Golf Architecture and Life with Mike Koprowski

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 fried.

Egg Friday egg, the dreaded Frida Egg Friday Frida Egg Egg, fridagg Bride Egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off the.

The Welcome back to another edition of the Friday eg Golf Podcast. I'm your host, Andy Johnson. Today I have a really fun interview. I talked with Mike Koprowski. Most of you probably are not going to know the name Mike Koprowski. He is an up and coming golf architect. He got into the industry.

Late in life.

A unique road to his life as a golf architect. He's been working with Kyle Franz. He mostly worked for Kyle Franz until this project called Broomsedge, a new golf course that's near Columbia, South Carolina, where he had the unique situation of being an owner as well as a golf course architect on it. So it is a co design between him and Kyle Franz. I would say, you know, in terms of co design, probably more of a Mike

They were like very early in the fitting of golf clubs.

This was when I was in kind of high school and college and playing competitive golf. They have remained on the cutting edge of golf fittings, golf club fittings. They have one hundred and twenty plus studios now nationwide. It's a really cool story of going from one studio to one hundred and twenty plus nationwide. There you can try basically every single type of head and shaft that you're looking for. They're sixty five thousand potential combinations. They have

Is that true?

Pretty toasty? Yeah, it's pretty It's pretty toasty in the summer. It's because there's no wind that just sits in like a it sits in a bowl. So uh, but winter, spring and fall a pretty.

Dark nice it is. What I was there was really delightful.

It was.

It was quite nice.

What you know, how did you go about finding the site to build this golf course? Like, you know, you're you're out looking for land, you decide you want to you want to build a golf course. What was your process for determining where you wanted to build a golf course?

Yeah?

Well I always felt like there was this miss link between Pinehurst and Acon. You know, you got these the Carolina sand hills that stretch from North Carolina through South Carolina down into down into Georgia. We all know about the great golf that's in Pinehurst. We all know about the great golf that's in Aiken, But like east of Columbia, Columbia area, same soils that Pinehurst is sitting on, but kind of a dearth of great golf, and so that had always been kind of in the back of my mind.

You got to just feel it, and it was It was.

Often challenging because a lot of the a lot of the parcels that I looked at were just they were timber. You coudn't see five feet in front of your face. It was just stacked with trees and jungle. And so thank goodness for modern topographic maps because that really helped kind of helped me understand what the lay of the land was, even though I couldn't, you know, quite see it with my eyes. I could feel it with my feet,

The patient's aspect of it, if you could, you know, the first piece of land that you saw that you felt like.

Was really a good fit.

You know, you have access to a road, access to water power. You know, you check like these are things that like a lot of people don't think about, right, so that checks the box.

You see golf holes.

What what what's the difference between what the site you chose where Broomsedge is now to that, Like, what's the intangibles that the site that you chose over that had and you know when you think back to if you had built on that site, like, what, how do you think they would be different?

Yeah?

Yeah, I this land moved in different ways. It moved in weirder ways, in sort of non predictable ways. You know, the sand hills are known for sort of their rolling topography, but oftentimes you can get kind of the similar role over and over again. And yeah, I mean you can have you know, a diverse routing that moves in different directions,

I feel like a word you could use to describe a lot of it is like rambunctious.

Yeah, you know.

And if I think like a lot of people would think like, okay, like this is you know, look at this like consistent role. But then you get a lot of holes that feel similar. But if you're if the

Yep.

You have to have that differentiation in topographical interests to have like a very compelling site.

And I think, what go for it?

Yeah, I mean, I think another way to maybe put that is you don't know what the hell's coming next, Like I mean, think of like our seventh hole to our eighth hole. Like seven is a pretty gentle you know, uphill par four across pretty gentle terrain with kind of a push up number two eight type green with Falloway edges, and you stand on that green and it just has a has a certain feel to it. You don't really

Yeah, I totally agree with that. Like it it's and it just, yeah, the way it moves through, like there are like breaks. And one of the things that stood out to me about about this site and this course versus a lot of other golf courses that have been built in the same time period, it felt like a little bit more intimate.

It feel.

It feels I'm not sure the exact acreage on it, but it feels way small, like a way smaller site than most modern golf courses go for. And I think like one thing I had to question about was, you know what with smaller acreage, I don't think you had four hundred acres right, what is it now?

It's like what two fifty ish?

Well, we expanded the two fifty, but at the original when I originally purchased it, it was only one ninety seven. Some of that was was wetlands areas that we weren't even gonna mess with. So the actual area that we had to work with was was pretty small. I think the golf course routing right now sits on like one sixty.

So I think like in terms of like a lot of modern new developments, they're looking for three point fifty four hundred acres and you know, that's great. Having space is amazing, But what ends up happening is the golf always feels kind of expansive.

There's like you traverse a lot of land.

One of the things I loved about about your site was it was so small that it felt very old school in the sense of it was like the sequencing of the holes just like you just kind of.

Fly through the routing.

What challenges did that present, being such a small golfable site.

Yeah, it was, you know. The so.

I had a routing before I even put in a purchase or before I even put in an offer on it, because I was concerned about that very thing that when you have such a small site, the routing kind of needs to work perfectly.

If you run in.

Any spots where you get stuck, there's not a lot of area to play with. There's no room for sprawl. You can't just go out in a different direction and find better land. So it really needed to work, and that was that was one of the primary concerns when I looked at this site. Was not a lot of room to work with here, and so routed, you know,

We changed a few things.

We changed like the fifth hole and the eleventh hole. We just changed in the field, So the eleventh hole isn't isn't even the same as what's on our master plan. So I think that was a key thing. I was not convinced that this would be a great site until we could do the routing. It just needed to it needed to fall into place, and that meant no sort of unworkable topography. And I think that having that having that constraint really led to a lot of kind of

I think like a great example of a constraint, like, you know, this small property, you don't have a lot of routing.

Options in certain parts. In certain parts of the property.

It is like we get over here, it's a small property, we have to fit this many holes in this section. A great example for anybody that gets out there is the first four holes, yep, where you know, your first five holes sit on a very kind of like narrow,

No.

No, I mean we had a lot of feedback of well, you can't run four holes parallel.

Well why not?

The topography is so different. I mean, hell, you can't even see the second hole from the first hole. They're running parallel, and you don't even know the second holes there when you look across the valley, you're looking at the third hole. You can't even see the second hole because it's so low in the valley. So I mean, had the and this goes back to our rambunctious conversation, had the landforms been similar, then I do think it's a problem, you know, of routing the same stuff back

I think like when I when I've I've gotten a couple weeks to think about the the property, what or just the whole project, Like I think my favorite thing about the project is the small site is the like when I think about the round, it felt like I was like flying through it, which I think is something that like is rare with modern golf courses where you feel like you you are just like the rounds going quick. And I just I think I like the idea of you know, it's kind of become the gospel that you

Yeah, and it's it's an expensive proposition too. If you believe that you need that, I mean, you know, you know, and even still, I mean, broomsts can stress to seventy five hundred yards. I mean we can, you know, we can test the best if you will. But the other constraint that's that's worth noting here is that I bought this land with an agricultural loan. Is just a poorschemuck. So I didn't have the money to buy four five hundred,

Well, I wanted to get to that.

I wanted to get to your winding path to being a golf course architect and golf developer. I mean, you've got two great distinctions in a matter of a couple of years.

But you know your.

Career, your list of academic achievements are, it's just a very very interesting story to get it to where you are today and what you're doing today. So your life, I would say, fifteen years ago, what did your life look like at that point?

Fifteen? What was fifteen years ago?

Say, I don't know now, so that's twenty five. So I was in the Air Force.

Yeah, that's what it was about. As far from.

Actually yeah, I actually think oddly enough, fifteen years ago on this day was that was that two.

Thousand and nine. Yeah, two thousand I was in Afghanistan. That's where I was fifteen years ago.

Yeah, it's been weird, but man, it's it's been a it's been a hell of a ride.

I guess.

I'm just I don't know what I want to do when I grow up, and I hope that I still never do.

I don't know.

This is what I tell people all the time, like younger, younger people all the time, like, you know, they get obsessed with like what I'm doing. It's like life's a winding road and every every decision will lead you to a different endpoint. And it's like, you know, I think that's the like the amazing thing I think. You know, it's so easy to when you get to middle age to think back to different moments and be like, oh, you know, and it's like, well, like if I had done that, like.

I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing now.

And you know, you wouldn't have Like if you had done something differently, you probably are not not being here with a.

Golf course at the totaloint of your life.

No, let's let's get so you you were, you played high school golf, you were a golf not where'd you grow up?

Grew up in South Florida, not a lot of great golf courses. I grew up playing between the palms and the condos and the lakes. That was That was my golf experience. And then really my my first kind of eye opening event was when my dad took me up to TPC saw Grass and I'm like, oh, this is this is different than no offense to my home course. I love it, but this is different than premierk Lakes Country Club. You know, when I started asking myself, why

Was in d C.

Working at a think tank, banging my head against the wall, working with Congress, and we had a We were living in d C, but there were some family circumstances that caused us to move closer to my dad, who was retired in Pinehurst. It wasn't a heart cell for me. I mean, it's like, oh, okay, we're gonna go to Pineherst.

It looked pretty good.

And then I kept going and I did one on six and then you know, by the end of the project, I was you know, I was, I was shaping, and then that led to uh what that least? So then it was eastward ho with Kyle, and then did some work on the practice facility at Raleigh Country Club and then Luling and then Cabot Citrus Farms, and in that in those couple of years, uh, you know, with Kyle, uh did a lot of evaluating raw land for prospective

I don't know, you just you know, you breathed through a very interesting backstory here. So let's I want to dig in a little bit too, before you got into the golf course industry.

Just exactly what you were doing.

So you you play high school golf, you go to college, you join the ROTC, and then eventually you joined the Air Force.

Yep.

I would you say at this point, you're you're kind of completely disconnected from the game of golfer?

Were you still playing decretty much?

No?

I didn't play much.

I would watch the Four Majors on TV, maybe play once or twice a year, and would read like one golf architecture book, you know, every every six months. And that was like that was the extent of it. But I wasn't playing that much. It was just it was really busy. This was the time when Iraq and Afghanistan we're you know, in the a Circle of Hell, and it was just a really really busy time. So I kind of will and then I just wasn't involved in the game all that much.

And what were you doing for the Air Force?

I was an intel officer, So I was attached to an F fifteen fighter squadron.

I was there. I was their intel officer.

So uh yeah, I mean, and then and then we went to Afghanistan with that with that squadron and in late two thousand and nine, and that basically meant a range of stuff where like mission planning and target analysis and all that, all that sort of stuff.

Oh, let's focus on the pod. What was the best part about being in Afghanistan?

Beautiful topography? I mean, oh, gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous. I mean I remember when it got uh you know, you'd have like the snow capped mountains, and it was just we were in kind of northern Afghanistan, near to Kabul and and.

It was just a gorgeous, gorgeous.

I mean you it was like, man, this would be a great tourist spot if you know the tali Van weren't you know here, And it was just it was beautiful, yeah, yeah, small if.

Yeah, it was. It was just a.

Gorgeous, gorgeous country. And the other thing that really stuck with me with the Daffhan people. You know, they they worked on on site, they were mechanics, they worked on buses and you got to meet some of them, and they were they wanted the same thing you and I want. You know, they wanted their kid to be able to go to go to school and safely, and they wanted the opportunity, and it was. They were very gracious, very gracious people, and they most people we worked. They didn't

You know, I've I've had a few.

Things tossed by way of potential sites for golf in the Middle East, and there's some like crazy like sand dunes on the ocean in the Middle East, like it is not inconceivable that there is that there is great golf there at some point, and you know.

Totally yeah.

I would look outside the base gates and you know, I think you get a little little shelf green in there. I want, it's about one hundred and thirty yards, get a little shelf green in there. And Kabool, I think, at least at the time, had a nine hole course that was you know, was dirt. But I don't know if it's still there. But yeah, no, no, no, no, I never played it.

That reminds me of I had said Laton on the podcast, who worked for Arnold Palmer designed. Yeah, yeah, his first project he went off to I think it was Kazakhs down really like gets hired by Arnold Palmers Design.

They're like all right, yeah, you're going to.

And he gets off the plane and there's like soldiers with oozy's and it's just like uh a K four sevens. But but yeah, I just have this image of you at a in a in an army base with your with your golf architecture book and the golf.

Looking out at the expanse. What would you say you like a life full of experiences?

Right?

Like what what was it about that job that that has helped you the most doing what you're doing now.

On a very technical level, like g I S topographic type type work that came and that was very very handy to be able to look at a topographic map and know what the land is doing.

Can you can you explain like how you were like in from the from the Air Force sense, you know, with with your role there using topographics and like how were you using that? Like what were you doing that that and made it really easy to look at it like I think, like for a layman who's like somebody sends somebody a topographic map and it's just like lines everywhere, It's like, what's going on? So like what were you

Yeah, essentially mission planning. So if there was a you know, if there was a target we were we were looking at. You know, you'd look at a topographic map and you'd have to see, oh, okay, well, if if the bomb comes in at this angle, it's actually going to hit the mountain before it hits the bad guy because there's a freaking mountain in the way. So we got to comm in from the other direction.

I mean, that's the re to see it until this point right right. That type of stuff.

Yeah, and even even on like collateral collateral damage type stuff. I mean, we went to great lengths to try to avoid civilian casualties. And you know, topography plays a role there of Hey, if you know, if there's a blast that happens in X spot, what's the topography doing between X spot and you know that village over there? You know, is that village sitting downhill from where the you know,

So now instead of worrying about where, how to how a bomb might function in the land, you worry about how water might move and right exactly whether a slope's too severe for for a golf hole exactly.

I worry if a foe iron will stay on this hillside or if it'll ejected over the green. Yeah, a little bit lower stakes, but a little bit more fun at the same time.

So so after after the Air Force, you you you kind of breezed over this. You got into you you went back to school. You got degrees from Duke and Harvard.

Yeah, yeah, and yep.

And what were they in and you got into government work?

Yeah, I got it.

Duke was for international relations and Harvard was education policy.

And what was the thought at this point, what am I going to What am I going to do?

What was I still had the GI Bill, and I was just basically trying to postpone real life, just stay in school. So I got the smartest board of different things. But I wanted to go into education reform. I had started the Duke degree. I had started while I was in the Air Force, International relations, obvious connection there. When I got out of the Air Force, I had my eye toward toward education policy. Education is important, it's our children's future, blah blah blah ah.

That stuff. I believe it.

And so so after Harvard, I went to Tennessee and worked on education reform there, and then went to Dallas and and worked on education reform there. Really my work in Dallas was on desegregation, trying to integrate schools. You know, here we are, you know, many many decades after Brown versus Board, and our schools are essentially as segregated as they were when Brown was decided. Our schools are still, you know, incredibly segregated by race and class, and it's

So that's what I worked on in Dowa.

Makes sense.

You also become like a more well rounded individual, you know, like you think about like I mean, as we're talking, like, you know, the more diverse your background and skills and expertise are, the more likely you're going to come at any kind of solution, any kind of situation with a with a different mindset, which is beneficial in the world.

Oh yeah, it's I mean, it's an essential skill set. I mean, you could argue that many of the many of the ills we're dealing with today are because people don't fundamentally understand each other and never have really had a meaningful interaction with somebody that's different from them. I think a lot of the villainization we see in particularly

At this point, has golf re entered your life?

Yes?

Yes, so golf seriously re ent heard my life. When I was in Tennessee, I was working at the Tennessee Department of Education and I had just left Harvard, I caddied at the country club at Brookline for a few loops just so I could play the course. And then they they told me I needed to shave, and so I didn't. I didn't caddy anymore.

So what did you get to play though?

Oh yeah, oh yeah, of course, of course. Yeah, I'd shave till Kingdom come to play it. But after I played it a couple of times and move on, and I was I was skipping too much class, and I just you know, because the only time they'd let us play was a Monday, and I had class, and so I was skipping too much class to play the country club.

So I had to kind of feel like.

One of the Harvard would be a hard place to skip classes.

Yeah, yeah, it was an ideal. It was an ideal, but it got it got that bug going again of like man, this is this is really good.

This is really good.

So that's your favorite thing about that course?

The country club? Oh just again the topography, I mean, like the the.

Property.

It's just it's incredible. Just that lamb moves in unpredictable ways. That's that's what I loved about it.

That's that's the thing.

It's like when you when I think about that course has got like probably like five of the most unique holes that I've ever seen. You know, you think about like three, you think about uh really like four is epical five's and epical ten is insane. You know, like there are there are a lot of like the par five I get mixed up with the routing of fourteen on the championship routing.

That's up.

Yeah, you aim at the pole in the background.

I hate the pole. They got to get rid of the pole. They got to be a reform. You know, you worked on education reform. Maybe now you could join me on like big flagstick reform. Yeah, Like I think we needed to remove big flagsticks from from.

Golfne to line. I like that'll be the next it'll be the next task.

But it's it's just as important as educated Yeah.

Just as important as desegregation. I mean these things are coequal pillars of a healthy civic life.

Yeah. No, I mean it's a I mean it's an awesome special spot.

So looping at at the country clubs kind of like what got you back into it?

Yeah, it just got me the bug of Wow, this is this is special. I like being here.

I didn't look for very long, but it was just, you know, it was a special it was a special vibe. And then the program at Harvard was only it was a quick like accelerated masters.

It was like a year.

So before I knew it, I was in Tennessee. And here this is when I really started to lose my mind around golf, was I. So I was in Tennessee. I worked in downtown Nashville, but I bought a house up in Goodlettsville, which was kind of twenty five minutes north, and I bought a house on like five acres.

And so I married at the time, are you.

I had just I had just started dating my now wife at this time, and she actually helped me do what I'm about to tell you.

Which every story of going golf instane starts with a very willing partner.

You know.

Absolutely she helped me do what I'm about to say, which is that because I had, you know, acreage in my front yard, well why not build a part three? And so I rented a back up. I mean, I don't know shit.

How much did it cost to rent the back up?

It wasn't that much. It was just it was like a week and I think I probably took off work and I just like worked all day long on it. But I didn't know what I was doing, so part of it was just like trying to learn how to not tip it over.

Did you have to get a permit?

I don't know, that's a good question.

I think I had to call the septic because we were on septic out there, and I think I had to call to make sure I wasn't going to hit a septic system, yeah, because yeah, yeah, what were you doing out there? I mean we had people pull off it was Lichton Pike was the road. They'd pull off Lichten Pike and they'd say, uh, you know, what what are you doing here? Is this like a future lake or like what are you?

What are you doing? I'm building a golf course.

I had to take out a few trees, and I didn't know what I was doing, so like I built the bunker with like sand bags, Like I didn't know how to shape things, so I just I dug a hole and then just built up the lip with like sand bags and I covered it with sod and my my wife at the time, his girlfriend was was helping me do this, and I mean, what more of a keeper can you possibly find on planet Earth than that? So I knew instantly she was the one. And it

I bet it would get like a nice shadow to it too.

Yeah, it's like that's how gil Gil builds the small like mini vetted faith right on his bunkers, and then he has the grass come over it.

You get that shading look.

The sandbag would do probably like a similar thing, talk about totally.

Yeah, it would be a new bunker construction it could be.

I mean, it's it held up pretty well now the so I think it was featured who has that art? I think Golf Eye just has the best backyard golf holes in America. And I think I'm I think I'm on there alongside you know, Tiger and VJ and John Smoltz.

And it's the only time I'll be listed in the same sentence as those guys. But it made it.

There's a pretty good holes, like a really kind of small, small green one hundred and thirty yards and h we uh yeah we did you see it?

Yeah, it's like a oh, I remember, I'm now down to this rabbit hole of where it's where I'm looking at the old carousels of of of you know, the Internet of yesteryear.

Yes, yes, this was a while ago.

Yeah, where it's not an article, it's just a carousel images.

Yes exactly.

It's just like what wait, why did this? Why was this the Internet for a period of time?

Yeah, yeah, so yeah, I see it.

It's amazing. It's actually amazing when you look scroll through this carousel. I'll post this in the in the show notes. You scroll through the carousel and every hole is like kind of like fake looking, Yeah, and yours like it's kind of it's kind of like it looks like a real golf hole.

It's plausible.

Yeah, I mean the cream is tiny, what is it? Two thousand square feet fifteen.

Yeah, yeah, if that.

I didn't have a very big so I had to keep it small. The maintenance budget was pretty freaking limited. Andy, you know, I had to keep keep the features small.

But the sad the sad thing is when we when we moved, we had to we had to, we had to bulldoze it because.

Apparently what no buyer, our realtor kept saying, like nobody wants this ship, like they don't want to have to maintain a golf hole in their front yard, Like you just gotta you gotta get rid of it, or we can't sell the house.

And I'm like, you had to bulldoze it.

Yeah.

Yeah, so it's not there anymore. Like if you look at Google.

Or do you have to light our data? We have you recreate it somewhere.

We didn't have the budget for light art. Yeah.

Maybe that's the next big restoration project. It's the next lead though, really.

I mean, do you have you got to have like an acre that you could put it at broom sedge in the corner.

That's true, that's true. I got a lot of photos of it.

Right.

Maybe, I mean we self we have to build a practice facility. Maybe that's one of the greens.

It doesn't seem like a functional practice green though. It's pretty small, pretty small, yeah, pretty small.

Yeah. And it wasn't even put up.

I mean it was like whatever whatever the Bermuda grass was from Low's on depot.

It was. I didn't have ultra dwarfrom this green.

You know.

I got like a low mower and I scalped the ship out of it and you can sort of you could sort of put on it, but uh.

The green, the green had to be insane.

Oh yeah, yeah, it was rolling at a bumpyfore. It was not the best.

I Oh, when I lived in Chicago, I always had this dream of building a putting green in my front yard, like very much in the front yard, yeah yeah, yeah, and then just putting putters out there and like having it be like a neighborhood putting green. Yeah, like where like if you're walking by, you could just hit some putts.

I don't know why these don't exist, is like shilling.

I like, frankly wonder about I always think about this too. When I drive down the road and I see like a tiny little acre, like an acre of land that's for sale. It's like, clearly nobody's gonna is, Like why isn't anyone like trying to figure out a business to just build a single golf hole and it's like you can pay four dollars to come play.

Yeah, it's just a it's a drive up.

Yeah yeah, I mean drive up, play one golf hole and you're done. Like I'd be into that.

I would be, like I was thinking, I've got like a couple of weeks I'm playing the next time I know I'm playing golf, it's in November, and I've thought about maybe going to the range or like in mid November, right, and I've thought about maybe like I want to go to the range.

I kind of, you know, I kind of I want to play.

Decent and it's like but like I just I really just want to like take like two swings.

That's all I want. But I don't want to go to Like if I could.

Just drive by, stop and hit a shot, hit three putts, I feel like I'm staying sharp.

Yeah right, yeah, fifteen minutes and you're out. Yeah.

And the thing that once you put a pin in the ground, people know what it is, and that was nobody knew what the hell I was doing. But once I put a pin in the green, people would come up to your door and say, hey, can I like this is this looks pretty cool?

Can I hit a shot? And I'm like, yeah, I go for it.

You know, people stop by.

Yeah yeah, people would stop by because the tea box was right by the road.

So you love this.

Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It was uh, it was pretty fun, but it was you know, unfortunately it was short lived.

But I think that's like just the difference between Scotland and in America, right, Like if you think about like the Kids' Court or like the Putting Green in downtown North Barrack.

It's just like a total it's just there.

Like I don't understand why they can't be parts of parks, right.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely there was. There was one in Dallas that I remember at the Clyde Warren Park. They had as an asteroidsurf putting green, but it was just there. It just putter's land on the ground and some balls and it was always in use. It's a great thing. Should be more of it.

What, like, how did you get do you have like a moment where you like you decided I'm building this golf hole, because I assume this is the moment that that led to you just dropping my drop.

My political career eventually.

I mean, this is the this has got to be the moment, right when you decided to build this golf hole that you just put your foot in the ground. You know, screw out my education, right, I mean, I do something completely different with my life.

Yeah, I don't, I don't know. I mean, do you know when you're going crazy? I don't know. It just happens.

Just one day I woke up and it felt like the right thing to do. There wasn't I don't remember, like an aha, it was just like I was kind of I think I was a first time homeowner and I'm just like, wow, all this land I have, Well, what do you do with lots of land? Well, obviously you build golf, And that just kind of went went from there. I don't know, I felt like I could build a cool hole, you know, I had.

Did you have a lot of concepts? Like what was the ideation around? Did you just or did you just start digging stuff?

Oh?

I knew it was going to be about one hundred and thirty yard par three because that's kind of what I what I had to work with from the corner of the road to where this location would be. So I knew it was going to be a part three. I knew it was going to be relatively short, and beyond that, I was really at the time, I was

So that was kind of what was in my head when I was when I.

Was doing because I was fresh off my my, my, oh so many loops at the country club. So I was just kind of thinking like a sixteen at the country club would be kind of cool's let's do that.

Did you ever make a hole one on it?

No?

No, I never, So I never made a hole on one in my entire life until a few weeks ago at the opening round at.

Broomsedge, first round ever played there.

First round ever at Broomsedge, and luckily we were a.

Guy that bought the land, built the course. You make a whole one your first round, pretty.

Freak, and luckily we were in a sixth sum so there was There's many that can attest to the veracity of this story, and the truth is I didn't hit it very good. I mean it was a skanky nine iron that had I hit a flush, it would have airmailed the green. But I hit it just skanky enough to where it kind of like had no spin when it hit the green and it just trickled right and all.

It was pretty wild. And that was my first hole one ever.

I think that maybe the same day or the next day, I was playing golf at Old Barnwell and this is how stupid hole ones are. I was the guy I was playing with a friend of mine. He hit like an incredible shot. I mean the second he hit it, I was like going the hole going the like that, that's an amazing And it ended up like I swear I've never seen a ball hang more over a lip and not go in. Like we got up to the

So it was on seventeen at Old Vern.

Seventeen at Old Barne Okay. Next, so we go to the kids course, first hole. He literally like hits like a half shank and it catches the slope, kicks left, and I go, I think that went in. We can't see it, and we get up there it's in the hole. It's just like, this is why hole ones are dumb. Yeah, the whole whole outs are better than whole ones, like whole out, whole out Eagles Albatross's because it requires two good shots.

Yeah.

Absolutely, Yeah, you have to be in that position in the first place.

Yeah.

It's kind of a sheepish feeling like I.

Didn't but it was. It was pretty damn good story.

It was meant to be. That's a moment that was meant to be.

It was.

It was, so let's let's go to like you move back to you keep doing the politics, uh career. I guess that's that's safe to say. Politics.

Yeah, that's a good catch all for it, sure catch all.

And you go, you're in Southern Pines. You're doing that remotely? Yeah, why did you pick Kyle to reach out to?

What? What made you pick him?

Yeah?

So it was the Southern Pines project was was just starting, like literally they were days away from, uh from from putting dirt in the ground. And I wasn't gonna like, I mean, I was still working full time, kids in school, Like, it's not like I was going to go travel to some far off place to do this. So it was like, oh shit, this is happening in my backyard. I mean, I I had loved what what Kyle had done at Mid Pines and Pine Needles and even some of the

Guess I don't know.

I mean, Kyle was still you know, Kyle didn't have any new builds at the time. He was still you know, locally, he was pretty well known, but didn't quite have the profile that he that he has now. And so maybe that was a benefit to me. Like I often think, like what if I had I mean, I just stone cold emailed him, and I was not thinking I'd get a response back. And then I got a response saying let's have lunch. But had I done that to a bigger, more established firm, I mean, I probably don't get an

So yeah, I didn't know that Kyle. You know, I know Kyle pretty well. I didn't know there was common interest besides golf of Kyle.

Oh yeah, golf. He's a golf maniac.

Yeah, but you know he's also perhaps an even greater maniac about college football.

And he's a Notre dame no way, yo. Oh he's he's he can tell you. Yeah, he can tell you that.

He could tell you the statistics from a Notre Dame game in nineteen fifty four. I mean, he's just he's a savant.

I love that.

I yeah, yea, yeah, so he was.

I think that he jokes, and I don't know that he's actually joking, but he says at the time, like, because I went to undergrad at Notre Dame, that's probably why he emailed me, right, he needed somebody to talk about Notre Dame football. Well, but he's a huge Notre Dame guy.

That's the Bill Court. You've heard the Bill cor Pete Die story, have you?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

He thinks that he.

Came to meet him just to watch the Dolphins game to get out of the house.

Yep.

And he came to his hotel room or wherever Bill was staying, and he turned on the Dolphins game and he's like, yeah, you can work for me.

Yeah.

It's weird. Life is weird. It's weird stuff. It's weird stuff. I mean I remember that first lunch of Kyle. I mean we talked a little bit about golf, but it was it was a lot of noted in football.

All right, what when you look at that Southern Pines project. What would be your biggest takeaway about golf architecture from thinking about it building a backyard hole too, like I am on a full scale project here.

Yeah, yeah, the teamwork nature of it. Just I mean, number one, how how welcoming people were to a schmuck like me, Like just I mean, like the shapers like you know, Am and Sullivan and Matt Smallwood. I mean like they were cool with me popping in their machine and trying something out, like they were welcoming about it, and they taught me stuff, and so it was a very welcoming, team oriented environment. And I realized just how

I feel like water is one of those things that like you don't you don't think is cool and this is like, you know, very nitty gritty. But then once you get like really into it, it's like one of the most fascinating aspects of it is like moving water around.

And yeah, and just like how much how much reaction there is to water movement even after the ship, Like I remember the eleventh Hole at Southern Pines, that kind of epic, you know, driverable par four now, the kind of capes around the around the water there. And I remember, you know, we were in the middle of summer and I think I had just shaped a couple of bunkers on the left side and the right side, and we

The whole project's room.

And and what I learned from the pros was, now, man, this is a good thing. It's it's good to learn this. Now we're seeing where the water's going. Look at the rivulets, look at how the water's moving. All we need to do is build the water bar further up to hill. Like we obviously the water bar can't be down here because it's too late in the game. The water's already gained enough speed and it's going to obliterate this this uh,

You know.

We would we would shape the hole and then it would it would rain like cats and dogs, and we'd go and look at the rivulets and see where the water was moving, and we mapped our drainage Accordingly. We didn't really have like a going in drainage plan. We just we shaped it, We saw where the water was moving, and we based our drainage plan around that.

I think this also ties back to what you talked about at the beginning, where you talked about sixty sites finding the best site.

Yeah.

Like some things that help with drainage and water management is vegetation.

Yep.

The less you have to move on a site, the more native vegetation you keep, yes, and the better you suited you're going to be for for withstanding big rain events because you're moving less earth so you're disturbing less land in the way that a site's drained for thousands of years is intact yep.

If you don't have to mess with it, don't mess with it, leave it alone, keep it stable, because the minu you disturb soil, that's when it that's when it washes. And it was a pretty challenging thing too, because it was there were trees everywhere. So when the timber folks come in, I mean they make a mess of the place.

Yeah, it's it's like a it's a a killer that nobody ever thinks about when you start to start a project. Is just like okay, because like you know, it's a time. Earth moving is the most expensive thing, and to control water usually requires earth moving.

Yep.

Let's so you hit on this earlier.

You were not a billionaire or you know, even a I don't know your financial situation, a multi millionaire.

You are a you're a normal person.

Yeah, I worked for a nonprofit who built who.

Who bought a piece of land and built a golf course? Can we just look how? I like, this is everybody's dream? How did you actually do it?

So? I took out an agricultural loan, and.

So we searched. As you said earlier, you search soured this area.

Found the side I wanted, and then I found the side I want, And then it's like, okay, I could try to get investors on board right now, but that's you know, that's hurting cats. This land is going to be gone by that stage. So you know what I'm gonna do, take a leap of faith. I'm going to buy this thing with the loan and I'll figure the rest out later. But the central ingredient here is the land. I can nail that down now. I have tremendous faith in this thing. And then the other thing was, what's

I imagine it's hard to find.

Like that's got to be one of the toughest aspects of a golf course.

Is like.

In trying, like when you don't have the money to fund it, when you're looking for people to fund it, they want it to be their golf course.

Totally yeah, and they don't. I mean, I want to.

One guy said to me, well, you know you're no Tom Doak. Well, no shit, I know that, you.

Know, like, thanks, thanks for me, thanks tips, you know. So there was a lot of that.

I mean, I was a girl, you know, Bob Dylan has I'm a big, big dealing fan, and he said something once in like a sixty minutes interview that always stuck with me. He said, you know, there's sometimes you just have this feeling about yourself that nobody else knows, and you just have your yeah, this picture in your mind of of what you're capable of, and you don't tell anybody because if you tell somebody they're going to

Was there was there a moment when you didn't believe it was going to happen. Yeah, for what was like what was like the most dire uh moment of of lacking self belief.

So it was it was a struggle to find to find some investors. And so we had made the decision and me and Andrew and David and Aaron and Bran Coffin, you know, the original guys of well, you know what, let's just go out and start shaping shit. It's maybe it'll be like a self fulfilling prophecy. We have, you know, four hundred dollars in the bank, you know, that covers

It's July.

I've always believed in this, this idea. There used to be canal shores, just got redone in Chicago. Yeah, but I used to take part in this, Like I believe this is the way you can do this with like total golf tragics like ourselves. Oh yeah, you can just get people to come do like Missline.

Absolutely on a golf course crazy and be.

Like, hey, do you want to Like I dug a bunker at this golf course with a shovel.

It was awful. It was like I remember, I got like, I was like, why did I just do this? Like what?

That was an awful morning of work. I was exhausted for like the next two days.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

But like you can do people into doing anything when it's golf related.

Absolutely. My wife makes that point a lot.

You can go build a fence for the boundary line on fifteen at Broomsedge, but you can't you know, you can't mow the freaking lawn.

I mean, come on. And my answer is, well, it's not golf related. I mean I don't want to do it.

Uh, you had to have a golf hole in your backyard exactly.

I mowed that thing regularly. We just need more golf features in the yard. But that was I remember that being a oblique moment because that it was July in Colombia. We're just, you know, I'm shaping this and I'm like, oh, this is going to be overgrown in a couple of months.

Nobody's going to see this. What am I doing.

I'm just hoping we can get a nice picture out of it and then maybe somebody will have belief.

And then the.

Ac broke in the excavator and those things are like they're like greenhouses.

When the ac goes out.

And I'm just I'm soaked, I'm dirty. It was just like what the hell, Like this isn't going to work.

This is stupid.

But you know, then you get done with it. You take a picture and you're like, yeah, I could see this, this could be a cool green all right, I kind of see it, and you just keep going. But you need a few screws loops to do this.

I think you have to be a crazy person to do anything anything of this nature.

Right, absolutely.

Yeah's like to go out and try and do something completely unrelated to your your previous existence on earth is or you know, yeah, that you.

Have to be a completely complete lunatic.

Like I think, like the w I think back to like my personal journey with this business. For example, when I think back now, I think about like just how naive I was, and like nive, being naive is actually like a superpower.

Absolutely, if you have.

No clue how hard it's going to be, it's like a great thing because you you still have You're still positive. You're positive, like and like you know, some people can say I'm like negative and stuff. And I was talking to someone one day and they're like, yeah, I mean, you're like the most positive person I know. And I was like what, They're like, you can't you can't not be positive and be an entrepreneur.

And that's effectively what this journey is.

It's like, yeah, you have to like you can't ever look at like it would have failed, it would have crumbled, you wouldn't have like you wouldn't have been able to get up to have the thirtieth investor call that told you know, right, yeah.

Absolutely, absolutely, Yeah, there's a there's a benefit among the constraints that this is true even on the design side of things as well. If there's a benefit to having some naivete on your team to say.

Can we do this?

And and you know, maybe it's a horrendous idea because of erosion or something, but maybe it's something that nobody had previously thought of and it's because their constraints, you know, kind of told them that that's not a thing you do. So it can be you know, it could be a risk, but it can also be a real benefit.

Well that's I mean, that's the thing with any industry, right, like most of the most of the fresh new ideas, like the guy that came up with Uber was not a taxi cab drive right, and did not manage a taxi company. Right.

The person that that started at Airbnb, I believe, was not in the hotel industry, right.

They did not like this is this is how it works, right, someone that is completely Underlike, the vast majority of great ideas do not come from people that are entrenched in the industry. Of course, there are visionaries within industries. They

But then like one of the things that's like.

A huge pain in the ass for most people to navigate with building a golf course and is like the permitting aspect. But you have a huge experience working in the public sector like that. Yeah probably, I mean that's that's like busy work, you know.

Yeah, yeah, that was that was a relative easy part going before the county council and getting the zoning. I mean, there was not a golf there there wasn't a golf course in the.

County, and so there was the entire county.

Yeah, not in the county.

There used to be at a close so they didn't have like a zoning category for a golf course. So they had to create a new zoning category. And that stuff didn't really it didn't FaZe me because again, I just that was that was part of the course.

That was that was normal work. But yeah, it certainly came in handy.

There is uh is South Carolina going to become your second favorite team to Notre Dame.

You know, you're not gonna run very much.

Yeah, that's that's an added benefit is that we don't run up against them too much. But I think so we've uh, you know, the folks at the University of South Carolina have been real friendly to us. They want to come out and play. You know, we've talked about hosting tournaments and whatnot. So they've been awesome to us. A couple of them are are members, and so it's it's great. They've they've been a great neighbor. So yeah,

All right, let's take a quick break to talk about our partner, Stripe. Just like Club Champions, Stripe is a product that we've used for a really long time. Stripe helped me build this business, this podcast business, this this online business by making it super easy for somebody with a lot on their plate that doesn't really have technical expertise.

So I, I, you know, I don't want to.

You've worked with Kyle on pretty much all of your golf architecture projects.

He was a part of this project. I think, like I think a lot.

Of people will will say this is a Kyle Frans golf course. I think that that's kind of miss It's very much your golf course with Kyle, right from an ar text our standpoint, like it is a it is a co design, But like I think what generally happens is with co designs is like the name people no more are Usually they're going to say it's a Kyle Franz to die. Is it safe to say? Is it right to say that this is a true co design? If not more You're design than Kyle's.

Yeah, I mean it's a true code design for sure. I mean it's It was kind of strange, right because I was sort of wearing owner hat on this one, so it was like apprentice kind of calling the shots. Now, there was never any like you know, drop down arguments about stuff. I mean, we see things pretty pretty similarly. But and Kyle was deferential to that. I mean, he knew the risk that I that I took here. And you know, so you know, we're both classicalists. We both

Strike me knowing both of you is really like pretty opposite personalities.

Yeah, so the way that I describe it to people is okay, so you have under the classical umbrella, let's say you have you have Shinnacock on one end of the spectrum and National on the other end of the spectrum.

Both great, greatly, both great golf courses.

Shinny is like the straightforward, stern old lady frank presentation, demanding questions, and National is the wily fun uncle capricious and humps and hollows and cork. You know, I guess the Scottish and Healgy would be Merefield in the old course. And so I mean, both Kyle and I consider on a table and talk about what we love about those

High on the on the Wyley scale.

And I think that's a reflection of the fact that, Yeah, I mean it was a true co design and you know, ultimately, you know, as the as the owner and the you know, the final decision maker. I mean it is a weird sort of George Crump impersonation of owner and and you know architect. But I mean, ultimately, you know, it came down to, you know, if there was a particular disagreement or particular thing, I mean, ultimately was my call as owner.

So but it was fundament it was fundamental design instincts basically. Yeah.

Yeah, But I mean it never felt I mean, it never felt like that because we're we've worked together for so long and we're friends and we see like the number of differences that we have is relatively small.

But yeah, it was. It was a unique It was a unique sort of environment.

So what's what what is next for your career?

And and what's next for would you say for group said, where where is it at and in the and the whole process of its evolution? And where are you at with with your career? This was a kind of I would say, a half step towards solo design. Yeah, yeah, maybe a half a large stuff towards golf developer, Like yeah, you know, like what.

Yeah, I mean I think about, like through this whole experience, I think about, Okay, what did I like most? And it was certainly on the design side. The development side was was fun and I do it again in a heartbeat. But the real like what got me up in the morning was like we canna put that bunker in on seven?

You know? Are we are?

We what we can do about the six screen? Like that's the stuff that I found most fun, And that's the stuff that at its core is what got me into this was a love of golf course design. So I think that that's a that's a bug that I have and I'll keep I'll keep riding that horse until she kicks me off. I don't know what exactly comes next. I haven't really had time to think about it. We just opened a couple of days ago, so I've just

So why I stop now?

Yeah, it's what's what's you know, you've been open for a couple of weeks, small, you know, small amount of groups going out every day.

What's been your favorite piece of feedback.

That you received? Yeah, I mean our most.

Memorable moment of outside your home one.

Yeah. I just the people that come back and they say.

What appeared to be hyperbolic things of like this is one of the greatest golf courses I've ever.

Played, And I'm like, well, you know, yes, I'm the architect.

Nobody's going to come up to me and say I hated this piece of shit, Like I know that that's not going to happen. But the feedback has actually been fairly overwhelming that people have been really really positive about it, particularly the green complexes, and people are like, these are this is a world class set of greens. They're eighteen one act plays. They toe that balance between interesting and never going over the top, and people have you know,

Love.

I love that stuff, and that's that's what it's all about, you know, is when people experience the thing that you built and they come back and they share their thoughts on it.

The I agree.

One of my favorite I was out there one of the days early on. One of my favorite things was seeing it was it was your opening day and seeing.

A husband and wife member.

They teed off early on, and then my favorite thing is that we got done playing and I see them going out to play more golf like that.

That's a great side. Yeah, Like Husband of Life play eighteen wasn't enough.

They're going to get more, like perfect side like to me, Like it's as simple as that. Like I got done with the golf course, I wanted to play more golf Like that, that's the best sign you can have. And I completely echo the greens, like I think like one of the things that I was I was most impressed by, Like I had heard a lot of things about the land, heard it was a great piece of land from a lot of people that.

Had seen it.

But what I really liked the most was was the greens. They were none of them felt uninteresting and none of them felt over the top. And I loved the idea, the simplicity of a lot of them where there was generally like kind of a central feature that was varied different and in different locations that influenced the entire green Yeah.

Yeah, And we tried really hard on that.

I mean, the land did so much work from from tee to green, so we spent the vast majority of our time just focused on green concepts. And yeah, I mean I think the greens are are you know, they're they're fascinating, but in in often subtle ways, you know, And that's that's what I really like. I love greens that rely on you know, slope and tilt more so than like big in your face undulations. And I just that's that's kind of what I wanted out of this.

The music we're going to have you come back for music, golfs to extravaganza.

It's there's so many parallels. But he said the most interesting thing about a song is what notes you don't play. You know, your your canvas is silence, and you don't have to fill it with everything.

And I just I'm not like that.

That's not my style where you know, like we've all been to those golf courses where they it's just it feels like they bang the drums as loud as they possibly could for eighteen holes and that's fun. But it's just not it's not really my style, and it's not the stuff that I want to play day in and day out. I love the subtleties that reveal themselves over time. It's not the stuff that smash in the face and

I think.

I so this is I think like early on my journey looking at golf courses, I used to think, man, look at how bold that that took stones to build that, and that's a crazy green.

Yeah.

Now I would say, like, now what I look at is like this happens a lot at like Bill Corps golf courses, where I'll see this just like beautiful, understated yeah hole that like a lot of people might be like, I don't, I don't really know what's going on, but it's like, oh, there's just this little bump in the green and it's like a very fun hole to play, and this bump just like just rex like it. It

And I think, like, it takes so so.

Much confidence to build something that simple, like and be confident that it's going to have enough interest that people aren't just like that is a nothing burger, right right, ye, Like that takes more confidence in my mind than building something wild.

I totally agree.

And you know, I got to give a shout out to Joe Hancock, who is our lead shaper and really a key thinker and all this. And Joe was like, Joe's a seasoned old cat. I mean, he's been doing this for a long time. And Joe was a really great voice to have on the project. And Joe was, you know, a voice of saying that's enough, like we there is intrigue in that. You know, the ball's going to do what you wanted to do. You don't need

I love this. I was good. This is exactly what I was going to say. I loved I like, you.

Know this, there's this guy walking around with his wife. Yeah, and I'm I don't know, I've never met Joe Hancock like I've known of and I'm just like, hey, how's it going. He's like, oh, I just just he was just out watching people play the golf course that he that he helped build.

Like that's like that tells you everything you need to know about like what what he's interested in. He probably thought about, how's this hole going to work? How Like he saw I was.

In the in the bunker on the on the boundary hole fourteen or fifteen fifteen fifteen, the boundary hole driveable par for Obi Wright. I hit it in the left bunker and He's like, Oh, that's gonna be a really hard.

Shot, you know.

Like he was just like he was so excited to see the shot that he'd probably thought about a million times.

Yeah, you know, yeah, play out.

Joe.

He's he's a true believer. I mean he loves he loves this stuff. And I mean we went we went out to lunch. A couple couple of days after that, he was still kind of hanging around and he still had thoughts about the golf course. Oh you know that cross has around seventeen. I think the broom said just a little too high there, go and go and trim

We have out there. That that's Joe Hancock.

I mean, you know the way that the way that Joe and I worked was it was like, all right, you know, here's here's two or three concepts. Here's kind of what I want to see out of this green and they were you know, go to town and sometimes it was a walk off, you know, like fifteen green was like we got that one next, and then other times we struggled a little bit more with it, like eight Green you know where we you know, I felt like I alway need to do something else at it.

All right, let's close this out with a couple a couple of music questions. See what's your favorite music to shape to?

Uh? Man, it depends on what I'm shaping. If it's like an aggressive type feature, then it's like Hell's Bells a CVC. If it's a tamer thing, then it's like Springsteen Tunnel of Love.

You know.

It's like that's so it depends on what I'm shaping. I sort of go into something.

And the music matches what you're what you're doing.

Yeah, absolutely absolutely, And sometimes I'm totally wrong.

It's like the baby you say, Hell's Bells, It just like rins through your head.

Yeah, And sometimes you're wrong.

Sometimes it's like, Oh, I might have gone too far on that bunker. What the hell was I thinking? I shouldn't have put on Hell's Bells, I should have put on Tunnel a Love but yeah, it's sort of what I'm about to shape.

It dictates the song and then.

Favorite song.

Golf course comp like where like this golf course feels like this song.

If you have one, hmmm, I can give you one of mine. Yeah, I mean I wrote.

This article once and Garrett was like, it is way too n niche for nobody's going.

To care about this. Yeah, I wrote, I wrote this out.

I remember, I was so excited about it, and he's like, you know what, I don't think we should publish.

So of course nobody's played.

East Hampton, I've always said, is like Band on the Run because they have farmland, Like there's a farm section, there's like this in between section, and then you go into like a pine like a like a mature sand dune forest for nine holes, and it's like the three stages of Band on the Run.

Yeah, that's a good complimation, Like none.

Of them really feel the coldest, but at the end you're like, you know what that worked? That worked for me.

Yeah, A day in the life, I mean with the Beatles, that's another kind of three. Pamir is a good one for that, Like Pamier is another place where you have like parkland, and then it goes to Heathland and then it goes to links Dunelands.

So yeah, oh man, this is this is tough.

I mean, I I I guess another one I have is like Posita Tiempo.

You could do like Hotel California, because it's just like the song, like you're it's really pleasant and then it just like ends just wailing out. Yes, like like the last half of the song, you're like, holy shit.

Yeah.

Maybe I guess for Broom, maybe it's like uh uh, you know, born to Run or something I don't know, or like smells like teen.

Spirit because yeah it starts it starts.

Yeah, yeah, it starts hot or like I mean it smells like Teen Spirit was the first song on the you know, on the album there. So it comes out, it comes out swinging.

Like I never know if it should be.

You compare it like album or song, right, yeah, like because you could do. You could get like if you got really into it like you do the album. It's just like you're narrowing the audience.

Yeah we've lost everybody already. Yeah yeah.

Maybe, Like I mean, there's like Nebraska. I'm a big Springsteen guy, so like huge, Oh yeah, I got a Springsty shirt on right now. I don't know if you can see it, but I'm always I'm always sporting.

Spring I'll hold back my boss.

I know, I know I'm in the minority there.

Just I'm a boss. This overrated guy.

Yeah, Cody is. Cody is too. Cody gives me sh about the Boston.

Cody is a big music guy.

He is, he is, but he's not He's not a Springsteen guy for sure.

Yeah.

Maybe I don't know like some of the more like the you know, the low key places I always think about, like Nebraska, just really austere and really basic, I mean recorded on a you know, a shitty recorder, and you know, I just think of like some of the some of the kind of the you know, the Scottish, the Scottish places like a Pamer or something where.

It's really austere and just really really solid.

But nothing nothing in your face, nothing big, It's just it's just in its ross elements. So I'll have to think more about that.

Yeah, it's you got time.

The good news is, you know, I know I've got We've gotten very narrow here.

Anybody that's listening.

At an hour and twenty six, yeah, is in the bucket. So Mike, thank you for joining us chatting. I'm excited to see both your career and UH and Broom Savage evolve. And congratulations on UH on getting getting your dream built.

It's amazing accomplishment.

Yeah, thanks man, appreciate it, Appreciate you having me on and hopefully we did it again.

This was fun.

Yeah, all right, that does it for another edition of the Friday Golf Podcast. Big thanks to PJ Clark for editing and producing this podcast while he was on the road in UH in Phoenix for the Champions Tour event. If you want to learn more about that, check out a shotgun started the latest episode there. We will be back later this week with another episode. I'm probably going to do something a little different for that one. We are we have our company off site this week, so