David Esler

all of the grow the Game initiatives, which are terrific. Uh, there's there's really one proven method of getting people hooked on the game and learn all the good things the game can imbue in a personality and and revealing all the bad things that the game can show off in a personality. But the I grew up canning and playing

on Mondays. We were fortunate enough to get to play golf just about everywhere that was good around Chicago on Mondays, back in the days when clubs used to be closed completely on Mundles.

Caddyshack movie. But we were really fortunately because we would go up and play back in you know, nineteen seventy five to nineteen eighty five, when golf in Chicago had actually golf courses in Chicago had a better reputation than the reality. I mean, back then, probably the only really really good golf courses were Story Acres in the Chicago

Golf Club, mostly because they hadn't been touched. Most everything else at that period in Chicago used to have a great reputation, even better than New York, which was I don't want to sound like a homer, but the truth is, it just wasn't comparable. There was a quantity, but not a great quality, and the qualities improved quite a bit a lot of the restorations and less so new development. But in the last couple of decades there's been a

lot of really good work on the restoration front. But so we played everywhere, and I got to see everything, just about everything on Mondays, and then I played a little bit and got to play in some really good tournaments at some really good golf courses and saw things that you know, public kid wouldn't otherwise have a chance to be exposed to, on both the architecture and kind of the socio economic front.

like like we do as golf course architects. But so there must have been something in the DNA, I guess, but I always knew I wanted to be involved in golf course architecture, and you know, wrote the fifth grade report and a lot of silly stuff and used to draw drug alf holds, waiting to get out on Saturday mornings as a young looper, and got decent enough to have a chance to play at a big ten school.

When I got there, of course, figured out that there was a whole bunch of guys who were really, really good, better than I was, and grinding it out and had had a decent career, got a you know, respectable education, and played for a little while just because I felt like I was as to and had a little success. But frankly, like most of us, figure out, wow, everybody else is really good. I thought I was but yeah, that's who are.

wasn't capable of. I spent some time my brother and I worked at Kemper Lakes and they used to have now, shoot, what was it? The wasn't the World Series ago, but there were four guys the major champions, and I caddied in the Grand Slam, right, Grand Slam of Golf exactly, and I think mc I was involved with it somehow. I remember caddying for Norman and we played a lot of golf and ran carts. There's a fella named Bob Spence who was just gentlemen of the game, played exceptionally well.

It was a terrific marketer. It was a fantastic teacher, you know, cut from the mold, back when the golf pro was the guy at a private club, because he knew everything, could fixed clubs, could knew all the rules, knew a little bit of something about agronomy. And so Bob took my brother and I under his winging at Kemper Lakes back when it was just nine holes. Anyway, fast forward, so watch Greg Norton. We play a lot of golf at Temper Lakes, and you figure out where

you hit the golf ball on certain conditions. And I just watched Norman fly at sixty five yards further and my Sunday punch, and I thought, yeah, he can do stuff that I can't do. And you know, that was the beginning of the end of a largely unfruitful playing career. But the good thing about those exposures to competition is you meet a bunch of guys who are really good guys, and you get to see places in at least in my industry, you get to see places that you good,

ugly or you know, just mediocrity. Lessons about golf course, about golf courses, what.

of still exists. It was a big, hard dog like left but for a lot of guys, for your listeners, I besting there's quite a few who played there before Nicholas modified the golf course or updated at whatever they however they packaged it. But it was so good. It would test everything he had and I learned a lot about course management there. They didn't really put to good use.

was the you know, impetus. Was it just because of Jack Nicholas's design career, like, you know, like how did this all happen? Why did somebody think it was a good idea?

the job anyway. Honestly, don't know. I assume that the response was largely agonomically. The place was never great when I was there, and I suspect that contributed as well as the ridiculous distances that the golf ball does. You know, a really good example of that is a place that you and I talked about last week, the place called Bellevue Biltmore, which I think is not long for the world.

It's a real Donald Ross golf course time in clear Water, and we were fortunate enough to be involved in the restoration and rebuilding of a kind of a design build approach a couple of years ago. And it turns out that one of the local rich guys is going to buy it from the city, which is kind of unfathomable, but that the city would sell an open space asset like that. But you know, those those make me really sad when a really ideal, niche golf course that has

some history, has some architectural integrity disappears. And you know, I suppose part of this progress and we've lost a lot of them. But when when you lose them for no good reason, it just seems unnecessary. And you know, not that I'm the doian of all things style, but I'm pretty sure that what used to be at the Scarlet course is probably better than what's there now, and what is at BELvue Builtmore today is probably better than what we'll be there now. If you happen to be

a high networks individual, that may be arguable. But for the mass market of the as Mike Guyser causes, for the retail golfer, it's an unfortunate trend.

and the ship is sale. It's just, uh, good news is there are so many more golf courses around that are being restored to their golden age characteristics. And that's the that's the good news. On the upside of us of that story, I suppose.

on that was certainly happening. But we I suppose we all do that to some to some degree, I find myself doing some of the you know, and I make a cognizant effort every time I go to a job to try to do what's right for the project and not what I have done, and that really puts some folks at unease. And we had a chance to get hired by a nice private club in town I said,

I really don't know what we're going to do. I need some time to think about what you guys are in the marketplace and what this golf course should be. And you know, I tend to fall back on the best architect who may have ever worked on a property. For example, when we redid Ravoslolt was an easy one when we read it was obviously Donald Ross was in and out of there. And when we redid park Ridge many years ago, Bill Langford had done some work there and so we largely went with that flavor. We just

redid again. On the design design build side, we redid Riverside. We did a bunch of the bunkers at Riverside, and it's an easy decision to make. We didn't move any golf holes or anything, but of the things we touched, we did so in the Bill lank for style, and that's an easily defensible I can sleep at night saying, you know, this is what we're doing, and this is why we're doing it. And I can remember my education early on back Columbuses. You better have some really good

reasons to do what you're doing. I think there's a lot of guys now who just work to find work. There are two or three good restoration folks out there who look at the history, and there's guys who get really serious about the historical data. That's not me. I honestly just don't have time to be that guy. But you better well. If you happen to be working on a building that that Frank Lloyd Wright worked on or Louis Sullivan worked on, you'd be hard pressed to move

away from that pedigree. And I kind of take the same approach, whether it's our early work at Starter Golf Club when I was consulting there, you know, the Glen View Club, we tried to do a variation on the Flint and obviously they changed horses a couple of times now, but that's a great old club that has a terrific history, and I still have a lot of friends there. But we tried to do what we felt was right for them, and that's typically what we try to do. You mentioned

Lake Geneva Country Club. You know, we work there as well as Bigfoot down the Lake, you know, a couple of miles away, and they could not be more different places. They're physically different property with different histories. They both tend to be weekend kind of clubs. But to do the same thing at both of those properties, like many architects would would be doing a complete disservice to them, to

each one of those guys. And so you can go three miles from Lake Jimeiva Country Club to Bigfoot and see dramatically different aesthetics and design goals and objectives, which would be fun for me. Would I would have to do something else if you call me that, we're just going to do flashy bunkers or grass based bunkers everywhere.

You know, it's great. It's a lot of fun to go through the intellectual exercise and sometimes the golf course archaeological discovery of figuring out what a place should be.

and if they had no budget. You know, that was our first construction job with Didge Golf Construction, which is kind of the build portion of Esther Golf Design slash Vintage Golf Construction Design build that we do. And I get on a machine from time to time and I'm not bad, but that was our very first construction job and it was so much fun. They had zero dollars, but we got an awful lot of really I think important work done for not a lot of money. And number four was one of those that had to be

just right. And while you could literally play ping pong back and forth with sandshots, if the greens are fast or if you're not skilled. That's what that hole was, and we just put it back the way it was. But that's a Graves was a fascinating If you look at the old aerials, there were two hundred plus bunkers on that property. Some were massive, some were tiny, and while we didn't they didn't have the dollars to put back everything, we gave a fair snattering of the variety

that was out there. There's a there's a good size ten thousand square foot bunker with islands on the sixteenth hole, which is I don't know if it's a ross green, but it sure feels like a ross green. It's kind of like hitting it's a you know.

a significant, a historically architecturally significant asset. And sometimes just simply not touching the ground itself, but pushing the bent cress in front of an old feature, whether it's a series of chocolate drops or an old bunker gives the illusion that that mound cuts into the fairway, even if it cuts into the faraway at the God forbid the one hundred and fifty yards off the tee or know

at quote unquote the wrong distance. And everybody wants to put bunkers out there at to eighty five or nowadays it's even three bills. But those features that help frame the view, the more you can x scent them. In various committees meetings and board meetings, I always kind of give the analogy of so many of our golf course fairways have become runways because they've become overplanted and undermode. That's kind of the effect of the mowing pattern in

the fairway. But when you have the opportunity up by the green to start to mow around the outside of the blookers, and we did a lot at Belgium, built more and partially because it was easy down there, because it was all bermuda. We're up here you have to consider, well, if we're going to do that, we have to take the bluegrass and changes to band grass typically but not always, And you have to be a little more cognizant of

surface drainage and top dressing and all those things. But just shortening the height of cut around the green sixteen at raves Low is a good example. You know. You mow all the way around that, and it's a little bit more equitable and a lot more interesting, whereas if you go one hundred yards and you try to mow around the fourteenth green at raps Though, it's not quite as interesting in terms of equitable, you know, I don't know, it's just because of the filled platform and the green surrounds.

Sometimes it's a it's a fantastic way to go about it, and sometimes it's not. Yeah, But regardless, when you do that, it's very inexpensive. Having said that, you know, maybe number two is tree removal, but that is far away the most politically charged potential third rail of golf course modifications.

is it next week? Yeah? Next week? There's there's the old original pre white person settlement oak trees up to the east of the clubhouse in the photograph, and there's some other things that are out there, but there's not much.

and eighties. It's not the effect of the all Dutch l disease which is now kind of manifested itself in the autumn put flash or the ash boar. It's still happening today. I just last year one of my clients, who has a nurseryman as a member, said, you know, this fellow wants to donate thirty five trees to the club. We want you to figure out where to put them. And you know, I'm getting to the point in my career where I'm a little bit more blunt. You know,

you try to politically couch it. And I said, the best place to put him is in his nursery. You know you don't want them, You want the opposite. You are to donate chainsaw and stump grinding time that would be a good use of his you know, and trust me, I said it more, Yes, delicately, delicately because you have to unless you happen to be the benevolent dictator in a club. And those places almost do not exist anymore.

But it's still happening, and there are still places where there are guys who who want to plant a whole bunch of trees and lose sight of the fact that the trees are there to support the golf. The golf is not there to support the trees. And like I said, there are there are on most properties. There are plenty of places to plant some trees for specific purposes, whether it's safety or control the views. But to make the golf course harder quote unquote tends to not be one of the right ones.

I'm kind of I'm curious. You know, who you've kind of come to found is like the underappreciated genius of the bunch.

I suspect was the influence of Charles Blair McDonald. And they're kind of ova of archetype golf holes. You see Langford Moreau PLoP goes down from time to time, whether it's a ra dan, whether it's an Eden or Sahara, probably because Langford played at Yale and was exposed to those golf holes. Uh, incredibly dramatic. They they're they're they're bold, an amazing set of God, it's an amazing collection of

golf holds and a collection overall, a place overall. The individual holes are little bit the fabulous pearls that combine into just an extraordinarily beautiful necklace. And there are a lot of places like that, Fisher's Island, you know, one of my favorite places to golf from the planet. Same kind of thing. Each one of those holes, if they existed on their own, would be just a joy to play one time. But then when you string eighteen of them together, it's it's just a magnificent experience.

do you walk the property a ton like? You know, I'm always curious as to your philosophy.

Black People is really the first big one. And you know, I didn't spit out all of the ideas on that one, but on that particular and the thing that I believe is between you know, in the world of architectural geekdom is often overlooked and misunderstood. Is the external influences, whether it's an owner, a couple of owners, the overall business plan,

the site itself, the regulatory issues. If there's a world in which it is extremely difficult to compare apples and apples, it's golf and golf course architecture, because no two sites,

whether it's they're immediately proximate to one another. For example, on a sunset Valley and Bobbling they share a common border, but they couldn't be different, more different products, different end users, different original architects, and so it's very difficult to say, boy, this was really successful if that guy's a good architect,

because you could never replicate the same conditions. Let's say that, you know, Tom Doak gets a project and then you erase Tom Doak's work, and then Dave Vessler gets a project and you compare them side the same project. To compare them side by side, it never happens, and so the best you can do kind of is look at each site in each project and each set of conditions and hope that you can get the best out of them.

Black Sheep was obviously a good, great opportunity for me to do some really, really good work, mostly because we had a pretty free hand in routing the place and sequencing the holes and determining the overall style, which was the point of conversation early on. You know, I said, Vince, we need to we need to think of this place unlike any other place in Chicago at the time, not the same converge we had at Glubi Club, which didn't

obviously end as well for me. But I view that particular experience as a badge of honor that I knew what I wanted to do, they didn't like it, and I feel bad that it didn't live in the world in the words of HS Cult. But to circle back to Blacksheet, but we were fixed with the clubhouse site,

so that was a given. In the middle of the site, there was a road and utilities were already extended, so we weren't going to move anything in terms of infrastructure, and so its a matter of starting from the high point, which we didn't have the ability to change, nor necessarily what I've wanted to change in that particular case, and how do we move in and out and around so that it's interesting in terms of whole type, whole direction

because obviously the wind. You know, if it's windy ear, if it's a little windy at your house, it's blown out there. And so we've got sixty to in some cases one hundred yard wide fairways, particularly on holes nineteen through twenty seven, where you're really exposed, and you need that. With on a day like to that you and I are talking, there's probably a two mile an hour wind,

but out there at maybe five or ten. But when it blows thirty and it's firm and fast, the ball runs out and you need that room to so that you can play golf. So that was an easy decision to make. Hand in hand. That came with triple and quadruple and sometimes quintuple with irrigation, and then the overall aesthetic it was, you know, we need to be thinking about prairie dunes. We're not quite sand hills, we don't

have that magnitude of landscape. But I felt like prairie dunes was a pretty good placeholder in terms of early on meetings and concept. We need to restore the native landscape. You know, when I first walked property, I think I told you this around maybe somebody else that week that we drove up to the property and I made the sick non architect marketing mistake and said, you know, mister Silana, you haven't you haven't actually bought this part. You haven't

closed on this prout yet, have you. Because when you're driving up to the site from from outside, it doesn't look like much, you know, which is completely the other end of the spectrum. I'm sure you've read it fifty seven hundred times. Golf digest that the architect proclaimed that this was the greatest idea or she had ever seen for golf. Yeah, you know, I I just probably have an aumental, you know, moment and went, what are you're

thinking of? This is not the site you want? But he had already closed and looked past.

And I said, you know, we're not going to have to spend a lot of money to build this golf course. We're going to have to shape the greens, we're going to have to drain some areas, build the tey complexes, but we're not stripping the top sail from the entire property. Just because we can do it doesn't mean we should do it. And so with the exception of the bottom lands where there's you know, we had to build a lake.

I tried to get out of play, but we had to build an irrigation lake, and it really wasn't anywhere to hide it. So and I'd love to be able to have been able to hide it by that piece of ground, it just wasn't going to happen. And so we incorporated it on a couple of holes. The only three holes on the property that play in the generally the same cardinal direction four, five, and six could not be more different in terms of the type of golf holes they are, But every other golf hole there changes

direction with respect to the wind. You know, plays a little upfill downhill, and you do those permutations, and yes, you do walk to site a lot and that that's just part of the process, you know, the corn crunch. Our guys are notorious for doing that, and yes, that's that's that's the way to learn the site, yeah, and and get the best out of it is to spend time with the total maps are really a great starting point, but they are a starting point and not the whole process by any stretch.

get to get. But I think you know, in this in this instance, you know, you see you saw with a lot of rainer courses where you know, he took flat pieces of land and made him really good golf courses by by doing you know, building spectacular green complexes and using these surefire you know, whole templates you know to production. So you know, tak us a little bit through the thought process and evolution of Mount Prospect.

Not that that was a private club, but actually it was a private club many many many years ago in the twenties, and I had known a lot of guys who grew up there and went through the high school, and I g g A ranks, and I knew it at a place that created golfers, not unlike Village Links. You know, David Glott and Gary Pinn's and Doug Pin's, and there were a lot of guys who would just hang out there and play golf and evolved into competitive golfers.

And Mount Prospect was also one of those places, and so I also knew I felt like Mount Prospect was very much a as close to a kind of a private club, you know, public setting. It's in the neighborhood. And when I went back, I think for the second or third meeting, there were guys walking down the sidewalk with their poll carts to go to the golf course. And while that's almost a Scottish aesthetic, you know, the club in the village that's open to the public. And

so it was kind of an interesting flavor. And every medium to small town should have a Mount Prospect golf course, a place to grow golfers and kind of a community center away from the community center, and so it was really important for me too. They had one of the

most dangerous driving ranges and under fitted facilities imaginable. They had some people get hit and fortunately, you know, no legal action, but it was a liability, and so we looked at it as how do we figure out there are so many high school kids who can learn to play golf there and they use it like crazy, and they've been very successful. So we wanted to find a

place where there could be a substantial practice facility. And unfortunately, after a whole bunch of iterations and permutations of routing and working within the floodplaine, and we figured out how to build you know, half an acre range to you at three hundred yard long range talent. And the thinking was,

what's the least the audable thing on the property. Typically it's the floodplane, and in that case it was the horrible ninety degree dog leg right eighteenth hole, and I don't know if you remember it, but it was not

a great hole. And so I thought, well, how can we take the liability which is a very awkward finishing hole that floods and turn it into houcki We you reuse the space, kind of co opt some of the maintenance facility space, and so we landed with the driving range there, took the old short game area, made a brand new hole to the east end, ended up having to move a couple of golf holes, so you know, I tried not to do that, but we ended up with a couple of big holes on the back then,

because there are a whole bunch of holes in the back that were three hundred and sixty yard holes and although I have no problem with that, you don't need six of them on one nine. Mostly retained the front nine routing, but really am very proud to have created a terrific practice facility where you know, for the next hundred years folks will learn to play golf there. So that and we went there, you know, opening day and a couple of days after, and there's a million kids

running around. And as I get older, that's obviously becomes of more value. But with respect to the golf course and the design decisions that were made, you know, nobody asked what we're going to do in terms of style. Along the process, they needed to redo the irrigation system, They need a lot of drainage work, and so eventually

collectively they landed on. We need to rebuild the golf course and as much as we can add these other assets, the access facility, the short game area, assive putting green, and a range arranged tea and a short game area at the end for the high schoolers. If we can get all that stuff too, it's a total slam dunk. We were able to do it, but nobody ever really

asked about the style of the golf course. And so, you know, we had done Raveslow and it had become open to the public, and so there was some Donald Ross golf course that was available in Chicago to the

public golfer. And you know, I grew up playing golf as a public guy, and like I said, looping, and I thought, wouldn't it be cool if we had a seth Rainer style golf course for the public golfer who will never get invited to Chicago Golf Club, will never see Shore Acres, would never see Camargo or Blue Mound or something like that. I have no idea what that is.

Wouldn't it be a cool and I don't really mean to sound pompous, but wouldn't be a cool gift to give the public golfer that style of architecture, and so we just kind of started down the road quietly. And it wasn't until very late in the design process that Brett Barcell, who was a director golfer in a very sharp fella, looked at me and said, you know, the sixteenth toal seems an awful lot like a beer itz.

I think we're laying it out. It was being staked, or maybe it was even shaped at that point, but I think it was after construction had started, but I could be wrong. And I said, you know, Brett, it is and of course, being a modern golf professional, and he understood the marketing value of it, that they are the guys who have a publicly accessible rainer slash McDonald's more rainer obviously, and he said, this is great. So this really is a reverse for Dan and this really

is the road hole? Uh? And I said yep, and yep, and this is the Eden and this is a double punch bowl and anyway, so it went on and on, and there's one variation in there and that you know, the astute listeners and architectural geeks will pick, and that's the ninth hole, which is more of a tenth of Riviera. But at two hundred, and I guess it goes three

or five from all the way back. There's a lot going on in the Green complex, but that's kind of the only one that's not a double plateau or kind of one of the archetype Ross or later McDonald.

so much fun. And the one I stuck on was nine, and it's not really the the driveable Riviera tenth, but it's of that flavor. It's kind of a combination of Riviera at ten and a couple other holes. The sixth green from Piping Rock, but that's a wonderful hole. I love the punch bowl, the completely new a Labith hole is the one really big boy hole on the back. Nine kind of looks like the Edward Monk screaming face

as you stand at it from the fairway. And I love the double punch bowl on thirteen, which is it's not a great punchbowl in the front, but it's not a deep one, but you know, you get that flavor. Fifteen is fifteen turned out to be a pretty good hole. But we're kind of handstrung by the drains considerations and some of the permitting issues in Cook County and webs

anywhere in the metro area. There's a whole bunch of water that we have to take down from the west of the property, and so we might have liked to do a little bit something different in front of the green there, but it's a fun little part. Five, sixteen, seventeen a fabulous sixteens maybe a little bit too difficult. Seventeen maybe a little bit easy, but it's a nice balance. And then eighteen is a very very soft Alps hole,

which not a lot of folks pick up on. We hid the front right part of the green with a mound right in front of a bunker, which, of course is a modern no no to intentionally hide a bunker, but you know, that school of architecture is anything but modern. And so while I would have loved to do a full on Alps with a twelve foot high or fifteen foot high mound in front of green, it's public golf

and you can't. You know, I would have felt really scared about intentionally hiding people from view and the dangers that come with that. So we did kind of a soft three to two kind of Alps team. But I don't know what a favorite it is. There's there's some really really good ones out here, though, and I'm awful proud of that work.

play it last fall. I walked it, you know, three three and a half hours with and uh, you know it's a it's just you know, template golf for the public, which is super cool.

But Jim and I became partners formally about a decade or so ago on Pacific Gales, and it's one of those projects where, for example, I was, along with lots of other guys, I was interviewed and walked around Bandon Dunes before it was Bannon Dune's Mike and I and the aforementioned Bob Spence. Bob and I were going to be a design team along with I think everybody in the business probably was interviewed and walked the property, so it's not as if we were special by any stretch.

But I remember thinking to myself, for I should just sleep on Mikes stares in order to be involved in

this project. But it turns out that that Jim Haley hired a fellow named Jeff Knapp, and it turns out they became good friends and still are, and we all are, and Jeff's family has a couple of ranches on the Oregon coast very similar to the property at Bandon Done, and after much effort and considerable expenditure, we've gotten to the point where we have a of I don't want to used too much hyperbole, but its golf course on

the Pacific coast. When we're done, it's it's very very good, and anybody who's seen the pictures looks at it and thinks, wow, I want to be part of that, and anybody who's on site. We've had a lot of very smart people on site, and there have been some really heavy hitters who tried to acquire the property along the way. But my partner Jim has a great relationship with family and

that's how that's why we're involved. We've gotten to the point where for folks who love golf and understand that this may be once in a generation opportunity to be involved in golf, that is maybe as good as anything on this planet. And I jin's been around the block, and I'm not a complete rookie, but it's very very good.

I've had guys tell me, boy, if I could have been involved in Bandon, dudes like I could become a founder at Pacific Gales and you think back twenty five years ago for folks who might have had the opportunity to be involved in Bandon Duds, and obviously nobody was.

It was Mike, Mike's baby. But we have a founder's club at Bandon Dunes that allows folks to you know, have one hundred years of free golf for the family and the likes, to be part of our development team and maybe get to be part of one of the best golf courses on the planet. The physical characteristics of the site are very similar to the first golf course at Bandon Dune's, except we have quite a bit more topography and we have a massive dune, not unlike Tom

Doak's golf course there on the north end. That is it makes the place very very special. So we've been working at it and spending our own money, kind of putting our money where our mouth is for about the last seven years, maybe it's six years, gaining permits and setting this place up for a build which I think will probably start or possibly start Christmas or New Year's about And that's just the first golf course. There may or may not be a second golf course, but it's

the opportunity to be involved in something a special. Frankly, it doesn't come along that often unless you happen to be Bill Core or Ben Crenshaw or Tom Doak or maybe Ki Hands. But this may be better than anything

they've ever had to look at. So Jim and I made a determination that we're going to go all in, and we are and we're very close to getting in to the finish line and are trying to make people aware of the opportunity that they have to jump in our boat and be part of something that's not only really special, but if you've ever been involved in a build, and our guys will have full access to the site like nobody else will besides the media. It's a lot

of fun. It's a lot of fun to be on the ground when these things are getting created, and they just don't come along very often, particularly in this economic environment.

the ocean. It was an awful lot of routing iterations, like you said earlier, walking the golf, walking in the property, trying to figure out a comfortable walk with or without clubs. And that's kind of where we landed at Blacksheet. Is a comfortable walk whether you have clubs or don't have clubs. And obviously the end purposes is to play golf over the ground, but I felt it was really important to add a little drama in terms of sequencing of the

golf holes. You know, as much as ten years ago, I think I talked to Brad Klein over a cocktailer too, and he had just been to Spyglass and we were talking about the gross effect of the routing of Spyglass versus the experiential effect. And I mean gross is overall that grotesque. The experiential effect of playing a tubble where you get to the ocean, you move away from the ocean, you get back to the ocean with a peak, you move away from the ocean. Then at Pebble you're fortunate

enough to finish. So what we tried to do and I think have done very successfully in the routing is give you the big bang and the first t So you're standing on top of the dune looking at the ocean, over looking at ninth and the eighteenth green. You know, we may kind of have that same intimatesical space created. I don't know if you ever played it crowded by the clubhouse. I want you crowded by the dune and the ocean as much as that's possible, a kind of

by a negative space that is the ocean. And then the first green plays out to a promontory with a skyline, you know, infinity green. And then to move away from the ocean and get some views of Humbug Mountain and the coastal range. And then you come back into some quieter away from the ocean space and into some wetland areas that are just stunning. And then we line the

up with the Portford Lighthouse. You get back to the ocean, fool around with the dunes, and we're it's a good enough site that we're able to finish both nines on the ocean play a couple of holes on top of sixty sixty five foot high dunes right overlooking the ocean. And so I'm not one hundred percent sure that we've got that we've squeezed every ounce of joy and drama out of the routing, but it's really really good and somewhat three theatrical, and people are absolutely just going to

love the experience. And we were able to put the clubhouse on the ocean so you can hang out and have a cocktail of your choice, and we felt that was really important to differentiate ourselves from Bandon, and obviously Abandons the yardstick by which any resort is measured alone a resort that's within twenty miles of band in which we will be. We're only twenty five minute drive away, so there's going to be obvious comparisons, and we know that. So we made the determination that we need to be

a little different than they are. The business plan is a little different. We want to be smaller and quieter. We won't ever have as much golf as they do, but style wise, we need this golf course to be a little different and routing. As much as I love the decision that Mike May did not put the clubhouse on the ocean, we think that's an important part of creating our own space and creating our own unique character at Pacific Gales.

We didn't want to be perceived as the seventh golf course over there, as wonderful as that would be we need to take a different path to be successful and attract people in our own right rather than just relying on them spilling over from band And we're very confident that people will want to come see us and stay

with us and then also go see Banded. I know that's a that's a pretty bold statement to make, but you know the team we've got between Troy Russell, who was abandoned for the construction of for the first Boor golf courses, Jim obviously was there very early on, and like I said, I'm not a total beginner, but those guys have an awful lot more experience in that environment

than I do. But we're just ridiculously thrilled to have fought through all of the obstacles that were placed in LA and gotten to the point where we're able to welcome folks into our founders Club, which is which is kind of interesting. You know. Jim and I talked about it ten years ago when he was working in London, and he said, no, we need to be able to

do something. He called it the European model, which was just kind of a placeholder name, but it got us both thinking about, you know, a private club within a public operations model, and you know, kind of the UK model where there are clubs that you different clubs that use the same real estate. And it turns out Mike Keiser beat us to the punch. He used the same

model up and Valley to populate his Founder's Club. And historically, you know, I just talked about spy Glass Hill, but spy Glass Hill, the great Samuel Morse used kind of a founder's club to fund his construction. It worked out pretty well for them. They had his two hundred guys had I think fifty years of the first five or sixty times every day is what they gave away. And that round it. And I think or somebody called that

like the best deal in golf. And while you know, our Pacific El's Founder Club, it offers an awful lot more value value than they did at as spy Glass Sell. I'm not sure we're the best dealing golf, but I'm not sure that we're not the best deal in golf. It's historically people are going to look back at this once the doors are shut and once we've reached our thresholds. You know, geez, I can't believe I didn't get involved

in that. I'm not going to say it's like Apple when it was you know, selling at twelve or Microsoft, because you know, the profit motive is not there. But to be involved in something the special is is rare. Indeed, you know once in a generation or two even you know, who knows whether we're going to do the last Yell on the Pacific Coast for you know, maybe ever the it's very very difficult these things permitted.

So we're going to fire a couple overrated, underrated and uh, anybody that's interested in Pacific Gales, I'll throw a link in the podcast on the page for the website and I think all the infos on there.

and he's clearly an enormous talent. But I unless he's putting really, really well, I'm not sure he has the horsepower to be that good over the course of a couple of decades. But of course, you know, he'll probably win fifteen of him and and prove me wrong, and I hope he does. It would be fun to watch.

mean they still are really good at it. I mean they're there, but they aren't as good is you know, the elite. So next one, center line bunkers, like.

that didn't exist before. And you were criticized by you know, a member or two for placing the bunker in the middle of the fairway, when in fact, oh we really did was add new fairly opposite and so that's a hard that's a hard one for folks to get their head around, not unlike mounds within a bunker. Mm hm, oh that's unfair. Well, you know, if it's a long finger in the bunker, it's perfectly fine to some folks.

But yeah, I in the right situation you have with particularly on a second shot in the par five, which I think is probably the most ignored shot in architecture, I think they can be used really, really effectively in that scenario.

more foul less now than when fouls designed it. H If you can't get there, and almost nobody can, it's definitely worth a couple hours of Google Earth, just kind of drooling over some of the little feature that have been created in the square corners and the greens and uh, boy, what is that five or is that four? That was low? Is wonderful, but that's not fair. So I don't know. I I love, I loved, I loved Glenn Club. That's that's a pretty good one too. And like I said,

it's a that's a great space. I'm sure I'm choking my guts out, but I I'm drawing a blank beyond that.