Geoff Ogilvy - Part 2

weren't doing it as much. But I'd caddy every now and then. But I really did it just so I could play Royal Melbourne at after four point thirty and I all summer. Mama dropped me off there at four twenty eight and I would walk straight to the first tea on the East Course and I would play until dark and should pick me up. Every now and then i'd sneak a few holes in the west, which we weren't supposed to do. Which is the better of the two, I mean, they're both amazing. So I did that and

I joined Victoria Golf Club when I was sixteen. But I grew up on the sand belt and I just thought which are. Clearly, everybody who knows golf course architecture has any interest knows that the sand Belt, whether they've been there or not, they understand that they're some of the world's best courses. I just thought that was normal, so I didn't I didn't know how treated. I mean, everyone told me how good Royal Melbourne was, and these courses are great and they're better than everywhere, but I

didn't really. We all thought that everything in America was better. The Australian attitude traditionally was always, oh, everything in America is that's always on TV. They're green, and the sanders white, and the water is blue and big pine trees and everything that we didn't have we thought was great. But then as I as I kind of got to the elite amateur level and you'd play amateur tournaments, it's so unfair. I mean, it's fair for the amateur, but it's unfair

for everyone. Amated tournaments have played on the best courses in the world usually, and the British amateur I mean I played British amateurs at Rows and George's Millfield and Canburry, and I played the Snandra's Lynx Trophy, a great amateur tournament that's still going on, which was three rounds around the old and one around the New and the Bratherson Trophy. The English stroke play was raws and George's we played

one time. So I just thought, well, this is what golf is because everywhere I knew there were some crappy courses around, but I just thought the great courses were all great. And then when I turned pro and started playing in Europe and I realized the courses that you play on tour, just like, what is this, This isn't good, This isn't no, this is not it? When do we get to the good courses? And I finally it took

me forever to work out. So I grew up in the area of maybe the densest great courses in the world, at least up there with Long Island and Westchester County and Carmel and and Surrey, say in London. It was just I couldn't it just it just disappointed me so much that everywhere we went it was just so vanilla and bad. I just and it was it was going to bad courses that made me realize how good good courses are and how much your enjoyment of the day.

Your enjoyment of the game, whether you acknowledge it or not, is built in where you're playing. And not just the golf course either, the whole the feel of the clubhouse and the smell of the locker room and the and the way the parking lot is and the first tea in the pro shop and just the whole feel of the place contributes so much to your enjoyment of the game, and it's so underestimated. And I kind of I worked that out in reverse because I just thought this was golf.

And when I started going to lots of other places, I'm like, this is just not as enjoyable. Why, you know, I'm playing golf, I'm making money, I'm hitting the ball well, I'm making lots of birdies. Why And I finally worked out that someone would invite me to Sunningdale or something, and all of a sudden that feeling was back. It's like, oh, this is the game game I play. I love this. I mean, how good is this place?

a few times, and it's just absolutely amazing. It's just like, I just want to play golf all day every day. Just drop me off here every day. That's just what I wanted. And then we would go back out on tour and play some awful cow paddic in Germany, and it's just like, what are we doing here? Like the tour should be playing on things like Swaly frosts. This is just ridiculous. So I kind of it went and reverse, like I didn't know how good I had it until

I went somewhere else. So it just it grew from that, really and as I said, just that feeling of the feeling you get when you're at whatever, these really really really like highly ranked, amazing places. So many people all this shot values and like they focused on completely the wrong thing. It's just a feel when you pull up Cyprus point, You're just happy, don't care. It's just a good feel. Like the locker room is the same one

it's been for one hundred years. Like the pro shop tiny, Like there's the first tea, boys, go play well, see you in four hours. Like it's just everything about it. So I just liked golf so much more at places like that that I started crazing going to places like that, and it kind of built out of that.

like we're gonna do it. I mean a lot of the I've got amazing clubhouses, and I've got all the other stuff, but that's just makeup on top of like a makeup on top of something beautiful, like it doesn't need to be there to be great. As you say, focus on the golf, and almost all of them are very very like tied to the history of their club, like this is the way it was, so this is

the way we're going to keep it. And they've been had obviously had great superintendents and great managers and greens committees through the years that generally have preserved have understood why their place was great and preserved that. The places who don't understand it, with the bad supers and the bad greens committees and the bad owners have thought that their driving range wasn't the lockers weren't big enough, or that we need three beef jerky after the fourth green

or something like all that stuff. The clubs that have focused on the non golf stuff and the have lost their way. The ones who the Cyprus Points, the pine valleys, the Sunningdals, the Swinley Forests, the Shintikock Hills, they're so like the are they would have been eighty years ago. The smart people in the club have understood why their place was great, and they've preserved that at all costs.

And there's a reason why these places are great, and the clubs that recognize that are the ones that the ones that thrive and kind of get better and better over time because they just create that the more history and more field of the place.

your second shot. Like and exponentially too, you're closer to the hole, you have a flatter line, and you have a better angle. Every yard you go away from the creek or every yard that you're not capable of hitting a good draw. The further away from the creek you're further away, your angle gets worse and the ball gets more above your feet. It's and it's a hole that

gives the alien handicapper a par every time. Really, Like, if you want to make five on thirteen Augusta, and that's your innate goal, your goal, you will make it every time generally because you've got one hundred yards a fairway out to the right, you've got a hundred yards of a fairway to lay it up and to and you've got a massive green did you hit it onto with a big backstop? And you're going to have less than twenty five feet for Bertie every single time if

you play it with that's your intent. But as soon as you start trying to make a four or a three, that's when you bring in all the carnage and are you brave enough and are you good enough to do this? And that principle that's the one that annoys me when they don't get it right, And funnily enough, almost nobody gets it right. Like it's such a basic principle that you open up a green from one side and you challenge the player to hit it to the good angle.

But by doing that you have a deep little bunker and out of bounds fent, so you have the water on that side of the hole. So you have to challenge that off the tee. If you want to hit the ball close. If you don't want to hit the ball closer and you just want to make a par or a bogey, that's fine, take the easy way, take no risk, but you're really going to have no fun.

Like that principle. To me, it seems to be hard for people to get but that when that goes wrong, I completely kind of tune out and I have no interest. And unfortunately it goes wrong almost everywhere these days or not, there's a renaissance if you like to steal Doake's company name, which is appropriate of architecture. That's bringing that back. But a specific one would be I don't understand why trees can be in front of bunkers double hazards, like one

specific little advantage. Quite often you'll you'll hit it in the bunker and you'll be're screwed because you're in the bunker, but there's a tree in front of the bunk as well. It's like, why is the bunker heat because I was already going to be screwed anyway, Like I trades it and it gives the guy who's practiced his fairway bunker play and it's developed the skill to do that. It's

like saying, not you're not allowed to do that. There's no point practicing your bunker play because we're just going to put you behind a tree, you know, double hazards for a really little specific example, just it just draws me absolutely crazy.

Like they don't want to hear it. But like I walked off the eighteenth hole after playing it once and I was thinking through it and I was like, you know what, the strategy made sense on every single hole if I took the aggressive line and I got the reward, and it was almost it's like shocking to feel that way where I was like, wow, they got all the

strategy right. It's crazy how often it goes wrong. So do you you mentioned with the double hazard, like, do you think that the way the PGA Tour courses that they play promotes a certain type of skill and mutes other skills and golfers.

the ball will do something when it lands. When a ball plugs all value of controlling ball flight and shape, and it's completely irrelevant if the ball is just going to plug then plug on the fairway and then plug around the greens and not go anywhere when it lands.

You are really just promoting long hitting good putters. You want to hit the ball long, and you want to be a great putter and be great with your sixty you know, around the greens out of rough that now I understand these are going on TV and motley courses that are like different shades of green and brown don't present perhaps to some people's eye, as well as striking

green fairways. But when you set them up soft, which pretty much exclusively the PGA Tour is set up very soft, very narrow, very long, very long, rough, very kind of penal style of thinking, you create guys that all you want to do is go home and work on hitting long, high drivers, long eye iron shots and be a great putter. Whereas say Snandrew's, for example, where the ball never stops when it lands, you know, it stops when it wants to. The flight that it comes in on is very important.

The angle you come from is just exponentially more important the angle you're on. If the ball's landing, rolling when it lands, they might not present quite as well on TV, but they promote a much more interesting style of golf. So I understand the predicament. I mean Sonandraw's is an underachiever on TV and an overachiever when you're there, you know. And that's the extreme example of the whole kind of brown,

sort of no definition kind of thing. On TV. It doesn't present that well, but when you play it, you understand that that's the best version of the game you can And you can replicate that principle on any golf course really, and it can be not going to be as brown as Snandra's. It can be greener, but it has to be. We have to water golf courses. We have to water them less because we have to let

the ball bounce when it lands. If the ball doesn't bounce a role when it lands, the so much of the kind of depth and interest or all the shades of gray come out of the game. And it's a that would be my one thing. We promote long hitting good putters just because of how soft and narrow and long imposed are.

very good at distance control. Late. It's so important to play, but as you said, it kind of gets a little bit. It's it's a little bit easier when the ball doesn't roll when it lands because it's very definite, like you've got a definite starting point and a definite ending point. There's no like, oh, did that hit a downslow board? Did that hit an up slope? Was the height is less relevant? I mean a high shot that goes one

seventy in a low shot that goes one seven. If it's soft, they both go one seventy, But the low one that flies one seven, he's going to go one eighty five. It's firm, and the high one is going to go one seventy five, you know, so fly, there's just more depth to more shades of gray. I think firm golf bring but I understand that. I understand the presentation of the pictures and stuff, But firm golf tends to find the class in a PGA Tour event pretty quickly. Mm hmm, yeah.

strategy on the course. I would just make it a little bit more attractive around the edges. I think it's a little bit too center ties and neat. Now I'm not a big fan of those big, long flat bunkers, you know, those two hundred yard long bunkers that just like run halfway up a hole on one side with just this perfectly uniformed bank along the side of it. Like I'd like to see that area of Florida can look like Pinehurst, you know, it can look kind of

raggedy and pine straw and sandy kind of. I would love to kind of get that more to a Pinehurst pine Valley style kind of thing, because I think the bones that sawgrass are there to just be. It's a really really good golf course. It's just a little bit too neat and a little bit too kind of I don't know, not kind of it just forced narrowness in a few different spots. And I think it's a wonderful course. I mean, just just the first few holes. I mean you have to fade the T shot off the first

you have to draw the second shot. The second hole you have to draw the T shot, fade the second shot, and that pattern follows almost the whole course. If you don't move it both ways, you're really not going to be able to shoot a great score there. And I think that was kind of that kind of rugged look and some like some good looking bunkers and stuff. I think it could be really really special sort grass. I think it's really close to being special.

effect on a tour player. And it just like I always whenever I walk around that golf course or watch it on TV, I think about how hard it must be for a fifteen handicap.

hendicap guy who's a good golfer playing there. It would just bash you over the head all day and it would just be just And everybody wants to play it, obviously because it's seventeen in the history and the tournament, and I completely get that, but it wouldn't be that enjoyable experience if you did it all the time, because it would just beat you over the head all the time.

It's just it's missing the point. I wouldn't want to go play that. When people ask you, I go play Tory Times, I'm like, no, you're not going to have any fun. Go for a walk around the property shore because it's a stunning place, but it's so hard that it's not enjoyable. I mean, with the exception of probably Pine Valley and Oakmont, which are outliers really in the great golf courses, in that their intent was to be really, really difficult and just they happen to end up great.

I mean, generally, if difficulty is the mission, you don't end up with something great. Generally, Oakmond Pine Valley of somehow got out of that for lots of other reasons. But the great golf courses usually have lots of width and lots of options, and if a tool player wants to go shoot even par or something at Augusta, it's really not that difficult if his intent is to shoot even par. As soon as he starts trying to make birdies, that vantage comes and he shoots seventy eight. But they

allow everybody to play. These top fifty golf courses generally easier for an aiden handicapper and harder for a scratch player, you know, And I think that that's what has got got when when places go wrong, that's the point they miss. I think you want to make golf as easy as you can for the aiding handicapper, because it's already really hard for him. You know, a dead flat hole with no hazards and like bumper bowling version of golf is still really hard for that guy. But the scratch guy,

he needs the challenge. And I think that Snandrews. The Augusta is, the Shinnecocks, the Nationals, the pick any of the Chicago golf clubs, the Cyprus Points, I mean, you pick any number of them, and generally they're they're easier

for the alien handicap guy. But they're much more difficult for the two level guy or the scratch guy, because the scratch guy wants to beat his head shoot two or three under par, and to shoot two or three under par, you've got to start making some taking some risks, and then you'd start getting into all the carnage if you just want to shoot, like the fairways usually really wide, and you're just when you're a handicap and you want

to just bogey every hole. It's relatively easy if your goal to boge every hole is to do that, because they give you a lot of room to avoid the problems if you're willing to give up birdies and pars. That aspect, I think is kind of where it went wrong. It's like, we're just going to make golf hard because people want it hard. And when you make it hard across the board, it's just it's just something that's too hard. You need to have challenge, but too hard just for

hard's sake. It just gets boring after a while and you choose to do something else because it's just it's beating you over the head, and where's the It's got to give you a few thrills here and there, you know, you've got to find your ball and you're going to be able to get to par fours in two and past threeson one. For that exams that matter, it's that if you if you went by that principle, I think

you really it's hard to go wrong. How do we make this easier for adian handing hebron and harder for a scratch guy. I think golf courses that tick that box are usually almost all the way there.

play number two? Or is it too hard? And they said no, no, no, no, no, you don't know what you're talking about. Number two is the easiest for us. That's the one we like the most because it's the easiest for us. All the other ones they're the hard ones because they've got forced carries and stuff everywhere, and it blew me away. It's like Pinet's number two. It's so difficult for us. It's out. It's just incredible. But he explained, this guy explained the husband and wife. They

explained that they could put it from everywhere. They have no forced carries anywhere. The ball rolls a long way. It's quite easy to keep it out of the trouble. If feds that's their only mission. They get it around the green, they roll their putter up onto the green. They one part for par or they're two put for bogey, and they're like all the other ones. We've got to hit like it shots over water and deep bunkers and all that, and pinehas gives the average player room to

do what he can do. But at the same time it presents such a challenge. I mean, the hardest iron shot you could be in the middle of the fairway all day at Pineha's for a two level goal. For if you even par from the middle of the fairway, if you hit twelve greens in regulation for the day, you've had a great day. And that's somebody giving you. It is so hard for us, and it just crystallized this idea in my hands, like, well, what, that's the

principle that's perfect. Number two was their favorite and it was also my favorite, And it was my favorite because it was so difficult, and it was their favorite because it was kind of relatively easy for them. So it was just amazing.

what type of greens they are. That's where the challenge has to come to really challenge you guys.

lot of great holes do. They make you what they make you sort of take on shots you don't really want to, you know, but you know you kind of have to take it on anyway, because if you don't take it on and swing with real conviction, you're going to miss the green and you're going to make a bug. So you've really got to play with conviction and really

kind of know what you're doing. And it's a little bit I don't know if I'd want to play Partners number two every day, but it's a brilliant place and it's got to talk about great fear, and it's got such a great feel and the Crenshaw core redo is just so brilliant. Like it just it didn't change Pinehurst. It just brought it back to what it should be,

at least from an aesthetic perspective. And it got rid of the silly ruff and irrigated the center line the cent line irrigation as opposed to throwing the irrigation into the rough and stuff. I mean, they did some really really good stuff and it should be one of the benchmarks for remodels around the country because they did. They did a lot of stuff right. So I think you'll enjoy it. I think you'll be surprised at how extreme some of the greens are, but I think you'll enjoy it. Yeah.

Golf Links of America. I just think it's it's it's everything that's great about the template whole concept, and it's it's it's that the beauty of North American press Wick kind of presented in such a beautiful way, and like it maybe one of the more beautiful places in the world. I mean, it's just it's just everything golf could be. It's just fun. It's just a fun adventure. It's just an adventure, and it's fun. Europe, I guess I already

And Swindley Forest I think is my favorite. Now if I want to pick the best, I'm I think Snandra's is our sports measuring stick. I think everyone should go to the Old Course, and I think everyone should play it as much as they can, walk it as much as they can, and watch people play it as much as they can, and it really after a while, it might it might be like some music for people to get back to music, kind of analogy. It might sound like noise at first, but after a while you begin

to hear the melody like the Old Course. That is what it is. It's just it's everything all of a sudden. It might go off day one, or it might take fifty days, but eventually the light bulb is going to go up and go ah ah, I get it now. But that's the point, and it's so obvious and it's so amazing, and it's it's if you put me on one golf course in Europe for the rest of my

life to play. If it wasn't the Sween Leaders, because I love the field of the place, it would be the Old Course because it's just it's just as I said, it's it's the sports measuring stick and it needs it's respected, but it needs to be respected more. It needs to be visited by everybody. It's the Vatican or it's Macca. It's like, that's that's the thing, that the whole game is built around. The principles that are that are exemplified best at the Old Course. Australasia. Content I don't. I

can't talk South America because I've never been there. So pick me one. He's the dog here of the dog. What's that? Well?

of Mount Fuji. It's a beautiful kind of places because you look up at the elusive Mountain or whatever they call it. It's in the clouds. It's out of the clouds. There's snow on the top of it. The mountain to draw when you're a kid. So I can't really speak for Asia, but we'll put Australia in Asia because there's a lot of Australia and raw. Melbourne is by far and away my favorite course in Australia. It's so good it's it baffles every time I play. It's on those courses.

I like it more every time I play it. Of the two, the West Course is the one of my favorite. It's incredibly short now, unfortunately, but I'll often go out just with a persimmon wood and a half set blade putterer, you know, go old school, and I never never don't it's even a golf course. I'd go playing the rain for fun, you know. It's just I just love everything about it.

Maybe do the sixth the six club thing there. Maybe it's only thirty six holes, but maybe you make all the players up and everybody talks about or why did you pick three one? I mean, I can't believe you put a three on and you've got to go a five one and then I hope or I mean you'd have those great kind of debates about what everyone was picking and why they were doing it, and do you have a sixty or do you just go fifty four or do you go straight from pitching wedge to sixty

or do you go nine nine to fifty four? Or like it'd be great, Yeah, it would. That'd be fun.

but like less clubs. And it would be really really interesting because guys might not take a driver, you know, three wood might be their max, you know, because they might want more clubs down the other end of the back. So yeah, I think it would be giving guys the choice of which one is to choose and seeing how they thought was best to attack the course. It'd be great to be a brilliant event.

The longest he was open in history in two thousand and eight, he went with two three woods. He didn't go with a driver. And then he goes to the Masters like well, the year before I think he went to the Masters with two drivers of no freewood like brilliant, tough, I mean, and when he tells you for ten minutes and he'll sell his theory, is that? Yeah, you know what, he's probably right there, you know, because he sells it so well, it's fantastic.

It might be raining, but it's still going to have that firm element because of the sand underneath. So I would I think it'll be very close to par. I don't think it would be won't be the Aaron Hills scoreline. I think it'll be more. If you're even par after three rounds, you're going to have a real chance.

it used to be, is now rough. You don't have McDonald rainer angle that they said, wow, unless you're good, if you can get it here, you can play this hole. If you can't, you can't. I don't like it when that stuff gets taken away, But the length, I don't mind car as much because in this dynagic s out of affairs, we kind of native bit length.

pins with the right angle. And then the holes that they've just lengthened have like stayed the distribution over the last fifty years has stayed like exactly the same.

he two hundred yard. Yeah, the seven eydes a little easier to too, or two hundred, but the real inherent difficulty in that is the fact that it's two hundred yards and the fact that a seven eine now is probably what a five iron was lost wise back then, So it's really like a five on anyway, right, But the narrowness, Yeah, like seven and seventeen are the ones I disliked the leaf or the new trees at the Masters. The seventeenth Green might be one of the more interesting

greens ever built in the world. And the whole point was especially though, because it's kind of a it's high in the middle and it goes down to the right and it goes down to the left. Kind of the point is the pins on the left. You actually want to drive it up the left, which is counterintuitive, right, That's why it's a clever green. And when the pins on the right, you want to blow it as far right as you can to kind of be landing into that upslope on the right inside of the green. You

can't do that anymore. Everybody's dictated to hit from the same spot. So if you don't hit the if you hit the middle of the fairway, it's kind of a part three because everybody's hitting their second shot from the same spot. It's clearly more interesting when the fan, the patrons, if you like, behind the green. I seen one guy come in from the middle of the fifteenth seway and another guy coming in from over near the seventh green

to the same pin. It's like maybe two different theories or whatever, and that is interesting, much more interesting than two guys hitting it from the same spot. Well, that's I think.

be that narrow. Really, it really doesn't. And and this isn't just from a golfer who doesn't like hitting the ball in the rough. I just think it's not about easy or hard. It's about interest. It's about making it more interesting, because what's going to bring you back next time to while the watch and play it is how interesting it is, how many different ways there are to

do it. When you narrow stuff down so much, you dictate where people have to play it, just it loses a little few again, those shades of gray kind of get lost a little bit because it's a bit more black and white it's fair way good, rough bad, or trees bad. You know. So, yeah, I've got no problem with the length. Yeah, I mean I do in some ways, but not really. It kind of needs to happen if

we're going to play the course. But it's the it's the inherent kind of misunderstanding of the strategy and taking the strategy away.