Gil Hanse - Part 1

tune to save my life. But I just have always enjoyed music, and I think that that sort of jam band. I mean, I love Dave Matthews. I never got into Fish. I think, you know, being a deadhead. It was just that was sort of I don't know, you look at it as a younger version of what we were going through. So but I think that that improvisation and just that kind of one guy riffing off the next guy and another guy picks it up and they go and it's just the music, the creativity, the just the sort of

how it all comes together when it's not scripted. I really enjoy that. And I think that that's somewhat of a metaphor for how we work. I mean a lot all of our guys, we just spend time editing and refining each other's work and trying to make things better. And so there's a contribution that, you know, I generally set sort of the bigger scale in the stage for

depth and scale of bunkers and greens. And then Jim will come along, Jim Wagner, my partner, and he'll start monkeying with an excavator or it's one of our other one of the cave men will get involved and then it we call it the theory of ever decreasing implements, where we start off big scale, go to a mini x, and then eventually wind up with rakes and shovels. And so I think that they're you know, just that feeling of creativity that just sort of you know, things that

the flow out of the moment. That's that's part of what I love about that kind of music, and it's also something I think that corresponds with our work.

It's all of our guys pitching in and it's it's the different you know, we're all different sort of levels of players, and we're all come to the game in different ways, and there's just everybody adds every step along the way, and so it's one of those things that from a collaborative standpoint, I've always found myself to be a very collaborative person, and I don't feel like I have all the best ideas. I think that you know, there are concepts and ideas and thoughts and principles that

I think are flow throughout our work. But it's that sort of spontaneous nature of what happens in the field. And that's something I learned from Tom Doak working for him, and that's something he learned from Pete Dye and obviously Bill and Ben they work in a similar fashion. But

it's that spontaneity. It's that field decisions. It's the reaction to where the sunsets, how the wind blows, what a tree looks like, what the background is, and just sort of knowing and feeling and being on site that ultimately lends itself provides those intricacies like you talked about, that that ultimately gives the work its own special feel and which would give music or a song its own special feel.

But it gets back to that, you know, there's always the bass and the drums lay and the groundwork for it, and we always feel like we have that groundwork flows consistently from one project to the other. But it's you know, those those solos that Jerry Garcia used to take off and go wherever and hopefully great places. That's that's what

we feel like each individual project gets. And interestingly enough, you know, it takes a special owner to trust you to do that because you know, it could be described as you're winging it or you're just making it up as you go, and yes, there's an element to that. And so you know, as you build your career, you get to a point where you get more and more trust and you earn more and more trust and respect.

And we're fortunately now at that point where we get a lot of owners who are excited about what we're doing and they trust and they've seen you know, there's there's there's a track record for what we've been able to accomplish. And I think you know Bill and Benner at the peak of that, I mean this what they come up with time in and time out. They've built that trust. In that respect, Tom Doak has done the

same thing, and you know, we're excited. We kind of feel like we've gotten to that point where where we're allowed to take chances when we're out in the field, and hopefully the chances that we take, you know, generally are well received.

I can't focus and listen to something like that and also feel like I'm being as creative and focused on what I'm actually building. I'm not saying it can't be done. It certainly can be. But I've just always felt like music sets that tone for me. It's kind of background. It can inspire what I'm doing, and certainly, like if I'm listening to Rage against the Machine, it's probably going to be a little bit heavier duties, or if I'm listening to James Taylor, it might be a little bit

more mellow. But there's just that I think as a backdrop for what I'm doing, I just find that music is the best. Now. When the Eagles were making the Super Bowl run, I was listening to the Philadelphia sports talk radio, which is pretty much mindless when you listen to sports talk radio, but it's fun, so it's not

something I have to really focus on. But yeah, I think it's it's been something that, you know, when I look back at the sort of the implements that we used and going from a walkman to you know, with the big bulky earphones that don't really fit over your ears, and then eventually, you know, you get to an iPad, it's like, oh my god, I can choose my own music. Or you listen to the radio, and now you get to the point with with Pandora and Spotify and you

know your own playlists or own music. Oh there's a great if you're a Dead fan, there's a great app called re Listen and it's got all shows on it, and it's got Fish shows and Dead and company. So there's so many options out there now to listen to music that I certainly take advantage of that.

holes the same and we're excited. I've I've always loved, you know, the restoration work we've done for McDonald and Rainer. So this is kind of a fun project on a not very fun site, really heavy soil and very flat. But I've got some guys over there we're not getting into shape, which is pretty cool. And then Tokyo Golf Club, which is a renovation slash restoration of an existing golf course. We you know, not a lot of people know, but Japan traditionally had two sets of greens per whole, and

long time ago, it was all for agonomic reasons. It was ben grass for the winter and permuda grass for the summer, but that fell by the way side of Tokyo Golf Club has retained both greens, so we rebuilt one set of greens eight or nine years ago. Now we're redoing the second set of greens, and we're redoing fairway bunkers starting this summer. So it's basically a complete overhaul of Tokyo Golf Club, principally a restoration, but since it wasn't originally built with two greens, it's not quite

a purest. So yeah, you get that sort of travel, then you get to come home to Pinehurst and work on this. So we're you know, I just look at it as we're really fortunate. We're getting to go to great places and be involved in great stuff, and so there's no I would never think to complain about being as busy as we are. I think, you know, with Jim Wagner and my partner, we just keep our heads down and try and keep focused and kind of keep moving forward.

of space that they have. But I think Neil Cameron from Barra, Scotland is our associate living and working over there, and I think between Neil and I were able to come up with some pretty good ideas and you're right now you correspond that to the strategies in different ways

to play it. And one of the cooler aspects is that the par threes all have not only two greens per whole, but two t's, so they crisscross, so you'd play one green from one angle and one from the other, so they're basically brand completely, you know, all new holes from T two green. So as a member, I think it would be pretty neat to be able to show

up and just be able to play. You know, you're never not sure which course you're going to be playing on or which combination of greens, and I think that that would would hold a lot of interest.

the time it takes to play. So I think twelve hole golf course would be you can find an owner who would back that, that'd be pretty cool.

and so then I started doodling golf holes. But he was a politician. So I then went to the University of Denver and study political science and history, which is, you know, one of these great things, which I'm interested in both of them. But now what do you do? And so I didn't have a job offer out of school, so I went to grad school. So you either go to grad school or law school if you're a POLYPSI history major. So grad school at Cornell, studying city and

regional planning, still doodling golf holes. And my first semester at Cornell I took a landscape architecture class and I met a gentleman who was taking it, whose name was Tom Griswold. He was studying to be a golf course architect and I was like what, and he said, yeah, we can do this here and the faculty is supportive of it and the whole deal. And he subsequently went on to work for Tom Fazio for twenty plus years. And I went home that night and I just said

to Tracy, I said, this is it. Actually you can do this, and I want to switch into landscape architecture. Switched over. First summer worked maintenance in the country coll of Itthica. Second summer worked at high Point for Tom Doak on his construction crew, picking rocks and digging ditches and doing anything I possibly could, and eventually, by the end of the summer he threw me on a bulldozer for two days, which was awesome and really just kind

of kept the bug going. And then I won a scholarship to spend a year in Great Britain, the Drear Award, which Tom had won previous to me at Cornell, and came back and finished up and went to work for Tom. So it was this circuitous path to get there. I'm delighted I did. But oddly enough, when I was a senior at DU I interned for a congressman and he

didn't have a position for me. So first semester at Cornell just flipped the switch, made the decision to go into become a golf course our study to be a golf course architect. Within a week he calls me and he says, I've got a job for you in Washington if you want it. And thank god, I said no. I mean, who knows where I'd be right now. But it was, you know, it was just one of those decisions in life. Now you look back and you say, thank God, you know I made the right one.

was great. So from that standpoint, it was just looking, you know, kind of day trips in and out in

a few longer excursions. But I think the the courses that influenced me the most were the ones that were the quirkiest, you know, the North Barracks, the Cruden Bays, the Prestwicks, because they showed me sort of the boundaries of where golf architecture could go, how far you could stretch it, that yes, it was acceptable to build a green with a wall running directly in front of it that you had to play over the top of that, you know, blind holes were okay, and that you know,

trying to utilize and route a golf course through the most wonderful golfing terrain is an exercise not only in finding the best golf holes, but finding the best pattern and not using up all the best ground at a certain point and going you know, back and forth to the sea, et cetera. So I think that those golf courses in particular provided that that type of window into you know, ultimately what we talked about earlier, the spontaneity, the creativity of where you might ultimately go with golf

course architecture. And Tom Doak was a great proponent of that, of seeing those golf courses, and you know, he gave me a great list of courses to go and look out that were sort of off the beaten paths, the

boats of garden, you know, the broras, et cetera. And I think that while you take a ton away from all the usual suspects and you know, appropriately, so it was these ones that you know, you maybe you'd only see one really distinguishing design characteristic, but it would be something that would always lock away in your mind for future reference or for it's some level you know, saying, hey, it's okay to try and push that button and try and stretch the boundaries a little bit, as long as

as long as it feels like it fits into the context of the landscape you're working with. So those were I think some of the best lessons.

relates to golf course architects as well. Ross typically built greens like Pinehurst Number two. Well no he didn't. Actually, well Ross typically built grass faced bunkers. Well that's not necessarily true. Or Tilling has did this or that, And I think it's you need to find out specifically what did they do at that golf course that you're you're restoring. And you know I mentioned history being one of my majors.

Well that you know that research and the interest and the thought of being involved and really dredging up and trying to find that information has always been a fascinat part of what we do. So armed with that knowledge, we can then go and hopefully do the right thing. By that golf course by the way it looks and the way it fits, and put it back to their original design. But then we can also borrow or steal ideas that we liked and then throw away things that

we didn't like. I think it's it always is helpful from a learning perspective to be exposed to other people's thoughts and principles. You can ultimately choose to accept or reject those, but to not necessarily think about them, whether that's politics, life anything. I just think that would be a bad way to go through through life. And so we've We've always thought if we can work on a design, it will help us to be a work on somebody else's design, will help us to be a better golf

course architect. I know that personally. Will work that we did at Los Angeles Country Club on the North Course, working with f Shackelford and Jim and I has had a profound impact on me as a golf course architect. I'm a much much better golf course architect by being able to study what George Thomas did. I mean that guy was a genius, what he was thinking about back then and how he applied it to LACC I mean talk about a mad scientist and having sort of a

great laboratory for an experiment. But everything he tried was brilliant, it was audacious, it was exciting. And to look at that and then go from there right to Rio to the Olympic Course and just chock full of courses within a course and different angles and different thoughts and set up and the utilization of natural features as hazards. I mean,

that was really very impactful on what we do. So I think we're hopeful that every time we approach one of these projects, we do so with a mindset of listen,

it's not our work, it's their work. Let's make sure we work hard to get the details right, because I think that's one of the things that can be missing in this day and age as it relates to restoration of golf courses, is that remember, they worked with shovels and rakes and mules and scrapers, and we try to do everything now with bigger pieces of equipment, and we can't ever lose sight of the fact that we've got to finish all of their work by hand. We can't

finish it with machines. And I think that getting those details right is just as important as finding an old bunker on an aerial photograph and making sure we put it back in the right scale, right size. But how we finish it is just as important, if not more important than getting it in the right place.

more of a renovation. I'm generally a proponent of any time a golf course is was designed and built by one of the recognized great golf course architects, that should always be first and foremost a restoration. I just think that, you know, we value the works of like a Frank Lloyd Wright or the Corbusier, or you know, all these greats of design. Why shouldn't we pay the same attention

to an Alistair mackenzie or Charles Bay MacDonald. Why shouldn't I think it's it's really ballsy and arrogant for any current modern golf course architect to feel like they can improve on that. Why would you even need to? I mean, that's what our own work is for, is try and go out and prove that we can build something comparable compatible. But to feel like we should put our fingerprints all over something that was done by one of the best who ever practiced, and then to remove that from the

face of the earth in theory forever. I just don't understand how anybody could walk into a project and just feel comfortable doing that. It just it doesn't make any sense. Now they could be you know, people could say, well, I'm being somewhat qualitative. Is who am I to decide whether you know, a seth rain or course is more important than a course designed by you know, some no name architect or some guy you know who built one or two golf courses, And you know that there's an

argument that can be made for that. We we just look at it and we're fortunate enough now to be working on courses that were just by these top guys. Is that it's really really important for us to focus first and foremost on what they did. And you know, where you go off script a little bit is if you can figure out that, okay, they're the thought process for the golf hole was this, and there's a bunker they placed one hundred and eighty yards and it just

doesn't work for the modern game anymore. So do you leave that in place and then add a second one further down, you know, so that it challenges the current player that that bunker was intended? Or do you take it out and then add the other one in the same shape or form as long as the topography will support putting it in a new location. Those are the

difficult questions. I think that, and I don't feel like that's bastardizing or destroying or taking away the work of somebody else, as long as we're careful again and getting the details right and making it look and feel as

if it could have been there forever. So it's not as simple is always saying well, here's the aerial photograph and here's the topo map, or here's the plan of such and such, and let's put it back exactly the same because you you maintain golf courses differently from when they were when that guy designed it, and you play the golf course differently. So I think it's important to factor all of those things into the evolution of the course, yet still stay as true as possible to that original design.

So it's it's not maybe not as cut and dried as I'd like for it to be. And I would say, if you're going to air on one side, you always err on the side of protecting and preserving what that what that person built.

going to add, let's just add one. Let's not really try and overdo or overpower the landscape.

You know, to play that you never get I never heard a single person in my life say, oh, I played a Rainer course or a McDonald course, and I had a bad time.

got the whole package. He built interesting, strategic, creative holes to play, but they were just amazing to look at as well, and he just plugged them into the landscape better than anybody in tilling Has I think was really, you know, just a chameleon almost. I mean his courses changed, you know, the looks and the presentations and the way he set things up, but they were always just really

stout good golf courses. And Thomas, as I mentioned before, I just it's a shame he didn't do more golf courses because that guy was a g I mean, he was really freaking brilliant.

a really good golf course. I mean, like the seventh or eighth best golf course in Philadelphia would be one of the top golf courses in almost any other city in the country. And you know, while in New York, the met area claims you're probably the best from a rankings. Man, they throw a very wide blanket over a bit. You've got Long Island, Westchester, New Jersey, Connecticut. But Philly, you know, we've got a ton of good courses. And I think a lot of that is a testament to the guys

that you talked about. I mean they were locals, they practiced in that area. I mean, William Flynn has got six or seven phenomenal golf courses in and around Philadelphia. Tilly has to a few. Obviously, George Crump and you Wilson to one hit wonders. But man, how good are you? How good are those two courses?

wanted to chime in and be part of it. So when you have a circle of friends that are really astute at it, and then you can also bring in you know, the Travises and the Rosses and colt et cetera, that's a pretty good lineup to draw from. And he, you know, he was great at figuring out what made the most sense.

from from Donald. You know, I think that his golf courses that he spent time on are brilliant. I mean course number two, seminole around, I mean the ones that you can you know, Vanessa mean, he's got a ton of great, great golf courses, but there's always look at him as is always solid, seldom brilliant, you know that, And that I think is is that sort of workload that you know, you can't physically be, especially in his

day and age, you just couldn't. I don't know how four hundred or five hundred plus courses, whatever the number is, how how you could spend any a ton of time on them. But he was so good at just figuring out the best way to route a golf course on the property that that's why they're always I've never seen

a bad Donald Ross golf course. But I think if you look at the sort of stacking, if you compare the best of Mackenzie to the best of Ross, the best of tilling As to the best of Ross, I think that's that's where you probably start to see that those guys maybe were because they limited the amount of work that they took on and they spent more time on their projects being h you know, probably being a little bit above and not why Ross doesn't make my rush more.

at that time, I was just in college. I had no idea what this business was. He says, you've got to say yes to like four or five things in order for one or two of them to come true. And he said, what happens if all five of them come through? Or what happens if none of them come through? So it's learning how to balance that sort of understanding of what's potentially a real project versus what's probably likely not going to happen, and how you come to terms

with that. So I think, you know, people have asked me about that sort of assent that we've had, and

you know, it was a twenty year overnights. I mean, Jim and I have worked really hard over a long period of time, and I think within the golfing circles, people knew who we were and people understood that we did quality work and we may not be getting the sort of marquee jobs, et cetera, but that every job we did there was a level of quality attached to that that showed that we knew what we were doing.

And I think, you know, Boston Golf Club has probably been the most important project us ever because we had two great owners who gave us a really good piece of land to work with. It's you know, I don't know the rankings. Is it our highest ranked course maybe I don't know, maybe not in some other rankings, but it put us in a place where we could be you know, we spent time with Brad Faxon, we spent

time with Seth Wah from Deutsche Bank. We started to sort of rub shoulders with people who were decision makers in the game and got to know some people who in so Boston Golf Club was well received and recognized, and then that got us TPC Boston and then the renovation of TPC Boston, working with Brad and actually getting one of our golf courses on TV and that was well received and then that was a stepping stone to

Castle Stewart. And then Castle Stewart was, you know, in our second golf course in Scotland, and you know, then it became a tournament course and on and on and on and blah blah blah until we got to the point where we got the Olympic course. And then that was when sort of everything broke open. But it was a slow and steady climb. It wasn't a meteoric rise.

It wasn't like we were given, you know, the opportunity to build a top two golf course or five golf course in the world with our second or third project. That just didn't happen. But it was I think a testament more to to our belief system, our belief and just kind of keeping our heads down and trying to do good work and eventually somebody would notice. And then, you know, with the Olympic Course, people noticed in a

big way. And then that was right around the same time we got Dural and obviously there was a gentleman involved there who was not shy about promoting things. So we were you know, so we heard an awful we all of a sudden just turned into this sort of bigger name than although that my kids always give me a hard time, and my wife Tracy, they make sure

I stay in line. They always when we went to the pitch for the Olympic course, when we did our full presentation, we had little name tags in front of us, and so Amy Alcott was helping us, and oh and Larkin was our environmental consultant, and we get up to give our talk and look down and they've got the name cards in front of us. And mine, says Gil Hansen, and then it's underneath it, it's this hands golf design and I'm like, oh my god. They didn't even know

who my what my name is. And I'm here, you know, going up against Jack Nicholas and Tom Doak and Greg Norman and all these top guys and they don't spell my name right. So I didn't say anything because I was afraid somebody might get fired or somebody get yelled at. But after we gave our presentation, I just quietly slipped that piece of paper out and stuck it in my notebook. And so my kids, Chelsea Tyler and Kayley and Tracy had it framed and it's hanging in my office. And

they said, have you ever your head ever gets too big? Remember, they didn't even know what your name was when you when you went up for the biggest job of your life.

this can't really be happening. And so Tracy, as you know women do, goes into problem solving mode right away, and before I know it, he's got an expedi or for a passport on the phone saying, well, you need to get to New York first thing in the morning. Long story short, I go to New York Monday morning. I cancel my flight. I get to get my passport. By ten am, my assistant Andrea Lynch is in the line of the Brazilian consulate trying to get so I can run up town, get in line, get a visa

because you need a visa to go to Brazil. That gets done. So now it's like one o'clock in my hands. My fate's in the hands of American Airlines. So I get literally land, get there at eleven thirty for a one o'clock presentation, have a coke and choke down a sandwich, and go in to do the presentation. And I mean it turned out to be the best thing ever because I had no time to be nervous or I could

barely even think about what the priest was. Just getting there was the biggest accomplishment, and so I was kind of relaxed, honestly when I finally came time to do it, and I thought that the three of us did as good as we could. It's one of those things where you walk out and go, listen, I could. We couldn't have done any better, so you know, you don't. We weren't kicking ourselves going oh, we forgot to say that or we forgot to do this. It was like, hey,

that's as good as we can do. If that's good enough, then great. If it's not, well, we gave it our best shot. But it was. Yeah, it was a harrowing experience. And then come to find out I had been in Korea at the end of in December, and I had this really nice overcoat that I never wear. You know, maybe I'd go out to dinner once or twice, but I took a degree of for these meetings because it

was cold. My passport was in the pocket. So a year and a half later, it's Christmas time and we're going out to dinner and I put this jacket and I haven't worn it in that period of time. I reached in the pocket and I was like, you gotta be kidding me.

build the stadiums. But basically FIFA approves the soccer field, FIBA approves the basketball stadium. IGF the International Golf Federation, which is the ruling body of golf in the Olympics, they would approve the golf course. So we thought, all right, we're working for the IGF and their technical arm was the PGA Tour Design Services, guys that I know very well, who are great at what they do and very competent. And then the REO Organizing Committee, well, it turns out

that we actually wound up. It was the only public private partnership of the Olympic venues, so there was a landowner who had the land, so we wound up working for them. They knew nothing about golf, really could care less about the golf course. It was sort of a development strategy for them. And so it got to the point where you know, it's been well chronicled. We basically spent nine months to close to a year spinning our wheels down there, literally getting trucks stuck and not having

the appropriate equipment, and it just wasn't going well. And then finally I think the REO Organizing Committee got the word from the IOC Listen, you're in jeopardy of losing the entire games. And from that moment forward, I think some pressure was applied to the developer and all of a sudden, we had the resources, we had everything in place, and it became like a normal golf course project and we knocked it out and you know, six or seven months.

So you know, the guys who were down there, Neil Cameron, Ben Hillard, Kyle Franz, and Ben Warren. Ben Warren came later on. So those other three guys were there from day one and just I mean, I can never thank them enough for the work that they did and all the highs and lows that they went through. It was an amazing, amazing project. And you know, there were times where it was really like we were going to pull we just how can we keep going? But we all did.

We all just kind of kept pushing in the right direction. We all had a commitment to building the best possible golf course that we could and trying to do the best we could for the game, you know, to give a credible venue for golf coming back into the Olympics. And so we kind of felt like there was a and I'm trying to be sanctimonious or you know, get pats on the back. We just felt like there was a higher purpose to do this, and we we just

toughed it out. And so, like I said, those three guys in particular, and yeah, it was it was a tough one to get done, but at the end, of the day. We're extremely proud of what we built and we're really really happy with the way that the tournaments turned out.

courses in South America. It has the ability to shape golf design in an area that public doesn't really get to see versus you know, you look at the well chronicled troubles of some designs in Southeast Asia, where like they got off and when they started getting into golf was at what I would consider a dark period of golf design, and sure enough those golf a lot of those golf courses over there mimic that.

manage the golf operation. I mean, the maintenance has been terrific, but how do you run a pro shop? How do you set up programs? There was a time Kyle was telling me that he played golf down there recently and there was a junior clinic going on and there were tons of kids running around and playing. So it's it's

been actually a pretty significant success story down there. It's I think it's the only Olympic venue still operating and still functional, and that just kind of gets lost in the shuffle and well, okay, we've moved on from Rio. But you're right, I'm we've always felt that if the legacy of that golf course is not so much about you know, who won the medals or or that competition, but it's about, hey, actually, you know what, the game

of golf grew from Brazil. There's maybe a player twenty years from now, ten years from now whose first introduction of the game came from there. And hopefully that public aspect and getting people to play golf in in Brazil will be a better story and a better legacy for that golf course. But I'm I'm happy to say that the reports of its demise have been greatly exaggerated, and the course is really really moving along nicely.

Hans golf course design. And I'm embarrassed but also slightly proud to say I've never stepped foot in that and that office because when I'm home, I want to be home, and I've got a very nice office in the house with everything that I need there, and she comes over to the house if we've got to go through some things. And Jim Wagner works out of his home in West Palm Beach, and Kevin Murphy works out of his apartment in a story at Queen's and Ben Hillard works out

of his apartment in Sunnyside, Queen. So I mean we're still a very small firm, and and you know we have like you said, there's five of us in it and you know, we all just pitch in and do what we can. And that's something that I don't think will ever change, at least I don't ever want it to. And that may be a turn off to some people, and it certainly was, you know, as part of the growing pains of you know, how big a staff do you have, how professional an appearance do you want to have?

You know, if somebody wanted to come to our office, I was like, oh, well maybe we should go. Let's go meet at Applebrook. It's of course we designed it's five minutes from our house and we can have a meeting there, as opposed to you know, well we don't really have an office, or do you want to come to my house. So that's been it's been part of I think part of the success. I mean, Jim and I talking awful lot about how it's very relaxed. It's

a it's a very fluid thing. It's sort of we talk once a week if we don't see each other, and you know, we're like ships passing at a night. If there's two projects on the go, He's at one and I'm you know, we just kind of bump into each other occasionally. But that's been the chemistry for twenty five years. That's worked for us, and so we're not ever trying to impose we don't do AutoCAD. You know, I didn't learn I was, I was. I'm too old for that and they weren't teaching out a Cornell when

I was there. Ben and Kevin know how to do it, but it's just not a serve. If a client feels that's important, then we you know, we asked we get an engineer to do it. So I think we recognize what we're not and we're honest about it, and we basically say, listen, we're just a bunch of guys that like to go out and run bulldozers and create and work in the dirt. And if we're not polished, we're not. You know, we don't have a lot of fancy brochures

in office space, et cetera. But we're honest and what we produce and that's ultimately what we try to do.

time and not have to change who we are. And I think that that was, you know, one of the overriding things that Jim and I talked about is we got our presentation ready for for Rio is let's not change who we are. Let's, you know, whatever level of success we've achieved that's allowed us to be part of this competition. That's what we've got to focus on. We can't just try and all of a sudden change and

do bells and whistles and do something different. If it's not good enough, if what we believe isn't good enough, then we shouldn't build a golf course. We shouldn't try to compromise or just curry favor. It's like, let's just go in say this is who we are, this is how we work, and hopefully you'll like what we have

to say. And I thought it was an interesting opportunity for us to kind of get on a stage where we could say this is what we believe golf architecture is and and you know, it's thoughtful, it's hopefully asks a lot of Mike Clayton, who's a great friend, who's a fantastic golf course architect. He always talks about golf courses that ask tough questions, but the answers are simple, you know, and that I think is a great way

to describe what we believe in golf. And we're not the only ones who think that way, but that's been part of that presentation. And you know what we've tried to do over these twenty five years of building golf courses. So you know, you juggle your time. You know, you you as you get busier and as you there are so many more demands on your time and you just have to be as as gracious as you can in saying no. But you have to learn how to say no. And that's a difficult thing. At least it is for

me and I think for Jim as well. But you so, I think that's probably the biggest growing pain is figuring out how to manage the the request for your time, and you're you need to sort of make sure you stay focused on what ultimately is the most important thing.

a machine. And you know, as long as my back holds up and my health is good, I want to continue doing this as long as I can. And Jim and I have said, you know, if if we get to a point where we can't get on the machinery because we're pulled in too many directions, then we've lost the battle. Then we've we've sold out. You know, we've gotten to the point where we've valued other things above the work. And you know, we built a hoopy match Club and I was on site for ninety plus days.

I'm going to be on site here at Pinhurst on the course number four for close to fifty to fifty five days and same extreams on Black Was, you know, seventy eighty days. So I mean we're we're still putting the time in on our projects.

I was like, oh, I got an idea. The first thing in the morning, Ben and Seamus and I are out there with Brandon, We're walking around, We're like, well what about this?