, that's going to give me the best opportunity to give
good conditions on a shoe string budget. If you have bent grass at those places and that's what they like, then removing some of those trees, it's just going to improve the turf quality. It's going to help with air movement, less disease, you know, better roof structure, all that garbage. But you know, you got to decide, you know, the municipality's got to decide. All right, we got bent grass fairways or we got rye bluegrass fairways. You know, you
spend the money on the greens because that's where it's at. Everybody. Nobody's going to talk about fairways or teas. If you've got great greens, they're going to think your golf courses fantastic, you know what I mean. And that's where you score. So spend the money on the greens. Get the greens back out to where they were. Usually those places don't have great irrigations, but the municipalities are open, ok with capital and infrastructure. Yeah okay, So you know again it's
an outside the box educational process. Hey, this is this is what I can give you, and you know, you take a few holes and you show them what you can do once. Once you give them caviare they don't want to go back to sardines, you know what I mean? People people like good ship. They don't want to they don't want to eat bad ship. You know, do you want to eat a flair? You want a McDonald's cheeseburger. I mean, they're going to want the steak. You give them a steak on two or three holes, guess what
those other fifteen tastes? Like? Shit, I'm going to go back to those three holes. What's it going to take? What what can we do to help you? And then and then then the ball's rolling, The ball's rolling, You're.
Gonna That's one of my biggest gripes with municipal goth is, like, is the fact that so many people think like, oh, this is the way it is, and this is the way it has to be in we're a twenty five dollars course, and we're always going to be a twenty five dollar course. It's like, you know, if you do a little bit of work, you can be a thirty five dollars course. And then all of a sudden, like you just bumped your revenue up and like, and you're gonna get people around faster.
It's all about rounds, you know.
For balls.
Well, that's I gotta tell you. My guys hated looking for balls. I'm at a private club. My guys they got caddies. They hated looking for balls. Speeds up rounds.
There's nothing worse than looking for golf balls. No, that's maybe the worst part of golf.
It's it's a guys don't they're expensive, guys don't want to lose them.
You know.
That's where the short mow grass speeds up, play, speeds up rounds. It just makes golf a lot more funner. I mean, if you're two hundred yards out and you're in like step cut, you feel confident that you can get that ball to the green. Ye, if you're in three inch four inch rough, that shot is impossible. Puckering your butt, you know, you're like, I got no you know, I'm just going to try to snug it up there the approach because I'm not gonna might get there.
So you've worked with Drew Rogers and Dave's inking here. You know what would have been the things that you have really helped with that relationship and made it a success.
Uh, their their hands on. You know, Drew is as good as they come working with soups. You know, he he listens to superintendents, and I think Dave's you know, his architectural skills and shaping skills are just extraordinary, you know, but working with those guys. I've known Drew a long time because we did old Stone together and that's where I met Drew and he's he's from Ohio and so
we go way back. But we went out and met Dave out at Bandon when he was doing the short course out there, and just love the guy and knew he'd be a part of the team. And it was really a team effort, you know. It was Kevin and old Elm getting on board and just kind of letting Dave and Drew do their thing. And the luxury they had was I had been in construction superintendent, so my whole staff was we gave them as many people as
they wanted when they were here. And I think that's why it was so successful is we really didn't hire anything out, so we kind of were able to go in the field and just do it and then go back and look at it and change it. And there was never any like drawings or anything written up. We just did everything in the field and if we liked it, we kept it, and if we didn't, we changed it
made it better. And that's what's really great about that kind of architecture and working with guys like that is and being able to do it in the field, you know, because we've done all of our stuff here without ever closing. So the members have had construction stuff, but we usually wait till the end of the year and do it in the spring when they're gone. But even doing the greens, we had temporary greens and the guys could play the course. So all of our work that's been done here, we've
never closed the course for one day. So we've done basically a total restoration of a golf course that's the bolts, without closing.
And how many years has it been, you know.
I got here in two thousand and nine and that's when we started basically the tree work and then got a plan together for new irrigation. The irrigation was thirty years old and it needed to be done. That was the first really wave of getting things done. We did the irrigation, that's when we got that was the first round of trying to bring the fairways out a little bit, like to make the bunkers make sense. You know, at that time, I never thought they would go for what
we have now with the bent everywhere. I just thought, oh god, these guys will never I go. One, I can't afford to maintain it. Two They're going to think I'm crazy. So we did one round and then we did the irrigation where the grass lines were, and Drew came out and helped us with that. And then you know, a couple of years later it was like, guys, the bunkers were not good, and I said, we need to do the bunkers. But I said, we can't do the bunkers,
just stripped aside, put drainings, put sand in. We need to do what Colt said on the plan, torn bunker faces, because that's to me, that's what put Old Elm on the map was was, you know, not only taking the fairways out, but changing the bunker complex. The aesthetics was huge.
Having grown up, you know, and played this course when I was in high school and and then you know, having grown up like in the area, like it's funny. I was standing on the first tea this year, and I looked out and I felt like I was like in England, but like the only thing that reminded me that I wasn't was like the same big power lines that I've stared at my whole life, Like out in
the distance. It's like, yeah, if those weren't there, I would have felt like I was in a completely different, you know, part of the country then.
US, because England doesn't have electric you know, you got that special out, you know. And I'd always say, I'm like, Andy, how much money you think we have. I'm not gonna get those lines buried anytime soon.
But you shut down, like shut that down, right, I shut that, Yeah, I shut that down right away. But and that's you know, our goal too, was to I wanted you to feel like it's one hundred years old, you know. I wanted the speeds and the conditioning to
be of the you know, twenty twenty twenty eighteen. But I want you to come out the old Elm and be like, God, I feel like, you know, the coolest thing I've had really a couple of our tough old members and we got those old school ball washers and they came out and he was like, I haven't seen one of these since my dad and I played here fifty years ago. I feel like I'm playing with my dad.
To me, that was one of the coolest compliments I ever got, and it was from one of my toughest members, Grummy Grum House, and but he was like he you know, he's sitting there and wash his boss. He's like, I feel like I'm playing with my dad. You know, I haven't seen this since I was playing with my dad. And that just hit me. And then that was when I wanted to get all the little divot buckets back and you know, make the flags old, do our own team. You know, it's I think Gil said it best, is
it's about the golfing experience from start to finish. Yeah, it's not just the grass anymore. It's it's all those little anywhere where you can pick up a nugget, anywhere where you can get something different than everybody else, you know, you know you talk about trailblazing. That to me, ourcessories is something that a lot of guys have been like, I mean, I can't tell you how many calls I get. Where did you get that? How did you do that? You know, from a cesory standpoint, But I think it's
it starts. That's part of the experience. Is like, how can you make your golf course totally unique? Talk about a municipality. You could. You could make your own wooden tee markers and make them special with your logo or something. And you can do that cheap and it's different and it's unique. It's not just a painted white ball out on the tee. Yeah, you can. You can slab some of that lumber and make a natural bench. You got a municipality for free.
And that's the thing. To market a brand, you need to have a brand and an identity, and that's those little things help build your identity. And like, you know, it's something that people talk about. You know, the more you can get people talking about what you have anywhere on your course or anything about your course is the better. It Just like it helps you market.
Wooden baskets on my driving range. Cool wooden baskets. You thought you thought I hung the moon? You know, these they were like where'd you get those baskets? But you could go to an apple orchard if you're a municipality and go get old apple baskets, or you gotta get out side the box.
You could go to like a rummage sale probably and got them.
I just saw online our our trash cans are old bourbon barrels. I just saw online where place in Columbus was getting away for free. You know, you you just gotta you gotta be.
Creative.
You gotta be creative, and you gotta be advantageous. You gotta you gotta find all those things. There's you know what I mean. When I started, wasn't any internet. You know, you didn't you couldn't find any of this garbage.
You know.
That's how old I am now, you know, to think about that, that's really my generations when the Internet started, and it's it's so much easier now because you got access to everything. So there's no excuse for not being creative. It's it's you've gotta you gotta dig deep and find it yourself to do it. So you you talk about municipalities, it's all on the eye of the beholder. It's whoever the guy's there. You know, if he's working hard and he's getting his guys working harder than they ever did,
he's doing his job. If he's getting creative and he's making shit out of shiola, he's doing his job. He's you know, there's no excuse. You know, I've got a great budget. You know, it's easy for me to say that stuff, but I started with nothing, and that to me, that that was a huge part of my career was those early years not having anything. Yeah, and you just learn to get by with nothing.
I visited this place in Philly called Jeffersonville Ross. It's an old course pus Municipal, and you know, I spent the morning with the superintendent walking around in the rain and we were just talking and he's like, you know, the nice thing is like we've done things and like they've worked out and he's like, now whenever I want to do something, they're all for it because like he's built up the tr but like they're doing forty thousand rounds a year and the course is packed, and you know,
the changes he's made have worked with you know, he's worked with an architect, but you know, the small changes they've made it worked, and like they're making money and they're getting rounds and the people love it. So it's like it's a sense of pride for the for the community too well.
And I you know, I'm at a private facility. But that's what I want golf to get back to. I want to get back to what I grew up doing is eighteen holes in a cart and a six pack for thirty bucks and play a good golf course that that is stimulating and fun, and the guys go out, have a great game, have a beer at the end of the round, and they love it, and the leagues come back. We've got to grow the game. How are we going to grow the game? How are you going
to grow the game? You got to make it fun again. You don't nobody wants to go and get beat up. We're not good enough. Even if you're a single digital handicap. You don't want to go and who likes that?
You don't want to do that every day?
You don't want to do that every day.
Yeah, so let's uh, let's get to overrated, underrated. Wrap this up. So you got pick overrated, underrated? Okay, different topics, I got you. We'll start with center line bunkers.
MM underrated, need more of them? I think, yeah, I think it's I think it's a good it's a good aiming point, you know, I mean, what about championship golf? I think it's overrated. I think it's overrated. Yeah, I think it's gotten too goofy. I I think we're doing championship. Are you talking US Open? If we're talking US Open,
I think we've gotten a way consistency. I think day to day it's just you're not playing the same You need to play the same golf course for four days in a row if you want to get a true champion. It's it's going you know, get it too fast, then we get too slow, and then the wind, whatever kind of garbage you want to talk about, set it up the same. The wind comes up. That's part of golf.
It should just be whatever it is.
It's got to be consistent.
I think that it's all around. The problem is the scores. It's like whatever they shoot, whatever they shoot is whatever they shoot.
That's I gotta tell you. I think people like to see them score good.
Yeah.
I know some people are like, oh, I don't want them to break par. But you'd love to hear the roars when he's making a birdie, you know, perfect example, Tiger at bell Reeve gets on a roll. Did you hear? I mean, it's time, I get it. It's Tiger. But any of those guys that are that are pumping in Birdie's Kopka and people get going.
You know, Old ELM's like a perfect example because like it's a par seventy three, but it in my mind it's like par. This is the problem with pars, Like I don't look at it as a par seventy three. I look at it as like a par sixty nine. And if I play it as a par sixty nine, like if I'm thinking about score, that's as hard of a golf course to par as there is in Chicago.
Absolutely, But if you play it as.
A par seventy three, you're you know, shooting under par for a scratch player isn't like that big of an achievement. And it's like that. But if you just flip it to par sixty nine, all sudden, people would be like, oh, this is this is the hardest golf course.
Oh sure, you.
Know, but it's that's the that's the paradigm of par. Yeah, it's so it's you know, it's like if they just made us open courses, like with the reality of the game par sixty eight.
I think they need to make it consistent. I think they've gotten away too far. From that from day to day. Just keep it consistent. I know the weather changes and everything, but you got to keep it consistent. And I think people like to see people score. I know there's guys that say, oh god, they didn't break part. The crowds ain't getting too excited about that. You know, we've got to grow the game, make it fun exactly.
You know.
So last one template.
Holes, you just had to go there, didn't you.
Yeah, had to get one that maybe a little uncomfortable.
Uh.
I think for that architect it works. Okay, I don't think it's all that great, to be honest with you, the template holes. I think for Rainer it works. But I can tell you this. I can go play certain architects horses and feel like I played one of their other courses and I don't like it. I don't like it, you know. But at the time that that was happening, I think he was probably outside the box and it made sense, you know. And they're very They're very cool,
don't get me wrong. There's there's nothing like a cool punch bowl, radan or burrits. Those are all cool. I like them, but I don't know. I don't know moving forward now, if template holes would be such a good idea. Yeah, for him, he was very good at it.
He also knew nothing about golf exactly.
It was all engineering. It was engineering. It was an engineering I mean that was That's as close as an engineer golf course as you can get. Or those template holes. It was more about engineering and shapes golden geometrics. Yes, geometric shapes and engineering was what he based it. And it made some pretty damn spectacular golf courses. Don't get me wrong. I mean those golf courses are amazing. I don't know if you could get away with that now.
Yeah, I don't think an architect could be strictly templates. No, I don't think Rayner was strictly templates because like some of his non template holes are like my favorite holes.
I mean what he did at Short Acres, yea. The fact that that just tells you he wasn't a golfer because he didn't put anything on the lake, you know, and what he did and take took those ravines and did that routing. That was amazing to me. You know, here you are, got got Lake Michigan. You could put some stuff over there. Now I'm going to go it's the flattest, deepest land. It's the flattest most undulated golf course I've ever seen.
That routing is epic. How you just one one feature over and over and over again in so many different ways, right left over off the team, he you know, around off the on a on a second shot.
I mean, I that guy. That was amazing, you know. But as you know, in Chicago's got some great template holes. I mean it's you know, they've got that real Dan is so good there. The greens in general, the greens are just diabolical, but they're you know that leads to big and bold too, geometric shapes, yeah, engineering purposes, and he gets and it worked. It worked really well for him.
What you touched on with Colet earlier about the subtlety of his greens. I think that's what gets lost with Rayner is everybody stares at like the big bowld for Dan Kicker, but they miss like the little internal spines that make those greens just out of this world. And that's what here has. Like the subtlety and the small interior stuff are so much more impactful than the big bold things. But the big bold things capture everybody's eye and you know, they.
Give, they give you well, and I think, you know, I just played Kingsley, and I think you did an amazing job there. But I think these this generation of architects are doing a really good combination of both. Yeah, I really do. I think these guys are inspired by the Golden Age, but they're they're taking it to another level and they're it's so good how they You know, back then you didn't tie anything in because it was just built out of the ground, you know, all these
big bold pads and everything. You just pushed it up and let it fall off. That the old steam blade or whatever everybody cont you know, kind of you know, Kingsley is so good and that if you hit around the green, it's going to feed into some of those greens. And I think that's great, you know. Yeah, but he's got some of those greens. If you barely miss one
way or the other, you're gone. So yeah, So I think this generation architects is really inspired by one hundred years ago by all those guys, but are doing a great combination of some boldness feature wise, and some of them are throwing some of those template holes back in there and and maybe just one and it and it works, you know, but where it fits, where it fits.
Yeah, you know, it's uh yeah, it's it's it's gonna be interesting to watch the continued progression. I mean, that's one of the coolest things about architecture is you just watched it progress and you know there's no right or wrong answer and no, and there's going to be somebody in the next ten to fifteen years that comes along and does something completely different than the way everybody's doing it now, and that'll you know, there'll be a new trend for sure. So but Curtis, thanks so much for
your time. It's been uh, it's been a pleasure.
And uh, well thank you.
You're not a social media guy, so nobody can find you that way. No, No, it's uh but uh yeah it's uh, it's been fun and uh we'll talk to you soon
Okay, buddy, thank you,