I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset. When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset. And when I find my ball in.
A bride Egg Friday Egg, the dreaded Frida Egg, Frida Egg, Frida Egg Egg, fridagg Bride Egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the hump course. Welcome to the Friday Egg Golf Podcast. I'm Garrett Morrison, and today my co host Andy Johnson and I are doing a Sand Valley Dream eighteen. That means we're picking out our favorite holes from the Sand Valley Resorts, five courses at each number.
Those courses now include Corn Crenshaw's Original Sand Valley, David McLay Kids, Mammoth Dunes, Corn Crenshaw's Sandbox Short Course, Tom New Sedge Valley, and on the private side, the recently
opened recreation of CB McDonald's Ledo. There has been a lot happening at the Sand Valley Resort lately, a ton of new projects with a lot of architectural interest, and over the past several months, Andy and I have both spent a lot of time in Wisconsin keeping track of what's going on, so we thought it would be a good time to take stock Dream eighteen style and really talk about the resort in depth. Now, before we get to that, a quick word from our partner for this episode,
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I don't eat that well, I don't do the things that I need to do in order to stay healthy. But bringing these ag One travel packs with me has allowed me to maintain at least that routine while I'm on the road. So if you want to take ownership of your health, it starts with ag one. Try ag one and get a free one year supply of Vitamin D three, K two and five free AG one travel packs with your first purchase. Go to drinkag one dot com slash the fried Egg. That's drink ag one dot
com slash the fried Egg. Check it out and let's get going with the Sand Valley Dream Made Team.
All Right, we're back. We're doing the first ever podcast live podcast with two participants from the shed.
We're both in the shed.
Yeah. The shed, for those that don't know, is I record out of like a simple garden shed. We've made some improvements inside the shed, but you know, one of the big improvements now we can have two people on here. How do you like it, Garrett.
I'm very impressed by the shed. I see that it might be called Sheddy Hacket.
I think that's my name is as signs on the outside. You probably didn't catch it. It says shed quarters.
It says shed Quarters. Oh sure, well I've seen pictures of that before. But yeah, I mean it's it's very nice inside, it's well appointed. You have really great art on the walls. Right behind your head is a what appears to be a signed picture of Lee Westwood next to a photo of a relatively obscure bulls center.
Probably yeah, it's it's I have a collection of very mediocre bulls, signed bulls, big men.
So that's that's Michael.
That's Michael Sweetney Ford who could forget? Also have Tyrus Thomas, the same person that sent Sheeddy Hackett and shed Quarters uh sent these all these all.
This great stuff. Yeah, there's a Sabotini picture, of course, and people have probably seen pictures of it of it online, but once you're inside, you realize there's a good amount of room in here, and it's actually really nicely laid out. I'm not sure if you cleaned up before I came. There's even a chair for your daughter right there, and so you've you've got it all set up. I'm pretty impressed.
Well, we'll get to what we're going to talk about. But it was, I have a three year old, and you know, she's discovered TV and understands what TV is, and recently, you know, I had I had to. I was, I had a lot of work to do, and I had the three year old and I brought her out here and I have a TV in here, and I
put the TV on. I put one of her shows on, and you know, she's really into the show Gabby's Dollhouse, and and she she like, you know, just in that excited, yelling child voice, was like, your TV gets Gabby Stallhouse too.
The shed, TV, Yeah gets Gabby's Dollhouse. What else can you ask for?
Now? She's always asking to come out to the shed, you know. So so anyways, yes, the shed. Uh, this is a this is a landmark moment in the history of Friday golf podcasts. So anyways, we're gonna talk. We're not talking about the shed for this podcast.
No, that's not the topic of this podcast.
Garrett, you spent you had two big trips to Sand Valley this year. It's a place that I've been a number of times, just my Midwest roots and you know, real quick anecdote story that I always like think about is the first Fried Egg golf trip as a business, as an entity, the first you know kind of trip that I went on. I went with some buddies and we played Sand Valley during their first year's preview play
and they were operating out of a trailer. I think there was twelve holes available of the Sand Valley golf course and it was just just piles of sand everywhere you drove in, you parked by the trailer. It was really cool experience. But I think about it all the time as like that was where like that version of what we're what we do days of the of the podcast the company and I wrote it. I wrote an article about about the place, and it was just one
of the first trips. And now every time I go back, I see all these new buildings, all these things are working on. It's a super super impressive build out and resort that's just continuing to get better every year that the Kaisers are behind. Michael and Chris the Sun's own
it and this year they're adding to New Court. They added Lido this year that's tangentially connected to the resort that offers resort play and Sedge Valley, which I get to play all eighteen holes of last month that will be opening next year, which will be in a tremendous addition to the resort. So with you having visited a couple times this year, me having been there again this year, we figured we might do a little dream eighteen, similar to what we did with Bandon Dunes a couple of
years ago. So with the winter ahead, I figure we can do Dream eighteen and some in depth course talks about one of the most heavily trafficked US golf resorts.
Right, I mean too large populations. It's more accessible than Bandon Dunes, and if you think about it, like it. It might seem premature to do a Dream eteen for Sand Valley, but if you think about it, we did a dream ateen for Bandon Dunes, drawing from the five eighteen whole courses that existed there at the time. And now when you look at Sand Valley, we included the sandbox in our Dream eighteen and there are five courses to draw from. It's kind of unbelievable how quickly this
resort has expanded. If you look at the Google Earth imagery, and anybody can do this, you need to download the Google Earth app. But if you look at how things have developed since twenty seventeen, basically twenty sixteen when they started building Sand Valley to now like it's just exploded. There was nothing there before, absolutely nothing but trees, right and sandy soil. You could see some blowouts.
Some ATV tracks too. It was a popular ATV destination. Craig Caltam found the land and Craig is a golf architect in his own right, really up and coming golf architect in his own right, and then he got involved with the Kaisers and this thing came to came to life, right.
Yeah, he found the land and they've moved really quickly in developing the resort and they're even building I'm not sure how much we can talk about this, but they're building a family course out there too, or what Michael Kaiser refers to. It's. Yeah, as the commons, it'll be a not quite a par three course, but also not quite a regulation course, and it'll be a little more subtle and not a lot of bunkers, is how I understand it, And so that should be pretty interesting to see as well.
Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's fascinating too because obviously, like I think the Sandbox in my opinion, and I think you share this opinion from what you've written about it in our in club TF and you're right up there, but I think this is that the Sandbox is probably the greatest part three course that I've ever played.
I agree with that. I don't think you played bandon Preserve. Yeah, we were there for a few days and we didn't play it, which was a bit of a miss. But if you have there, if you had been there with us, you would have understood why we missed Band and Preserved. We had things to do. But I have played Band and Preserve, and a lot of people would refer to that as the best Part three course that they've ever played,
and it's certainly more spectacular. It sits on a piece of land that a normal course could not have occupied, and it's really beautiful and striking. But in terms of design, the Sandbox is I think on another level, and it is, yeah, the best Part three course I've played for sure.
Yeah, so let's get into it. We will do a selection. Garre and I each have different lists. There probably is a lot of overlap.
There's probably a good amount of overlap. We sat here in the shed and we came up with them sort of on the spot, So I'm not going to make any great claims that this is like perfectly refined here. And we also talked about a couple of holes, and so we may have been influencing each other. So we'll be thinking it through as we go along, for sure.
I always tell people with these types of exercises, it's similar to like, what's your favorite golf course? But with dream eighteens, I could do one of these tomorrow and the results would be different, right, Like you're you're just like, oh, kind of. It depends on your mood and different things. I recently, for the upcoming Dream Golf magazine that they send out, I did a Dream eighteen for all resorts, so it was kind.
Of expert Oh yeah, this is just what you do.
Yeah, that's all I do. All I do is Dream eighteens. But but so, yeah, this was fun. I really enjoyed this. Who what's your whole one?
I went with sand Valley, but I don't feel super strongly about it. I feel like I could have picked one at Sandbox, which is kind of a fun hole in one op crazy yeah, and we One of my great memories from our visits there this past summer was standing there with Matt Ruschius and Cameron Hurtis, who worked for a Friday Golf, and Matt started just throwing golf balls from the tee at this first hole and using the contours to kind of feed them in. Now, he
he has more arm speed than I do. Matt. Matt is a young buck.
He can he can up more elasticity, a little more elasticity. He's into yoga too, so you know.
He's Yeah, he's an athletic young man. And he was able to get that golf ball kind of sailing down there. But it was really cool to watch the ball sort of feed in. And the different ways that you could approach this hole.
Well, with that front pin on the sandbox, you can use the right side and put it. You can put it and funnel it in there.
You could use the left side even maybe not with a putter, but there's.
Lots of you putt it around the like little burm on the right, and the putt will funnel right into the hole.
And here we are talking about a hole that's not even on my dream eighteen. But I may have just talked myself into it. Sand Valley, the first hole is really cool. You've got a big hazard, you know, sandy waste area up the left, and you've got a kind of platform green with a couple of sections to it,
and it's a very friendly opening hole. It's fairly short, but there is a line of charm along the hazard, and if you decide to bite off a little bit more of that than you should, then you can get in trouble on this first hole.
I think it's just a great opening tee shot in the sense of nobody's ever really comfortable on the first tee. I think I feel like, more so than a lot of places at this at this golf course, you might go to the first tea without hitting golf balls. I don't know. The range is kind of hard far away.
Well, the range is right there now.
Well they have sometimes that range is open. I don't know the exactly that's true.
I haven't seen many people hitting balls out.
There, so they have they I don't know if the warm up range still exists there. You know it it was there, and you know, forgive me, I haven't been I haven't played Sand Valley in a couple of years. But anyways, what I love about that tea shot is that it really tests you right off the bat, right You have to be very comfortable and and really make a great swing to hit a great tea shot there, and it's right off the bat it then if you hit a great tea shot presents like a great birdie opportunity.
If you get into the wrong spot, you could be struggling on a short par four to make par right. And like I think, one of the things I do really love about Sand Valley is the it's just the sand itself. The bunker sand is the native sand there. It is not the court that like very bright white pro angle sand that the ball just like pops out of right. You have to hit good bunker shots to succeed at Sand Valley. You have to figure out how to play a how to play out of the sand
because it's heavier. One thing that I kind of on my last visit figured out was having more bounce on my wedge. Going from you know, my sixty degree is a very low bounce sixty degree that I usually use out of the sand. I went to fifty six with more bounce, and that really helped me in the bunkers because.
The sand is kind of soft, yeah, so often having a sharp leading edge might dig in it exactly. I mean, that's a good point.
So I switched to that and it really helped me. But this is the thing, when you get into these into these waste bunkers or just natural bunkers, that sand is an adjustment and it's it makes it difficult, and all of a sudden you could make a bogie on a short part four that you feel like you should make a birdie. I love it. It sets the tone also with all these golf courses for anybody, you know, I think anybody. One of the things you have to get used to really early is the pace at which
these golf courses play. They are firm and fast and noting nothing is dicier than hitting like half ledges into an elevated green. To get to get used to that it is, I don't I think it's like a warm handshake in the sense you can make a birdie. But I don't think it's a warm handshake. It does not make you feel comfortable when you walk off the first hole at Sand Valley.
Yeah, there's definitely some peril on the hole, so yeah, it's it does its job as an opening hole. And if you get in trouble on that hole, then you have two coming up, which is gonna punch you in the mouth pretty much. No matter what. That's a tough hole at Sand Valley.
What's your second hole?
You kind of gotta you kind of gotta make your hay on the first hole. So my second hole is at Sedge Valley, So this hole is so clever. The first two holes at Sedge occupy kind of a different portion of the property than the rest of the course occupies.
Right.
The course really gets going on the third hole, where you're getting into the main part of the site that most of the course is in. And so the first couple of holes might kind of seem like a warm up. You know, you could play them as a loop because they just kind of go out and back, and the land that they're on is like not the best land at SAJ. I would say, I'm not sure how much Doakes Team shaped it, but you know, there's some topographical
interest out there. It's just not quite as magical as the rest of the property.
You know when you move from two to three that you've entered a new space exactly.
Yeah, you're very aware that this is sort of the dramatic beginning of the golf course, and the first two holes were sort of a you know, like an overture at the beginning of a symphony. I'm not even sure if that's the right term. So my apologies to the music nerds out there. In any case, two is such a clever hole, Like it's so well designed and the green is so cool. So you know, the thing that I really like about this hole is that the fairway
is super wide. But a really good shot, a really good t shot is pretty specific.
Yeah, and it varies based off of how far you hit it, because absolutely, because the feature of the fairway runs on a diagonal.
And that feature is a hogsback sort of.
And the direct a mound in the middle that cuts on a diagonal and deflex balls right or left.
Yeah, like a like a ridge, and it can deflect balls left, but it deflects them most sharply to the right, and the b line to the hole. The shortest route to the green is along the right side of the fairway, sort of right along the edge of the ridge in the fairway. And so if you get aggressive, if you say I'm going to hit this ball toward the green to try to get the shortest approach possible, then you
could end up way down to the right. You're still going to be more or less in the fairway, maybe sort of on the edge of some rough grass and a little bit of scrub down there, but you're gonna be totally blind. You're gonna have no reference points for where you're supposed to hit this approach, and the green is tricky like there are some runoffs, and there are some little areas that you can get in trouble in there. There's a really wonderful kind of hidden bunker right in
the back of the green. The shaping is just beautifully executed, which you sort of expect from renaissance golf design anytime they do a course, And so I think this hole is really clever and makes great use of a piece of the property that might not otherwise be that compelling.
Yeah, I love that hole. It would probably be my runner up for the second hole. My picks sand Valley. I'm sticking with Sand Valley. That second hole is so disorienting. I think that's probably what I love most about it. You're hitting, you know, a driver, Some longer hitters are going to hit less than a driver to a spot, and then you're going to have If you play up to the left, you'll have a look at the green,
but you have a longer approach. If you play down to the right, you have a shorter approach and a blind shot to probably the least forgiving green on maybe outside a liedo on the property where you have sharp runoffs around it, and it's a big part four. You really have to hit two great shots there. And I just I love that the way it kind of moves along the land. It kind of plays down into a ridge and back up to a ridge. It snakes around it,
and it's just a really great hole. So let's move on to three.
What's your whole three?
I'm gonna go with the sandbox.
Of course. What's your whole three? And why is it the sandbox? That is really the question there? This is a this is they call it a double plateau, but it's it's really a maiden. There's no reason to be pedantic about that. But it's like two big platforms.
It's a striking green. Such a striking green. It's so fun. It's I think it's about seventy yards. You can hit so many varieties of shots. You can try and run it up. It's a terrifying when the when the green, When the pins on one of the two ridges on a two high plateaus, back right or back left, it's
a terrifying shot. It's extremely hard to hit it up there. Again, you're hitting like a you know, like a soft wedge into a really firm and fast green, and that's like one of the it's just you you have to make decisions. You want to kind of bounce it up into there? Do you want to land it on top? It's just a really fun shot. And I think this is like I've been thinking about this a lot. That's a green that's perfectly acceptable on a par three course. It's very similar.
I feel like it's very similar to some greens that Walter Travis built.
I agree, and that seth Rayner built, but but the style and the boldness and the sheer height of the platforms in the back kind of remind you of Walter Travis or Caparundle or wherever, or.
Like country Club Troy, and like those greens, I don't think if it was a non par three course that like corn Krenshawk would build that green. And I just like wonder about like the state of golf architecture to where like that's unacceptable because it's like it's a perfectly legitimate shot and then if you're up there, you have like basically a flat putt and a really good look, but it rewards a great shot and like Walter Travis
was putting these greens on long par fours. Yeah, and here we are like, it's only acceptable if it's a seventy r par three. So I don't think you would see that green anywhere on a dream golf resort property outside of like the Lido, which is a private club loosely associated. That type of green would not exist at a dream golf property unless it's par three course, and I don't think that's necessarily great for golf architecture.
I agree a couple of things about the green. A couple of things that Bill Corr has said about the green said, I think on this very podcast a few years ago when you went out to Sand Valley for the opening Sam he called it called them match boxes, Yes, which is just a delightful class Bill cor Ism.
Two match boxes under the green.
I need, you know, I need Bill Corr to be writing my material on these golf courses because he always has some analogy like that that he uses to describe the features that they're building, and I think that one is spot on. And then the other thing that he said about it is that you know, he wanted to build this kind of green for a long time. He and Jim Craig. Jim Craig shaped a lot of the greens at the Sandbox and was really one of the
biggest architectural driving forces behind this course. He and Jim Craig had wanted to build a green like this for a while but had never really had an opportunity. And so to your point, I think the reason that they didn't have an opportunity previously to build a green like this is that they kind of weren't allowed to on
a regulation course. But here they had the freedom to let their freak flag fly a little bit and you look at it and you're like, yeah, this could be on a short part four and it would be great, right, But somehow or another, we're too serious when it comes to regulation courses.
That's what I don't get, is like just in general, right, like you heard like Gil Hands talk about how he felt liberated to build more bold greens at a Whoopie because it was you know, there wasn't stroke course. Yeah, yeah, because it wasn't. And it's like, why why have we
gotten to this this fair police? And especially if anything, I feel like society should be emboldened by the you know, golf architecture society and developers should be emboldened by the praise of Liedo because that is as severe as it gets. And and that kind of plays into my fourth hole. I'm going with the channel hole at Liedo. I don't know what you picked.
I wrote down the channel hole. I think there are a number of good fourth holes last the resort, but yeah, I mean, how can you not pick the channel hole here and tell people what the channel hole is? So like, this is a famous golf hole in the history of golf architecture, and.
I think, like, honestly, like I was thinking about recently, I wrote something on Colorado Golf Club and I was talking a little bit about the familiarity of Corn Crunshaw designs. They use effectively adapted versions of the channel hole. You know, Wikipa has one Colorado Golf Club Colorado with the sixteen. Yeah. Sam Valley has a couple yeah, twelve as sand Valley would be a modified version of this channel hole or similar. So the whole idea about the channel hole. So it's
a par five, it's reachable if you go to the right. Really, so there's two distinct angles of play a right side of the fairway, which is I think about thirty twenty five to thirty yards wide. It is the more aggressive play. It is surrounded by sand. If you play to the left, it's a wider landing area, but a longer shot ind so you're you're kind of conceding for most hitters that it's going to be a three shot hole. There's a there's a.
Long carry to the right. To the aggressive fair.
There's a longer carry and it's a more narrow landing area. Water runs along the left side and then cuts in front. So if you had a bad t shot and you find one of the many the copious amounts of waste area, then carrying the water on your neck shot becomes a
very big chore. So the penalty specifically for going to the right if you miss the fairway is you're gonna probably you'll end up in waste area, and then it's a questionable situation as to whether you get over the water, which is a huge, huge advantage because that's the difference between a long iron into a par five or a wedge into a par five.
And you shouldn't try to get over the water if you miss the fairway on this hole. Well, it depends on speak from experience that on that one.
You get a lot of like ROPI lies because it's waste. It's like, you know, it's like being in beach sand and you can end up in a footprint, could be being native. So anyways, then you know that, so you're severely advantaged. You're greatly advantaged going right, and then it becomes like maybe a reachable hole. The hole the green is fronted by a very deep bunker. So it's it's a great hole.
It is a great hole. It's a harsh hole, you.
Know, so welcome Toledo.
Right in certain wind conditions, it's going to be a tough one for a lot of golfers.
I played it into the wind, and I I hit as good of a drive I was playing the white teas in tom Doaks. Event I hit as good of a drive and as good of a three wood as I could get hit, and I got there. But like that was like five hundred yards and I mean I absolutely hammered both of them and you went you went down the right side, down the right side. Yeah, Like I mean, so if you're playing it into the wind, it is it is brutal.
It's a beast and yeah, I mean I've made something like a twelve on this hole, but I don't hold that against the hole. It was my own fault. But there is an aspect to this hole that is really kind of penal.
Right.
The drive is definitely classically strategic, even if you just choose to go to the left, or if you can only play to the left. The fairway is on a diagonal and you can kind of choose how much of it to bite off. But then from there it's a steeplechase hole. Right, you have to hit over a big water hazard and then you have to hit up onto a high barricaded green and so there's something that's very
kind of old fashioned about the hole. You don't see holes being built like this in Yeah, you didn't see many holes like it in the nineteen twenties being built. There are forced carries, and if you get off the garden path on this hole, you're in really big trouble and probably the best play is usually just to kind of chip out and sort of start over. And so it's a it's a very harsh hole, but obviously extremely impressive and memorable. And you can just imagine that the
original Lido this being right there on the channel. I mean, kind of a spectacular act of golf architecture, very daring.
Yes, all right, whole five. What do you got?
I chose Sedge Valley.
I have that too.
I think this is a it's a ridge to ridge par three. It's the beginning of a stretch at Sedge Valley of some holes that are in really interesting kind of severe land. Maybe not severe, might not be the right term for it, but it's kind of like the features back there in this portion of the property are sort of small. They accommodate small holes, and so you've got four small holes in a row a part three, a short part four, followed by two more Part.
Three, and then a short part four right after that. Yeah, so it would be, you know, a kind of almost five a stretch of five holes that are sub three twenty.
And it's a magical piece of property. I really love it. Obviously. One of the points of Dok's routing is that it gets you to this property and lets you sort of explore it, and so these holes are really fun.
It kicks off this stretch of holes that just flies by, and all of them are shorter holes that are so different from the other.
Yes, and so you can see that they put a lot of work into making these holes distinct from each other, because if you have like so many short holes and so many par three's all in a row, then one of the dangers potentially is that the holes kind of blend together. But they definitely don't do that. They're very distinct in their concepts and their green contours and everything like that. This green, in particular on the fifth hole
is super memorable. It's kind of a boomerang shape reverse boomerang in relation to the tee, and it's got these platforms on the left and the right and a lower section in the middle, and some really artistically presented bunkers around that kind of remind me of like McKenzie bunkers, the way that Alistair mackenzie would bunker a green that's set into a hillside like this one. It reminded me of that. And one thing that I heard about it is that Tom Doak himself actually shaped a lot of
this green complex. That's what I heard from one of the employees at the Sand Valley Resort on the agronomy team, that he kind of disappeared for a few days and just went to work on this green and it's it's quite something. It's really cool.
Yeah. What I love about the green too, just from the par three standpoint, it's a short par three that can play really easy when the holes in the front middle bowl, and then if you put it on either the back right wing or the back left wing, it
becomes very challenging. And I just love the ability to kind of have a hole that is really malleable where it could play, you know, a short par three that could play two point seventy five or three point twenty five on a given day, right, like where you have that big swing by moving the hole, you know, fifteen feet left or right.
Yeah, that's the way to introduce variety into a into a par three strategy, and and some motivation to play the course multiple times. All right, whole six, hule six, What do you have for whole sex.
I've got Mammoth. It is the famous boomerang green.
So another Boomerang green two sort of Yeah, I come to think they're flipped. Yeah, so, because yeah, exactly if you'd like turned the boomerang almost one hundred and eighty degrees, then you have kind of the the green at Mammoth.
I picked this. It's just a fun hole. I mean, I think like you get up to it and no matter what, you're like setting sights on the draw on the on the green, and you want to get that ball rolling into the boomerang. Right. The other thing I love is if you don't hit the green, then it's like you're you your mind becomes an imagination, become really activated about how you can hit it close. And it's
not necessarcessarily a direct path. Like you start thinking about the different ways that you can use this green to get different places. And for this golf course, you know, I think that there are a lot of greens that bowl this one, probably.
One definitely does.
This one bowls pretty creatively, and I think that's why I wanted to get it into my routing. I think the sixth hole you could go with so many, there's so many great six holes, but I wanted to throw this one in there and kind of just highlight the creativity of this of this green at Mammoth.
I chose the same one. You know. I think that the sixth hole at Sedge Valley ultimately is probably between the two short part fours that land on number six at the resort, the one it said is the one I prefer, but I also, you know, I think that there are a lot of good holes at Mammoth, and I want to make sure that it's that it's in this routing. It just has some tough competition. But yeah, I mean, part of what I like about the sixth hole at Mammoth Dunes is that you can if you
go at the green. If you make the decision to try to go at the green, then you can get into some trouble along the right side of the wall. If you push it a little bit, you can get into some really bad spots where you can't see the green on your approach, and you could be in some pretty nasty hazards. And so that choice has some stakes to it. If you choose to play aggressively, then you've got to execute. But there's the option to play out
to the left to a big expanse of fairway. Now this fairway isn't necessarily totally visible from the tee, so you kind of have to know the course in order to do it, and I like that right in order to you know, bail out, you have to know the course a little bit and trust your line. And so I like that this hole the different choices have different complexities to them, and so it's a it's a good hole, all right.
Number seven I got Sand Valley. It's the par five, first par five on my routing, and I think it's just a it's a spectacular hole you've got. You're kind of like playing through two big dunes and you have a tremendous center line hazard, and then I just love how this big sweeping hole plays down to this little green tucked into sand dunes.
It's a beautiful green site.
It's so good and it's just an amazing hole. You kind of don't know where you're going, and then you cut crust the hill and obviously you have this spectacular center line bunker. You crust the hill and you're kind of looking down at this little green and you're like, you know, if you're trying to go for it into You're like, you're looking at it as like I got
to hit it on this tiny little green. And it kind of shares that with the next hole or two holes later, the ninth hole, where they have these just these beautiful little greens tucked into these tiny pockets and everything narrows up as you get near it.
This is one of my favorite part fives in the world. I definitely chose it to I think this is the obvious choice here. Seven at Sandbox is one of my favorite holes at that course too, but it doesn't really compete with seven at sand Valley. This is a great, great par five. One feature of it that I love is how after a good drive, if you cut off some of that big bunker, that big waste area that you see off the tee, then you have a couple of choices. There's a fairway that kind of sits over
a hill on the left, but you can't see it. Yeah, you have to trust it, and then there's a more visible fairway to the right. If you hit out to the right, then your angle into the green is substantially worse. It's actually really tricky because the green is pushed up surrounded by hazards and it's not angled in that direction, and so you have to be very precise with your
approach from there. If you go to the left to the blind fairway and you manage to find the fairway over there, then you have a much easier approach and the potential to kind of kick more towards the green. And so yeah, I think I think it just works really well strategically. So yeah, love seven and that green side is just it's it's so beautiful. It's like back in its own little valley, and you don't see that valley until you kind of walk up on it, and
so it's like you're discovering something. And I always like that with a hole, where you know, where you start is nothing like where you end up.
Here's the thing about Sand Valley. As we moved to eight, this was always going to be a par three.
Okay, every day, every hole is a par three.
Every eighth hole is a par three.
How about that?
So which part three did you choose?
I chose the eighth that Mammoth Dunes. Yeah, the main part of the hole that I like, I mean, it's a beautiful, striking hole, Like it's it's one of those picture postcard holes at Mammoth Dune's kind of an island green surrounded by I really nicely sculpted sand hazards and downhill and there's a big view in the back, and you know, it's it's got all the aspects of a
of a hole that the routing was kind of building towards. Right, That's why we're out here on this part of the property is to kind of get to this vista and then after that you turn in and you go somewhere else to kind of find another spectacular portion of.
And it's like it's like if you're on a hike and you get to a spot and then you turn away.
Yeah, this is the location. Yeah yeah, so uh yeah, there's there's that part of it that can't be ignored. You've talked about this before. There are two very different teas on this hole, right.
Well, I think it's just like basically what I love about this hole is the tea box, yeah, which nobody, like nobody ever talks about tea.
The tea boxes. Yeah yeah.
So it's just like the tea moves forward into the left and it's all fairway pretty much. It's pretty much all connected. So what happens is you move forward into the left, it's an island green. It's like a very pure island green. From the back back tee box, which is the furthest right, it's all I think it's about one hundred and ninety yards. I didn't look up the yardage, but you know, if I'm wrong, you can tell me. It's one hundred and ninety yards too, so it's a
it's a challenging shot. The left side will funnel it in a little bit, but you have to hit a good iron shot. As you move forward and to the left, the aspect of island green becomes less and less, and really that's for it accommodates lower and lower trajectories, and when you get to the very forward tee you can run the ball in and the contours allow for a run a shot run in through a pretty narrow strip of faraway which really rewards a precise running shot, and
it'll funnel it right into the every whole location. So I just love the tea boxes here. I think it's just a very creative way. I think like one of the things about short par threes in general and par three's in general, is that they do really favor high ball hitting players, and I think this is a great example of a hole that blends playability into it and really can appeal to all players if they're playing the right t boxes.
Yeah, that's a great point because a lot of short par threes have these small, little pushed.
Up greens which you can't get to if you're unless you can really hit a ball high with spin.
And this is something that I like so much about the sandbox, by the way, that it's full of really short par threes, but you can play all of them pretty much along the ground. There's none that are sort of discriminatory towards players who hit the ball like eighty yards and don't get it much more than a few feet off the ground. And so, yeah, I think that's
a great point. And yeah, I think a lot of Part three's, you know, sometimes courses don't have the space to do what David Kidd did with this Part three, But I wish I saw more par threes with like radically different tea boxes. It's just such a great way to make something that's genuinely challenging for an expert player who might be playing the blue tea's or whatever, and accommodating for somebody who's up with the red teas. You know that that's I think that's a smart, obvious thing
to do that you don't see done that often. All right, nine nine, I think it went the same direction with this short sol on property. Speaking of par three's that you can put.
Yeah, this is this is just a giant, giant green with a big it's almost like, yeah, ninth old sandbox, huge massive green with just a big kitchen sink effectively a drain in the middle. Yeah, that that really bathtub. I mean this hole, I've played it like dozens of times. I think I made one time on it, Like I think I've sayed it.
You can make five on this, yes, and so easily. It's like it's like twenty yards long.
Yeah, it's so short, and it's amazing. It's just an amazing green. I mean, so it's got this like extremely deep depression. You could call it a big punch bowl, but it's got this like effectively just drain that catches everything. If you don't hit a great putt, chip, pitch, flop shot, whatever you choose to play, the balls ending up in this drain and from there it's like an extremely hard two put So it makes this like twenty yard hole, Like it's a hard twenty yard hole. It's an amazing green.
Yeah, it's it's incredible. It's a masterpiece of a green. You have to see it. You can you can only really understand it and conceptualize it if you see it and he walked that green and you see everything that's going on there. It is truly a lot of fun. Also, want to shout out a number of other really good ninth moments are good. Yeah, I love the ninth hole at Mammoth. I think that's one of the best holes on the course. It's a beautiful part four that has a really cool strategic design.
And it's just a great part of the property. Like that's so lovely, so quiet. Yes, you have like you are so far away and you're over that ridge and it's just I've been out there just from shooting. Like out there, especially back in the day when drones didn't have the range they have now.
Yeah, you have to you have to walk away run.
It would be like out there with the sun going down. I remember being out there one really late fall day and it was super crisp. Nobody was out there was probably like thirty eight degrees and it was just an epic place to watch the sun go down.
Yeah, very beautiful. And then the ninth hole at Sand Valley, the short part four that you mentioned earlier is a really excellent hole too.
But nine Alto is gonna be is a really cool short part for it or not nine at Sedge.
At such absolutely yeaheah, Yeah, I only saw that whole kind of shaped in the dirt. So so I'm not I don't. I don't have all that nine at.
Sedge is awesome. It just it's a short for it's really a The smart play is to hit like a a an iron or something short off the tee and then the green pitches away super severely. I love wedg shots into greens that run away, yeah, because it's like, if you don't hit a perfect wedge, you're gonna end up thirty feet away. It really like wedge shots into greens that run away magnify great shots from good shots.
Yeah. It's all about spin control.
Yeah, trajectory spin control every like hitting the right shot, Like you know when when a green runs away with a wedge, you have to hit the right shot, yeah, which is very rare with a wedge in hand.
Absolutely. I like that point because the spin on a way varies so much more widely than spin on other kinds of shots because of the different types of swings that you put on a wedg just not just a full swing every time, and so it can range from really low spin to really high spin. This episode is brought to you by Fat Cork. It is champagne season again. We are approaching the holidays, and Fat Cork is all
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that's fat Cork. Check them out at fatcork dot com slash golf. And let's get back to the episode, all right, onto the nine. Yeah, what did you choose for ten?
I'm curious, I would I don't think it's really much of a question. In my mind, it's the Alps hole. I think this hole, like you think about like the greatest Alps hole in the world. And most people would go to National Golf Links of America, which is the fourth hole at National Golf Links, and I think this is the one that rivals it. It is a spectacular shot. You can play right off the tee, which you want to do, but you have to contend with a series of bunkers that you can't really see.
Yeah, you can't see them, Yeah, actively cannot.
And if you get it up the right, you have a you'll get a view of every I played a far, far left pin and I got it up there and I had a view of it.
Yeah, if you hit it long enough, you have to you have to get it out there a ways in order to see the green around around the big Alps feature of the hill.
If you hit a safe shot, you will not see anything. It is a massive, massive hill that will impede your view of this green. That's really fun. It's got backstops and everything. It is a spectacular golf hole. Spectacular.
It is probably the best tenth hole at the resort. You say, there's no doubt about it, and yeah, I but but I was looking for balance in my dream eighteenth and I have something coming up.
I got a lot of lido coming on the back exactly.
I have some representation coming up from the lido very very soon. So I ended up going with the tenth hole at Sand Valley Good, which is a par five. This is a kind of classic corn Crenshaw par five. There is some kind of template or habit here that corn Crenshaw use on their par fives. It's got a
center line bunker. You know, it reminds me a little bit of like the third hole at Bandoned Trails or something like that, where you've got a mid length par five, you know, mid five hundreds or so, maybe up to six hundred from the back tee, and you know, maybe some longer players can reach the green from the tee, but it's really all about like how close can you get to the center line of this hole, because they're just hazards all the way up the center line of
the hole. And here, basically you have a choice between a low left fairway and a high right fairway and then from there you play into this green. And this is what really makes the hole for me, how beautifully sighted there, Like it's just you walk around there and you're like, this is this is the most beautiful part
of this property. Weirdly enough, even though it's like not spectacular or anything, it's just kind of pressed into this little knoll where there are a couple of greens and a couple of teas clustered, and.
There's some pretty trees too.
Yeah, some like old dead trees, like sort of craggy and gnarly, and it's just there's something about that green site that's just so well executed, the shaping that they did that.
Back too from it when you're because it's just comes down that hill and it's it's it's a massive hole, right.
And I'm not going to claim that it's like the same level of strategic design as Tenant Leedo, Like clearly in that sense that hole is is superior. But the tenth hole at Sand Valley is just one of those holes where you kind of look around for a second and you realize this is incredibly spectacular golfing terrain that this course occupies, and you almost start underrating that as you play the course because you get used to it. But it's so beautiful back there and it's sandy and wonderful.
You're making concessions.
Yeah, we've got we've got some visitors outside the shed right now, this is part of the magic of the shed. Cameron Hurd has just poked his head up there. He wants to be on the podcast. He wants to be an influencer. He can open the door. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah, just chilling all.
Right, eleven, I what do you have? Do we have the same? Do we have?
I'm doing?
Yeah?
This is where this is where I'm going to start a mini run of Lido. This green is just like a work of genius I have, you know, I don't even know how to describe it. But I don't know, like maybe we should talk about the rest of the whole too, but I just go straight to the green. It's got like these speed bumps in it. It's got a little speed bump in front of the green, and it's got a speed bump kind of midway or towards the back.
The backpin is terrifying, And it's another green where you're hitting a wedge in where if you want to get to the backpin, you have to hit an absolutely perfect wedge. Yeah, because if you're in most people are going to end up short with a backpin because there's water and a deep bunker behind that you know.
That run off behind into the water. So if you're a little bit long, you're you're running off into the water.
So you know long's dead. So you end up pulling up and you end up five yards short. Well, there's like a big ridge that brings your ball back and then all of a sudden you have to deal with this delicate up and over putt to the and it becomes then, oh, this is a hard two putt for me to get out of here with the part, even though I hit a really good wed shot into this par four. And then the front pin's so fun because you got kind of like a backstop and it's just
like the malleability of the way this hole. And then if you move the pin over way over right, it's kind of like a shallow, wide green, which I think works really well for a shortish part. Four.
Yes, yeah, everything about this green is so creative and cool and it's pretty simple. Right, you've got and when I say speed bump, I mean literally imagine a speed bump on a road. That's what this green has running through kind of its middle back section perpendicular to the line of play. Right, and then there's a little role in the middle, and so it forms kind of like a T, right, a t of raised contours and it
just defines these different sections of the green. As you say, the different portions of this green play really differently and kind of like you know, ask interesting questions for each you know, area of the green that the pen might be. So it's it's just a really cool one, all right for eleven No. Twelve twel Yeah, I'm staying at Alito.
You're going with the punch bowl.
It's the punch bowl. You don't even know it's a punch bowl until you get to the green.
Then, well, a keen player, and this is why I hate big flags. I think that big flags, giant flags for punch bowl green should be eradicated from golf. Your big flag hitter, I am because keen players, smart players, wise golfers, which golf should always be rewarding people who are paying attention. After you play, when you play four, you could poke your head over there and see where the pin is.
Yeah, I mean something about the routing of the lido is that that's the first on each nine.
You know what they didn't have in nineteen twenty big flags. They have big flags for punch ball.
Did they have poles that mark the that mark where the green is.
I don't know, I don't know.
I'm sure you know they built big things back then too.
You know this big flags need to go. Okay, all right, that's my number one complain. Stop with the big flags. Everything gets docked, honestly docked presentation because of the big, big flag. Any any golf course with big flags unless like I kind of get busy public course, I kind
of get that. But if you're a club, you should be rewarding your your members who are paying attention, and they should have a huge advantage when they bring guests out as to like, oh, like, I'm like A good example would be the country club, right they have they have big flags in there, and it's like, oh, I could I could just poke my head over and look and see when I'm playing another hole and see where the hole is, and then you know, I know to look there. We need to be rewarding people.
Okay, okay, for for course knowledge and for being observant while they're playing. And you know, the two things I think that listeners know about the eleventh hole or the twelfth hole at the leader of this flag is that it has a big flag and then it's a punch bowl. But maybe I should tell them a couple of more things about the hole. One is that the drive is pretty spectacular. It's a diagonal drive across a water hazard, so bite off is as much as you can chew.
Can I can? I say? It kind of feels like you're playing in Florida when you get on that too. So you don't like this hole, I'm fine with it.
You're a hater.
I like. I like the fairway feature in it that gives it like a kick if you play aggressively. There's like a speed slot to your gaining. Yeah, you're gaining yardage by playing on the diagonal, and then you're also getting a beneficial kick. So you can get down to where I had like a wedge into the screen.
Oh really, yeah, I had like a four iron. But this is the difference between my game and yours. But even the four iron was all right. It was a nerve racking shot. But if you get it up there, it will gather in. The Thing about this green that I think is cool and we can move on to your twelfth hole after this is that it's a combination of as the big flag first of all. Second of all is that it's a combination volcano punch bowl. Right, it's a big built up volcano looking thing, but it's
actually a punch bowl. And I just like that contrast. So what's your twelfth hole? What'd you do?
I got Sedge Valley. You probably didn't see.
I didn't play this whole. Yeah, this hole was one of the ones that was not grassed when I was out there, and maybe not even shaped at that point.
It's an epic green. So it's two hundred and seventy five yards. It would be for the most part of Part three most places, but it's part four. You know, it's friendly. Uh, there's a ton of you don't really see fairway left, but there's tons of fairway over to
the left for people to play over there. From there you have a really weird So the shot of the green's very long and narrow, and it's got a lot of slope and undulation, and there's a built up feature on the left that it kind of so if you're going at the green from the tee, that that feature
is going to funnel your ball into the green. If you're if you play left off the tee, that feature all of a sudden, then you have to really contend with because the green's narrow and you're gonna hit a shot in there that if you catch the backside of that slope, if you catch the slope of it, that's that's corralling your ball off the t. If you catch that slope on your second second shot from the left, it's gonna shoot the ball probably into the bunker over
the green right. So there's it's just this short par four. You know, it's reachable for everybody pretty much if you're playing the proper tea box. I imagine that like the middle t would be two hundred and thirty yards. So if you play left, then you have to deal with this slope. That helps you when you go for the green off the tee and this narrow, really undulated green.
It's just a neat hole, and it's just something like it's an example of like somebody might say, you know what, that green's too much if it's a par three and it's two hundred and seventy five yards, but it being a par four makes it acceptable.
Right, Yeah, that sounds cool.
And also it's just beautiful, like the green's up on this ridge. It's just like you get there and you're like, whoa, Like it's a striking hole as well.
I could have chosen twelve at Sand Valley two. If I were to go back and edit my dream eighteen, I might have switched that with ten at at Sand Valley. I could have gone with either of those holes. And you move some things around move Yeah, well, let's dock it for the big flag, you know, like, screw the big flag. What are we doing here? I still like the twelfth hole of Aledo, but I might like the god I like the thirteen. There's there's a there's a lot of really good holes of Aledo, so you can
you can't really go wrong with thirteen. I was just thinking about this. I chose Mammoth Dunes.
I did too.
It's another really pretty par three and it's it's sort of a hit it or else over a huge sandy valley, and it's just really memorable and nerve racking.
Maybe the most consequential shot at Mammoth Valley or Mammoth Dune or Mammoth Dunes, which is probably why I like it. It's yeah, the one I feel like, the one time you stand one of the few times you stand on the tee and you're like, I really have to hit this shit.
You're nervous because if you miss the screen left or short then or long or long, yeah, because it kind of wraps around.
That back area. Terrible spot.
It's a nerve wracking swing. And you know something that David Kidd says a lot that I find interesting and that part of me wants to disagree with, but I hear where he's coming from, is that in this phase of his design career, one of his big goals is to give players confidence, to make them feel as though
they can swing freely. And that's why players feel so happy on his courses and feel so great after the rounds because they've had this kind of high of being able to play golf as they have always imagined they could play it or should be able to play it, and the design gives them that power, which is sort of an impressive thing to be able to do with design,
or a goal that seems admirable. But this hole sticks out at Mammoth Dunes because you're nervous and you know that if you make a bad swing that you're going to pay for it. And it's also just a pretty hole. It's I mean we can just say that like it's beautiful.
Yeah. He also does the same thing with the t boxes. They move to the right, the forward into the right, and as they move forward into the right, the green gets deeper. So that's another aspect of the friendly nature, which is I think a really brilliant thing with this short par three that's got to force carry is that it gives more space as you move up into the right four players that might not be able to spin the ball on this firm and fast turf.
Let's move on to fourteen.
What do you have fourteen, I've got the sandbox, which is the semi blind par three. I just I'm just going to say it. I love blind shots. I am. If you don't like blind shots me and your golf taste, don't go to get take.
Your big flags and get out of here.
Yeah there's you know, there's not a big flag.
It wouldn't have made the list if it had a big flag.
It doesn't have a big flag and it's pretty much blind. Yeah, so why why don't they put a big flag in when it's over on the right side. See, this is another example of of curtailing to the to the regulation game, like where regulation game. You know, on the on the par three course, we're able to do things we're not able to do on regulation course.
If people were entering this round on their on their gin apps, then is that how you pronounce it gin or gin? You know?
Friend of the pod and mate told me exactly how you pronounce it, and I forgot. He made a point to tell me how I forgot it recently?
Is it complicated?
No, no, no, I now I have the side. I'm just I'm just gonna abstain from saying from now on.
G hi N. So nobody's recording the score for their handicaps, and so they don't care if there's a big flag or not. Yeah, I mean, and I think this hole can be non blind if they put the flag on the left side of the green. I haven't seen the flag there.
I've played it.
But there's a big kind of knoll that guards the front right portion of this green. And it's built right, it's constructed. It's basically there was nothing on this land and so they had to push around a lot of soil to make the features on this course, and it's just a beautifully shaped knoll. Like I know, that's a weird thing to say. But I just really like how it looks. And then you get onto the green and
you realize that it's pretty big. You basically can't see any of it from the tee and you get back there and there's like a lot of room and some interesting undulation and a pretty sharp runoff in the back.
Oh yeah, it's severe. Yeah, you don't want to miss, and you can't shoot it with your yardage gun. That's the other thing, because there's no big flag.
It's just a cool This is a cool fun hole that that is very different from really anything you would find on a regulation course.
All right, let's is that yours?
That's mine too? Yeah, I mean I think as with most of the holes here, Like you know, fourteen is a is a pretty strong one at Sand Valley. I think that one takes it though, so I.
Would fourteen at I like fourteen a lot of places. I like it Atledo too, you know, there's a lot of fourteen. So fifteen is in the same bucket. Fifteen at at Liedo could be it, but I went with fifteen at Sand Valley. What about you?
What is fifteen at Ledo? Remind me strategy? Yeah, Like that hole is incredible. Yeah, there are so many different ways you can go. I wasn't even thinking of that hole because I just kind of put fifteen at Sand Valley on there because I know that I love that hole. It is a great hole. I mean, it's it's got kind of this. It runs through a very subtle portion of the valley that most of the back nine at
Sand Valley runs through. It's kind of an out and back routing and the back nine at Sand Valley, and it's just a really beautiful location. And this is right in the middle of it, and the whole kind of moves to the left, and if you bail out to the right, then you have a longer approach. If you challenge the stuff on the left, you have a shorter approach. And then there are these lovely little mounds in front of the green.
I think Bill Corer another Bill cour Ism, I can't remember. I think he referred to that as a hot dog bun in front of the green a hot dog bun. So you got the two sides of the hot dog bun in a valley through the middle that you can play through. If you're in the right spot, you could play right through the middle of it.
Along the hot dog. Yeah, Bill cor never change.
Yeah, I think that's what he referred to it as a hot dog. And I can't remember who's in private or on a pod, but he called that a hot dog bun in front.
And they're just they're just super fun. I mean, you don't see many greens where what guards the front of the green are these vertical features covered by short crass. It's just not used enough.
That's arguably one of the most severe greens on property too. Like if you get above the hole there, it like it's really like crazy, how sloped the back half of that green is. It's got a ton of slope and it's easy, easy to three putt. The green's really good. It's kind of obscured, I think by the fronting mounds. It's in the in the dune, it sits kind of in behind it. It gets obscured, like the slope in
that green gets obscured. One of my other favorite shots out there is one time I left it short of a front pin and the pin was right over one of the mounds and I had this impossible short shot from short grass over the over one of the sides of the buns to the to the pin, and it was like, what do I do? Do I put it? Do I bump it into it? Do I flop it over it?
Do?
I landed on top of it and led it. It was just like, those are the moments I find the most compelling in golf is when you're standing over shot, and oftentimes you find them around the green, just with severe features, where you're standing over a shot and you're thinking about the six different ways you can play it and you're not sure which way to do.
If you hit the green on this hole, you should be sad because you'll have so much fun trying to figure out how to hit your short game shot from the bunkers along the left or short of the mounds or wherever you are around this green complex. It's just
so interesting. And by the way, you mentioned the dune that it's set into, it's the same little area that the tenth Green is in that I mentioned, and it's just this magical little corner of the property that I love and think is so beautiful, and you get to return to it with this green. And that's one thing about the routing that's really well.
I think the hole is about four twenty from the back, but just talking how wonderful would this hole be as a as a drivable part.
Four Yeah, a little bit longer, Yeah, I sort of agree with that that or if it were not just a driveable just like a long part four a hole that's where you're hitting like a wood into the green instead of an iron.
The I like this is where I like kind of lament how people just play golf from the same spot every round, because this would be a fascinating hole to play way up on like a fairly regular basis. I would be really curious to see what people would end up doing.
You know that said fifteen at the Lido is definitely the best fifteen hoole at sand Valley because that hole is incredible.
I think we'll touch on this. I think we both picked eighteen at Liedo, but like fifteen is another example of a hole and have I've got I'm lucky I've gotten to play now. I think five rounds at Liedo and.
Fancy Boylayed, I've played one. So Andy's coming at this with a lot more knowledge than I am about the Leado.
The thing about fifteen Aledo and it's exemplified with a lot of holes out there. Eighteen will be one. We'll talk about this, but fifteen there there are so many different routes and where you want to get to is so dependent on where the hole is. Like we played a front right hole and this fifteenth hole it just
feels like bombs away. But really the play is like playing short and left because if you play short and left, it opens the green up and you get the full spin of a wedge to play to this front right pin. But then if you move the pin over to the left, it's like, okay, you could play it way over to the right and push it up because then you're playing up into the slope with a wed right like It's just amazing how when you move the pin out there,
all these bunkers come alive. And playing short left, for example, there you have to choose if you're going short left or long left because there's a bunker that cuts on a diagonal with it right like. So you're just playing to these different islands and one you know's we'll talk
about with seventeen. But one day I hit it on seventeen and I hit it like what I thought was too far left, but I found this like two yard strip of fairway between a bunker and the native that was like actually the perfect spot to be and it was like, oh my god, like I didn't mean to hit it here, but this is like this opened up the entire approach to the green.
Yeah, there are so many possibilities on that hole, and you know, without describing it in depth, basically what creates the strategy on this hole is two diagonal lines of bunkers through the fairway. And the fairway itself is very, very wide, and so you can choose between different carries basically like what Carrie do you want to take on here? That sort of determines your tactics on the hole, and a lot of that, as you say, is determined by the pin position. And so it's a yeah, it's just
a very complex and interesting funhole. So sixteen, what did you choose?
I went with sedge valley, So did I center line bunker left side gives you a perfect view of the green helping contours. It's very narrow. It's like fifteen twenty yards wide. If you the first time I played it, I'd fit it right up in there, had a really easy wed shot. In next time I played, I bailed.
I went right. It was almost like I knew how tough the shot left was, and I just didn't let myself hit it over there, hit it right completely blind, everything working against you end up in the back bunker after I hit what I thought was a great shot, just classic hole like you can't. It's amazing how visible it is when you go left and how visible it is when you go right.
Yeah, the visibility, the sight lines are the heart of the strategy of this whole Amazing topography too incredible topography. It generally runs uphill and the green kind of kind of sits in what looks like a hollow basically, but turns out to be a little more complex than that once you get up to the green.
Definitely a hollow if you're on the left side. If you're on the right side, there's a run off to the left, run off to the left, a slope that's gonna propel your ball short, that's gonna like shoot your ball into this green, and then there's a bunker on the right that like catches balls that are that that goat run through. So really bad spot to be right, great strategic holl.
Yeah, and it's it's a huge advantage to be able to see the pin see the green, and there are a million different places to play in this fairway. Right, there's you talked about right and left, but there's a bunch of different places where you can get like little platforms, little corners of the fairway where you can get a certain advantage or disadvantage going into this green. All right, seventeen, what do you have? I actually chose Sedge here Again, I don't know. I like I could go with a
number of different holes here. You know, it's the long hole at the Lido. You have the punch bowl par three long punch Bowl par three at sand Valley that's really fun. And you have the last hole at the Sandbox, which is actually not one of the better holes at the Sandbox. So I'm not gonna, you know, say that that one is you went liedo. So, first of all,
my argument for the seventeenth at at at Sedge. You know, there's all sorts of trouble up the right side of this hole, and it's really intimidatingly presented, Like the visual of it from the tee is super obvious. It's saying if you play over here, you could be in big danger. And the green is angled just so that an approach from right near there is obvious a lot better. You know, you have so much more in the green that's going
to help your ball when it lands. If you're over on the right, and if you decide to bail out to the left, then that approach is brutal from over there, depending on the pin position. Things change with different pin positions on this screen. But I think it's a good representation at Sedge Valley of how exacting the lines of charm are out there, right. I mean, it's a simple concept.
It's as simple as strategy gets, and there are little intricacies that make it different than just your normal kind of like risk reward hole, which is basically what I described. But what makes it work, what makes it a hole that you want to play over and over, is that in order to get to the line of charm, you have to really take on something pretty scary, and I think that that characterizes a lot of holes at Sedge Valley.
But yeah, seventeen at the Lido also an incredibly impressive adaptation of the long hole.
Yeah, I mean, the green is unbelievable. It's so similar to the fourteenth that at Saint Andrews. I mean, it's just an incredible, incredible green that runs away so so severely. I had a downwind weg shot on one of the days. I played it like full wedge, full boar spin, and I was standing over the shot and was thinking, I have no chance to hold the green, and I didn't. I landed very close to the front hole location. It
just shot over into the back bunker. It's like, you know, you saw it in the Open Championship, right when Rory and camp Smith were coming down the stretch in that great, great finish. Camp Smith got it past the green and had an easy chip back up uphill. Rory left it short and had this just impossible up and down and that's that Green's just extraordinary. There's this ridge that runs up the right that kind of can corral and funnel
him in. One of the most amazing features is Lido was a blank slate, right, you know, everything was created. There are amazing ground contours on.
This hole right in the landing zone for drives too. It's like right where your drive lands. That's where MacDonald and Rayner built these very Saint Andrew's like undulations into the fairway.
So one of the most amazing features which Tom Doak pointed out when he was talking about this at the dinner at his event, is there are cross bunkers and if you hit a bad drive, you might be laying up in front of these cross bunkers. And right in the middle of the layup area, right in front of the bunkers, there's a created plateau that sits up and if you're on the right or left of it, you're blind. And if you're on the plateau, if you laid up right onto the plateau, you have a clear view of
the green. Just brilliant.
It's good stuff.
Yeah, it's just amazing.
There's all kinds of things like that at the lead of it. This is the kind of stuff that makes the lido so interesting and why people are blown away by it, right because everything was created as it's everything that is created, and there is an intention behind every single little fairway contour, not just every single little green contour, but you walk around those fairways and you find things. You know, look at the green from a certain portion of the fairway. If you see a feature that kind
of sticks out, go over to it. There's a purpose to it. There's an intention there, and it is that's why it's so intricate is that it has these little details that have a function.
All right, eighteenth Hole. I think we both went Lido.
The eighteenth Hole of the Lido is one of the greatest holes in the world. I mean, it's so incredible. It's based obviously on Alistair McKenzie's Lido contest entry from nineteen fourteen. Mackenzie built this ridiculous hole. Look, drew this ridiculous hole. Right, It's like on ocean cliffs and there's like this perfect little island out on the beach that makes an alternate fair way. You know, it's like this
fantasy hole. It's obviously really cool, and there's a million different routes to succeed on the hole, and it has this very complex, you know, multi lobed green But you look at it and you say, nobody could possibly build that hole. That is stupid. There would be no landforms that would allow for this hole to exist unless you create it them, unless you just build it off of a flat, swampy site as they did on Long Island, or off of flat sand like they did in Wisconsin.
You overlay the Mackenzie Hole on an aerial shot of the eighteenth Hole at the Sand Valley Lido and it's basically the same. All the proportions are perfect and so anyway, I mean, it's.
So one thing. I guess that's different. Talking to Brian Schneider when I was playing, the markings had for a fifty foot elevation drop on the left side of the fairway and they're like, we'll just go twenty five. Yeah, so one concession.
We can't go quite that great. And then we're laughing because you go out there and everything's huge, right, and it's already huge.
They didn't have like accurate understanding of what was built at the lead o. They just were like, you know what, fifty feet might be too much here on the left.
That'd be crazy. Yeah, I mean you could talk about this whole for days. I think that to give people a basic idea of the strategy of the whole. You know, you have a drive where you have a few different options. You can play up this fairway on the left with a big hazard that cuts through the middle of the fairway on a diagonal and if you go, like.
A series of bunkers cut through from basically left to right. So the further the further you hit it, the more decisions you have to make. The further you lay back, you have more options in the sense of you have right and then you have the short left option right.
Yeah. And you know, so when I played it, I had a really good drive, like way left up the left part of the fair way that it feels like too far left, yeah, because you're aware that the whole kind of travels in a different direction. But I had a good drive up there, and I get up to my ball and I realize I can see the green from here.
And you're in the green's open from there. The only way you're going to get to the there's this majestic back right plateau. The only way you're getting there is the best way to get there really is up the.
Left, and to run it up to that plateau. Yeah, And so I realized that I was in a really good spot. I thought of it as a conservative play, because it feels more conservative to go out there than to hit it down the center of this hole, which requires a pretty big carry, or even to the right.
But you know, the whole generally travels over a pretty big rise in the land that was obviously manufactured, and so finding a way to see around that to the green is kind of what you're trying to do on your drive, and you can do that if you play up the left. Then also there are aggressive options for playing down the middle of the corridor.
You'll play if you play at the house, the left side of the house, you can thread it between two bunkers, which is like, I didn't know what I was doing. My caddy told me to hit that shot, and I hit it, and I got up there and I was like, that was really stupid, Like it was like and it worked out. I had like a I had a short wedgon, but it was like I threaded it between like a ten yard gap between two bunkers, and it's like that, I'm never going to do that again.
By the way, side note, give the caddies some time to learn the Lido, because right now not all of them might have all the information about how you should really play this course. Well, it's hard, it's very difficult. I relate with it.
I think the thing that I'm most amazed about with the Lido after getting to play it so many times is that it was so disorienting the first time around and seemingly hard, and my last time around I felt like it actually was getting pretty easy because if you get into the right positions and you hit the shots.
And this was a day I played very well, but like I got into spots and I all of a sudden felt like I was hitting into bowls, but I was getting to the right spots off the tee to get those opportunities to hit into balls, if that makes sense.
You saw the puzzle, yeah, or parts of the puzzle, and yeah, I mean that's what's so attractive about the Lido is that.
In just a side note, you know this is anecdotal. So Tom Doakes event has a champion, it's like a matchplay event. Peter Floory won that. Two weeks earlier, the Club Championship was held at the Lido and Peter Floory won that. The man that like knows every contour out there.
Yeah, he's the one. He's been on the podcast. He's the one who basically modeled the course and enabled them to build it with such precision. So it makes sense. It also happens to be the case that he is a stick.
Yeah he's a great player, but he's play and he's played it a ton. But I I we were talking about it, and I just like you can just start to see, Like I was texting with another guy, I know that it's a member out there that's really good players like you. Once you start to understand the course, it's like, oh, this isn't that hard. You just have
to understand. It's hard to understand, but it's once you understand it, it becomes very like it's it's like addicting because you know where you need to get to for different spots, and it changes, and it's you know, it's it's a It's an amazing strategic golf course.
I think the Lido deserves its own podcast probably, you know, we've touched on a few key aspects of the Lido, but it might be the most interesting course to discuss that has been built since I've been working in golf, maybe in the twentieth twenty first century. You know, like it is fascinating to think about, not only because of the stuff that you're talking about, the strategic puzzle and the opportunity to kind of figure out intricacies that other
people might not know about. That that possibility is real out there because of how complex the course is and how much is going on on each hole, And so that's one area to talk about the other thing to talk about when it comes to the Lido is some of the I don't know what you would call them, like historical ethical considerations. Yeah, like just taking this course that once existed on Long Island and kind of transplanting it to Wisconsin. It is strange to be out there.
It's uncanny. It's almost uncomfortable where you like, should this be here? You know, I'm glad it's there, but I was unsettled buy it because it's like I was walking through I don't let like a mausoleum or something, you know, and so.
Well, I mean I think like I think where I would lend, where I would struggle is like I don't know how many more Lido projects should exist where we're just copying something versus building something new. Like That's like my takeaway from Lido is like, how come architects like Tom Fazio, who constructed courses like from nothing didn't think
about things in this detail? Because that's the thing. I just felt like, it's a different level of golf architecture in terms of like thought process of around strategy right and alternate roots. And it kind of is like, well, like how was this built in nineteen. What was it nineteen ten or twelve something, nineteen sixteen.
It opened in I might be wrong here, but nineteen seventeen at nineteen seventeen, and so obviously National was earlier.
How How did we have someone that understood strategy and golf so well then? And how we've had so many golf courses that none of which have reached even close to that level of strategy.
Yeah, and and you know, to the point that maybe we don't want to see a lot more of these reconstructions. I can guarantee that it's all downhill from the lead out from this idea.
Now we're now, we're now, we're getting into the lead up podcast, we're ending. Yeah, we gotta find I had a nine. I had a parse sixty nine. This was fun to do. If you asked me tomorrow, it might be different. But this was fun. Uh, lots of uh, lots of blindness in mind, lots.
Of blindness in mind. Mine was a par sixty eight. Lots of par three's and par fives.
Yeah.
I think the par three's were expected because we were dealing with a well know, the courses having all par threes. But I had quite a few par fives, and I think that that's one thing that stands out about the resort as a whole, is the quality of the par fives and how memorable many of the par fives are.
All Right, thanks Garrett, and let us know what you agree with, what you disagree with. This is a fun topic and definitely, by no means do we have the right answers.
That these are not authoritative. These are meant to spark discussion. Dream eteens always do so. Thanks Andy. This episode of the Friday Golf Podcast was produced by Matt Ruschius. Thank you, Matt. If you are enjoying the Friday Golf Podcast, then please consider giving us a rating and review wherever you happen to be listening to us. We really appreciate those and we like hearing feedback on what we're doing. All right, thanks for listening and we'll talk again soon.