I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset.
When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset. And when I find my ball in.
A bride egg Friday Egg, the dread and Frida Egg Frida Egg, Frida egg Egg Frida Egg bride egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off the golf course game. And welcome to the Frida Egg Golf Podcast. I'm Garrett Morrison, and today we have a quick golf architecture mail bag with Andy Johnson, followed by a discussion with the superintendent on how to do low cost renovations at municipal golf courses.
The superintendent's name is Will Benson, and he works at Laurel Wood Golf Course, which is a municipal nine hole course in Eugene, Oregon. Now, in addition to maintaining the turf at Laurel Wood, Will actually holds the contract with the city and helps to manage the course, so he has a very direct stake in the health and success of the facility. And over the years he's made some significant improvements to the golf course, including building new greens
and re routing a few holes. In the process, he's become kind of an expert on how to carry out very efficient, very cheap renovations at municipal golf courses. And that's a big question at the moment, right It's how can local courses make improvements when the margins are so tight? I think Laurelwood Golf Course is a good answer to that question. Not the only answer, but a good one, all right. So that's coming up in the back half
of the episode. First, though, Andy and I are going to field a few golf architecture themed mail bag questions, so right after this break you'll hear from me and Andy Johnson. This episode of the Friday Golf pot Cast is brought to you by Toro, Up and Down, Ham and Egg. To the list of great golf pairings, we
can now add the Toro Workman MDX and Electrification. For more than two decades, the Workman MDX has been the Superintendent's trustees sidekick, a rugged utility vehicle for whatever the job. And now it's the same except the Workman MDX Lithium is powered by Toro's proprietary hyper cell lithium ion batteries, meaning the chargers on board ready to be connected to any standard one hundred and twenty volt power outlet. Less time checking batteries and more time getting stuff done with
the same power and durability. That's another great golf pairing, a win win. Visit Toro dot com, slash golf and reach out to your local Toro distributor for more information. All right, Andy, we're doing part two of the Golf Architecture mail Bag. We had some leftover question from our last episode on Friday. You ready to get into it?
Yeah, absolutely ready to go.
All right. I got a few questions queued up here and we'll just knock a few of them out. We're not going to get to all of them. I think we had something like sixty five questions in response to your call for questions, so not possible to cover all of them, but I'll pick out a few of them that I think we can dig into a little bit. The first one that I'd like to address, and I'm not sure it's a question we can necessarily answer with much authority, but it's from Antifaldo or antifa Oldo. His
question is is Marco Simone scare quotes? Good? Now? Have you looked much at Marco Simone? Have you looked at the videos that have come out covering the golf course. Do you have a sense of whether this course is going to be any good.
I've watched, I've watched a little bit.
I mean the good I think the good news for golf fans is that for a Ryder Cup of President's Cup, the least important aspect of the competition is maybe I mean not least important of all competitions.
Golf course is like, you know, the least.
Important comparatively to like a major championship or such. I'm not saying like if you play a great if you play this event in a great golf course, the event's gonna be exponentially better. It's not like the golf course doesn't matter. But team match play can carry an event because it's really about the matches, the personalities in the matches and different things.
That said with.
Marco Simone, I don't think it's gonna be very good. It's in Italy, Like, there's not a lot of golf fans there. It's you know, it's.
Not in Italy. Are you saying Italian golf architecture has not had a renaissance. This is.
It's in Italy. So like the other things, there's no golf fans. It's like France, right, Like people don't care about golf in France. They don't care about golf in Italy. And frankly, it's not you know, from what I've seen, I haven't seen it in person, it's not a very inspiring golf design. But again, you know, this is about the team match play format, and you know, I think I think like a great example of how golf course
matters would be the Walker Cup. You know, if if the Walker Cup was played at the Old Course or Marco Simone, what would generate more interest?
You know? Yeah, the Ryder Cup is sort of coasting, maybe not coasting, but relying on its reputation, and of all events, the Ryder Cup can do that. It doesn't have to go to any kind of golf course that we've heard of or that we find historically or architecturally significant, because it's the Ryder Cup. And I think that's the main point here. Now. I have looked at a few of the videos of Marcus Simone that have come out.
I watched the match between Sally and DJ that they put out on the No Laying Up channel, and those guys, I mean, they're good players and they got murdered by this course, and my impression, not having been on site, my impression is that it has some of the kind of trendy aspects of modern golf course design. You have
these kind of wild, undulating greens. But to me, it didn't look like there was necessarily any rhyme or reason to the undulations in these greens, like they didn't really have a clear strategic purpose that related back to the whole. They are just sort of wild. And that's one thing that I've seen in a good amount of mediocre modern golf architecture that I'm not a big fan of. Now, there's a lot of land movement on this site. I don't know if it's a good piece of land or
a bad piece of land. I'd really have to be on site. It seems like that's going to be a big factor in the Ryder Cup because of the drama of the topography. There are going to be a lot of obscured sitelines, a lot of blind drives, and especially a lot of blind approaches where you can't see the surface of the green because the green is way up above you and you can't see it. Now, something that confuses me about the course and it's set up, and you and Joseph sort of addressed this in a podcast
that you did a couple of weeks ago. But looking at the makeup of the teams, looking at the distribution of players who are very powerful without necessarily being accurate on an elite level, I don't really understand why so many fair ways. Why the European team, which is of course setting up the course the European Tour, why so many fairway bottleneck at kind of the three twenty mark.
This would make sense if this were more of a traditional comparison between the teams or contrast between the teams, where the Americans have all the big hitters who maybe spray it a little bit, but the Europeans have a lot of those players too, and so why would it necessarily be advantageous to the European side to have so many of these fairways kind of come in at that three twenty mark, which I think is going to force driver out of the hands of a lot of players at this course.
Yeah, I you know, I'm not sure I would say I would, you know, I think a lot of the European selections, with especially Ludwig and Oiguard, center around like, hey, distance is going to be a huge advantage with the short part fours here. You know there's going to be three or four short par fours that are potentially driveable. So I think that also, you know, lends itself to a long hitter. But with the bottleneck, I think accuracy is going to be really important, right, Yeah, Like I
think that. I think it's it's not about just being long. It's to be about being long and straight, right if if you can take advantage sometimes, So I think that's that's the thing. I think the the Europeans generally, like if you look at the Europeans, they are longer hitters like rom And and Rory and uh when they're yeah, when they're going, those are very accurate long hitters.
Yeah, that's true and is probably pretty accurate too. Some of the longer players on the European side are notably accurate relative to there.
Well, and that yes, go down the list, keep going. You got Fleetwood, very accurate player, Matty Fits when he's cooking is very accurate player, Terrel Hatton very accurate player.
Yeah, so you have you have a.
Lot of players that accuracy is is a facet and just compare and Obviously this is we aren't talking about every player, but like you know, you Scotti shuffler is obviously very accurate, but then you get into the Jordan Speith that Justin Thomas type players for the US team, and those aren't, you know, necessarily as accurate of players. Obviously, we haven't gone player by player, and we aren't going
to go player by player. But I think the one of the residing traits with with the European team is that if you probably put together a total driving stat And I have not done this research. I didn't expect to be talking about this for a architecture mailbag, but if you put together a total driving stat I think that they would probably have a pretty good advantage there.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And you know, one more note about Marcus Simoni. You mentioned the driveable part fours. Those to me look like pretty neat holes overall relative to the rest of the course. And I would also keep an eye out for the finish at Marcus Simone. The last couple of holes are pretty fun. You know, there's a drivable part four in the mix. There's a very penal par three seventeenth hole where there's real stakes as to whether you hit the green and then the finisher is
a risk reward you know, water featury. I mean it's a little bit like the golf nasty now you see, you see a bit of a formula for these kind of European tour led designs that host these big events. I think that there's there's certain moves that they have, and some of these moves work pretty well. So as far as the architecture is concerned, a mixed bag at Marcos Simone. Overall, it's not a golf course that I would necessarily enjoy playing more than more than many others.
So yeah, not about the America team, like you know, Patrick Cantley and and Morikawa and Xander would all all skew is like really good drivers the golf ball if you if you blend accuracy with distant right, So.
Absolutely, yeah, yeah, it might be kind of a wash in terms of I'm not I'm not sure how much of.
All Europeans have a hoblin too.
That's true, Yeah, yeah, it's yeah when you have Ron Rory and Hoveland and some of those other guys. Yeah yeah, yeah, I mean his iron play is really the leading characteristic anyway. Well, we'll have we'll have plenty of time to discuss the differences between the American and European teams in the run up to the Ryder Cup, I'm sure in the next couple of weeks. But a more pure architecture question that I have for you, Andy, I really like this question.
It's a bit of a thinker. What's the best fair way in golf? Not green surrounds, not bunkering, not a vista, just fairway shapes, ground movements and contour. The question asker sees this as a very underestimated part of great architecture. And the question asker's name is Rob Key. So do you have any thoughts about this?
Off the top of you, Yeah, I love this question. I had a couple ideas in my head. I think one that I immediately always go to is the fourteenth hole at Pasta Tiempo, where it has like basically the extension of the Brancas that runs through the fairway on a diagonal.
It's just like I think.
And then the other thing that I think about I thought about the sixteenth fairway at Saint Andrews, which has like these just great little rumples. I mean, you could pick like five fairways from Saint Andrews and and use that another one the joined fairway what should be a joined fairway of the second and seventeenth hole at North Barrick.
There's just a lot of irregularity. I think, like the thing that that to me comes out when you think about this is that you have like irregular movement, choppiness, you know, and a lot of times the contours they aren't massive contours, there are about ten feet or smaller. Is what really like resonates with me. I like the little stuff, kind of the wavy contours is what really gets me.
The bigger stuff.
And I think this could be like a modern agronomy thing like when you get bigger movement, you're either on top or you're down right, and that's that could be just where the cut of fairways are. You don't end up on down slopes. So when you get this smaller stuff, like the the four to five foot stuff, like if you're thinking about the sixteenth at St Andrew's, when it's not cut super low right, you can end up with lots of like side hill, downhill different lies that that
kind of hang. And you know, that's what I love to see. Did you have thoughts on this?
I a few came to mind. You know, for one thing, I think that a lot of links holes would be can of for this question. You know, the thirteenth hole at Prestwick. This is not a hole that I've played myself. I've just looked at it. Wonderful pure linxy undulation on the small scale that you're talking about. That's just a beautiful type of fairway with a wonderful sense of randomness and complexity. You just can't can't beat it for golf.
But a couple more dramatic examples that did come to mind for me were one the eighth fairway at Prairie Dunes. The eighth Fairway of Prairie Dunes has these huge waves in it. So that's an example of the kind of larger scale contours that you know, a fairway can incorporate to great effect. And these these I don't know if
you even want to call them contours. I mean, they're they're they're so big, but they have a strategic effect on the whole because they they can either open up site lines or obscure site line And depending on your position and the and how well you strike your drive, you can either overcome them or really be hindered by them. Then the next hole at Prairie Dunes, the ninth hole, is a wonderful example of how smaller scale waves in
the land can really work. And you know, there's one side of the fairway on that hole that has bigger ripples than the other, and that makes the slightly flatter side of the fairway a bit more preferable because you're more likely to have a level lie and so.
The strand ale ale get over the left, you get a way better angle. The right side shortens the hole. But especially with that wind that usually is coming right to left there too, it is like super advantageous to get over left, but it's super hard. There's a big blowout bunker on the left, and then obviously you're always dealing with the gunch there and it's scary. It's really scary to hit the ball left there.
There's out.
But yeah, that is I was thinking about eight to nine at Prairie Dunes. Those are two amazing fairways, and I think what you pointed out, like the difference the big scale and the small scale right, it shows how each can be super effective.
Yeah, yeah, two of my very favorite holes in golf, and a big reason for it is because the fairways were routed over such interesting natural contours. You know, that's a Perry Maxwell. Those are two Perry Maxwell golf holes, right, And I think Perry Maxwell was really good at letting natural land movement stay there in the middle of a fairway at Old Town Club, which I just wrote a
profile for for Club TFE. One of the great things that he does Maxwell does and the routing of that course is just goes straight over the most interesting topography on the golf course, and he has the guts to put fairways on pretty severe slopes and make those part of the golf hole. I think that there's one thing that really I can identify that I don't like as much about the architecture that came out in the eighties
and nineties and early two thousands. It's that fairways are flatter, are graded, or are not put over the most interesting contours on the property. In fact, sometimes the most interesting topography is going to be off the fairway, and that makes your lie in the fairway more consistently quote unquote fair more driving range. Like if you hit it in the fairway, then you're going to have a pretty easy lie. But it also just makes the golf a lot less
dynamic to me. And so if there's one thing I can identify that I love about Links design and Golden Age design, it's that, you know, willingness to go straight over really cool.
Topography, unable unable to do anything else.
Yeah, exactly, Yeah, they didn't have any other option. They couldn't move the land. You know, Essex County Club. We just did a whole of the day on social media the eighth of the of the eighth hole at Essex County Club and that I mean, it's just it's again huge contours, not little contours, but there's a huge high section of that fairway, a big low section of the fairway, and all you're thinking is just I can't believe Donald Ross put a fairway over this stuff, Like it's crazy.
And on that hole, you're dying, dying to get it down on the low section. But to do that you have to hit from a blind te like kind of a draw and you're flirting without a bound and you pick up twenty extra yards if you can get it down into the low section, and if not, you end up out right. You have a worse angle into the green. The green, the angle the green sits on kind of
like makes it a little bit more shallow. You might if the pins on the left, then you're bringing in out of bounds and a bunker into play on the second shot. It's a brilliant, brilliant hole. Another great, big, big fairway and a couple a couple big fairways that people, probably a lot of people listening have played, would be the thirteenth of Pacific Dunes with the hogs back down the middle. If you're able to challenge the ocean, you get a huge benefit. You don't have to take on
the ocean on the second shot. If you miss the ball's gonna shoot it. If you miss it into the right side of the fairway, ball's gonna shoot right. Then that that ocean on your second shot into that narrow green is right in your periphery. Another great one is the fourth Abandoned Trails. You know you are. You've got that kind of diagonal hogs back. It's a delightful hole, and you kind of need to figure out what how far can I push it and carry that hogs back
get the benefit of rolling over. But if you if you play too safe left, you're gonna run into trouble. If you play too far, too aggressively on the right, you're either gonna be blind or you could find one of those bunkers. That is a brilliant, brilliant fairway. I mean, there's so many great fairways. It's a it's honestly, it would be a great little post is to just kind of go through some of our favorite favorite fairway features.
Yeah, I love thinking about this question, so so thank you Rob Keys for an excellent topic there. All right, Uh, let's do a little bit of discussion of teas. I think this is a pretty interesting subject that maybe doesn't get discussed very often. I don't think we've gone we've gone in depth on it recently. So Suzanne Woodrow asks rectangle teas or free form question mark and Alex DeLange asks,
in your opinion, what makes a great tea box. So we can kind of put these questions together and just generally discuss tea design.
This is why everybody wants to hear.
This is This is why it's the third question. This is not the leadoff question where we're getting We're getting in the weeds here, but I think this is an underrated subject. Let me frame it this way. We think a lot about how greens are tied into their surroundings. Right, We're really insistent that greens need to be gracefully designed in relation to their surroundings. Right, we really focus on that. I don't think we focus on that nearly as much
with teas. We're kind of fine with tea's just being these lame, little built up things that don't really have any design to them. So I wonder if this is something that's important to you, Andy, or whether this is something that's okay to kind of disregard when you're designing a golf course, if it's just not that important, not as important as a green, not as important as fair ways or hazards.
I think teas are super important.
As for rectangle or free farm, I think it's super syite dependent. And that's kind of a non answer there, definitely.
I mean, yeah, a parkland course that has kind of simple land, I think that rectangle is often the way to go because freeform teas on that kind of piece of land, relatively flat, normal parkland land, they look a little dinky, don't they free form?
Well, it depends too how you're tying them into the greens.
How far away are they?
Like I think the free forms look really cool when you can do some like tie into the green surrounds in its short grass that flows into a tea, Like that's really great. But that's not always going to be the case. Like maybe there's one hundred and fifty yards between tees. You know, maybe it's a course trying to get distance, like I think, but overall, like you know what,
I think, that's super sight dependent. I think the thing that I think about a lot, and you see a lot at older golf courses that were renovated in the nineties or two thousands are elevated teas, teas that are built up. And what it does is, you know, it doesn't sound like a lot, but if you give six feet and you put them up in the air six feet, it really changes the site line and it loses a connection with the ground. Right when you're down on the ground,
it changed. It really obscures the way you see the whole and you know, you see horizon lines, right. So I think like one of the biggest things that I see around is like just getting the tea boxes back down on the on the ground makes such a big impact on on a golf course. And like something that we've talked a lot about I don't think privately, but like you know, it creates a lot of obscured.
Views and obscured.
Blindness kind of like a little bit of like subtle blindness to a golf course. And I can't think of like many great golf courses that don't have a lot of obscured obstruction of views and in blindness like where there where it's kind of hiding different things from from you from the tea box, and when you elevate up
the tea's you lose that. Even it doesn't sound like a lot and it's like not a very sexy thing to do, but almost like I and I'm not like a lot of golf courses have done tea box projects, but almost every like non renovated golf course that I visit in the last twenty years could could have a lot of good from just having the tea boxes put down on the ground, right.
I think that something that is easy to do in a renovation and doesn't get much put pushback is just pushing up those teas. You know, nobody seems to really object to that, and it gets done a lot, but I think probably people should object to that more tees that are at grade often are more effective when it comes to what the architecture is trying to do. At so many great courses, what you see and what you don't see at a given time is very intentional on
the part of the architect. This is something that Coren Crenshaw do better than just about any modern architect. When you're on a Coren Crenshaw course, just pay attention to what you're allowed to see and what you're not allowed to see depending on your position from the tea box, from different positions than the fairway, etc. What can you see and what can't you see. It's always really specifically worked out at corn Crunshaw courses. And this is something
that also is so great about Augusta National. You are always being shown things or not shown things for specific reasons at that golf course, and it's one reason why it's so great and why it uses its land so well. So that's one thing that renovating tea boxes can unintentionally kind of mess up the site lines that are intended
by the architect. Now, something that I thought about a lot when I visited Old Barnwell, a new course that is under construction outside of Ake in South Carolina being designed by Brian Schneider and Blake Conant, who have done a lot of work for renaissance golf design Tom Doakes firm. Really interesting golf course that has a lot of forward
thinking design concepts in it. And one of the things I appreciated about what they're doing out there is that all of the tea boxes are as well and as cleverly tied in to the surrounding landscape as the greens are, and they're also as varied as the greens. There's not like one type of tea box out there. It's always different and the way it relates to its environment is always different and specific to the site of the tea box. Now, part of the reason that this works is that there's
a lot of short grass around right. The tea box is not a defined area of short grass. There's short grass that kind of flows into the fairways and flows into the preceding green and kind of, you know, surrounds the tea box as opposed to being one discrete area. But I did really love the shaping they were doing around the tea boxes and how each one was interesting in its own right in the way that each green is interesting in its own right, and I think that
that's a good goal for really sophisticated architecture. That's kind of the next level there. When you're treating each tea box with as much care as a green, then you're really showing that your detail oriented as an architect and that you care about every single component of the golf course. And so I think that's something that a lot of courses can think about when they're doing restorations or renovations. How can we treat the tea boxes with as much
respect as we treat the greens? All right? Unless we have any further thoughts about teas, Brentley roman asks a question that we hear quite a bit, and maybe we don't need an end depth discussion of this because maybe we've addressed it in different ways before. But when you hear the phrase best course on worst piece of land, what comes to mind? That's Brentley Romine of Golf Channel.
I'd probably say the Garden City Men's Club is up there. It's a really awkward property. It's like an l and then also it's it's very very flat now the way it's used it just it uses like the gentle movement of the land so well, and I think a lot of it it centers around the greens. The greens out there are terrific. They're just wonderful greens, and they're they're so difficult to approach because you know, you the ground being so flat obscures what's going on with the ground
at the green, if that makes sense. Where it's just hard to get like an idea. Okay, like when when the movement's big and you see a green kind of perched on the ground, you're like, okay, that green's running away.
So it's kind of almost like depth perception or or like you know, relative scale, or.
It's kind of like, yeah, it's like when like when shooters talk about shooting and like one of the big arenas at the Final four where the fans are set back, they can't they lose a little depth perception, and so what happens is like you're hitting shots into greens there and your wedge runs runs out and you're like, wait, I thought that was going to be right next to it, and it's like, oh this the screen runs away a little bit or you can't tell that it's then the
next one spins back and you just have like all this difficulty of really understanding what's going on because of the obscurity of it. And then obviously at that golf course, there's a lot of above ground features that really you know, make a big impact. So with you know, it's just a mixture of like really utilizing the little movement that exists combined with some built features that make you know,
really exciting golf. Like a good example the part three on the back the green that was restored by Tom Dok and Brian Schneider that has kind of like the really flat part of the ground. I apologize for not remembering the exact whole number, but it's part three and they have just these like kind of like elephants in the green, and it's just like, this is really brilliant built green on dead flat land, right.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, And Garden City kind of leans into what it has, right, It had really subtle movement, and so that's what the golf course. You know, it's not it's not as big as we're used to seeing from golf courses, but it uses the subtlety that is there. And and so that's a good example of you know, taking what you're given, which is what a lot of golf architecture can do better now that we can move land.
We might see a site like Garden City and make it less subtle, make it bigger because we think it should be. But you know, it's sort of a rarity now because it is it just like let itself be itself. You know, when I think of this question, I think of Pete die courses and how he almost always was designing courses on really ill suited pieces of land and coming up with clever drainage solutions and managing to build really interesting golf And so that's something that immediately comes
to mind. And I think you'd have to put the leado in this discussion as well. I'm not sure this is a It can be a bad piece of land when its seaside and when you had views of the Manhattan skyline, but certainly it was a constructed artificial golf course and so you know the land wasn't offering much there. All right, let's wrap this up maybe with one last question about courses that have great bones but are not in very good shape. So can good bones always make
courses worth playing despite unplayable course conditions? And where is the tipping point that's a question from Parmeshan Cheese. I'd like your brief thoughts on that, Andy, you know, do do does good bones, you know overwhelm the how poor conditions of a certain course can sometimes get.
For me, Yeah, I think for for different I don't expect everybody to have that opinion. For me, I'd much rather be playing a course with great bones that's in poor shape than a course with no bones that's in great shape, right, okay? To me, like the obstacles that architecture presents, even when the maintenance of the golf course is not really up to par is, is really exciting.
I think like a great example of this is like probably my two favorite courses to play in Chicago that are public, you know, in the general Chicago land area. I love going down to Kankakey Elks and playing that length from a row. There's just some massive obstacles that you have to overcome that were built features, and there's just some beautiful greens that even in a reduced state small circles are still incredible greens that you like have to hit great approach shots into to score. And Spring
Valley is the same way. Spring Valley's got a little bit more natural movement. And it's the way that ground, the golf course, you know, interacts with the ground is really great. But yeah, for me, like I'd rather go play those courses than go play the Glen Club. Like in the Glen Club charges one hundred and fifty dollars,
it's in great shape all the time. But for me, I just that's just my personal preference that that there's a certain thrill that golf architecture that really well thought out golf architecture provides for me that i'd rather And the thing I get to do when I go to a course with great bones it's not in great shape, is I get. I get to spend four hours dreaming about what it could be.
That's what I was just going to say. I think you like this because you like thinking about what a course could be. And I like that as well. And so it's enjoyable in a certain way to go to a course that isn't everything it could be because you get to have a little bit of imagination time when you're there and think, man, what would I do with this whole How would I make this better without spending a lot of money. Now, when the question asker refers
to course conditions. I think that I'm not sure what parmesan cheese means by course conditions, but I do know that often you and I think of something different when we talk about course conditions than what a lot of people think about when they think about course conditions. And you know, no one way of the doing this is better than another. I'm just going to articulate what we
often mean when we say course conditions. Often I would prioritize good tree management, good vegetation management, firm turf, things that I don't really care about, how pure and fast the greens are, how green the turf is. If you look at a course and think it's in bad shape, if it has slower greens and brownish turf, then that's certainly one way to view a golf course. But it's not something I share. It's not something I care about. So if a course is said to be in bad shape,
I want to know more specifically what that means. Now, what gets in the way of my enjoyment of a golf course in terms of conditioning or presentation is too many trees in the playing corridor that affect the strategy of the whole mowing lines that are too far in on the greens or in the fair way and turf that is always soggy and so doesn't run out in the way that you would hope it would. Now, even if those things are present in a golf course, I
would always rather see something of architectural interest. But certainly those factors can affect how the architecture plays and how much you can actually enjoy the architecture and bring it into the game that you're playing on the grounds, and so those are certainly factors that are important. I would never say that course conditions or the presentation of golf course is unimportant to me, But of course, yes, I
always want to see good bones. I always want to see interesting architecture, and even if it's not in the best shape that it can be, then that's okay. A lot of the times. So a lot of the times, it's understandable some courses don't have a lot of funds, and I'm good with that as long as I get to see something in the ground that spurs my imagination. So I think that would be my response to that question.
Now we're gonna move on at this point to an interview that I did with Will Benson, But you can consider the interview with Will Benson to be an answer to this question from Andrew Shannon. Andrew asks, lay out the formula for a great muni renovation, money included if you know average numbers. Now, I'm going to talk to Will Benson, who is the superintendent and also the facility manager at Laurel Wood Golf Course, which is a local municipal nine hole golf course in Eugene, Oregon, near the
University of Oregon campus. And what makes Will's story special is that he has managed to make ambitious, significant changes to this golf course without getting a huge amount of outside funding. He has done this stuff on the cheap. We're not talking about millions of dollars. We're not talking about anywhere approaching millions of dollars. We're talking about tens
of thousands of dollars. We're talking about setting aside little portions of the management contract that he has with the city, and you know, doing things over the course of years rather than doing them all at once. And so I talk about all of that with Will Benson and how he managed to pull it off at Laurelwood Golf Course,
and the improvements are ongoing at Laurelwood. I would imagine he has much more to do there, but I think the story is a really good one and a nice illustrative one about what can be done for very cheap at a nine hole municipal golf course. All right, thanks Andy for doing mail bag Reducks. Talk to you again soon.
Yeah, thanks Garrett.
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matter the venue. Its polar white body makes customization a breeze too, so the Vista can pull double duty as a rolling billboard while getting folks from point A to point B on point. Visit Toro dot com, slash golf and reach out to your local Toro distributor for more information. All right, Will Benson, We are in a unique setting
for the Friday podcast. We're actually outdoors right now at Laurelwood Golf Course, and so maybe you could start off just by describing what we're looking at, where we're sitting, what the whole kind of environment around here is like, so that people get a sense for that kind of sounds they're hearing and all that kind of stuff in the background.
Yeah, So the area where we are now was once my spot I hated the most because this was a fence all the way behind us and there was garbage and leaves and it was never used. So then we remodeled the golf course and moved nine down the hill and opened this area up. All of a sudden, we got picnic tables and everybody started to sit here, and so this kind of ended up. What was my least favorite spot is now my most favorite spot to just hang out in.
The evenings and the.
Sun is setting and kids are putting and people are putting and people are having dinner, and it just I think it kind of exemplifies that the change in this place, how much different people use it.
So we're at a picnic table. Right behind us is a parking lot, the parking lot for the golf course. Right in front of us. What do we have going on here?
Well, you can see the entire golf course, which is kind of unique to this place, where the clubhouse is set up above the valley that the course is in. So I mean you can see the butte all the way across, and you can see four or five holes from here, and you just basically have a beautiful view.
And directly in front of us, we have the practice screen where we have some people practicing putting, including a father and daughter. And I'll say this quietly because I don't want to make them uncomfortable as if they're being surveilled, but it's very, very cute and lovely. So we're in Eugene, Oregon, pretty near the University of Oregon, kind of like, you know, next to it. Yeah, almost next to the University of Oregon.
So can you just tell me about this piece of land that Laurel Wood Golf Course, this nine hole golf course occupies.
Well, it used to be eighteen holes, and it was the original country club in town, and they actually had trolley service up to it originally, and then it really
kind of just got lost in the sixties. I think the plan was to build an eighteen hole course on Alton Baker Park, or by the old Oak Way, which was eighteen holes, and they gave it to the school district and was going to become a school district, and it just kind of sat here for years, kind of became known as the Weed to everybody because the fairways were all weeds and you couldn't find your ball, and there's arbor vited trees planted in the middle of the
fairway and barbed wire fence around the driving range and clubhouse was wrapped in netting and plexiglass because we're getting pounded by golf balls from the ninety all the time. And it just kind of sat here forever till we showed up in two thousand and seven and kind of started this whole journey we've been on here all right.
So we're definitely going to talk about that journey. And that's a big thing that I want to, you know, put out to listeners, is the story of this golf course and how it went from what it was the weed, Laurel Weed. You what it is now, which is a really nice, public, affordable nine hole golf course on a
terrific piece of land. So we're going to tell that story, but I think I'd like to find out some more about like how you found yourself here, how you got started in the turf industry, all that kind of stuff. So what was your path into this profession.
So at the time, I was just an avid golfer and I lived three blocks from here, and we ran a construction company. So we did residential commercial construction. We did a lot of landscape construction also, and we always drove by it and we're like, you know, it's got that clubhouse, nobody ever uses it, the whole upstairs is empty. You got nine hole course with views, just seems like
it could be fixed. And so we put in a bid when it went out to bid, and we won, and so we kind of were planning on working here a little bit, but we're still going to run our companies. And then two thousand and eight financial crisis hit and construction was just basically had just dried up. It was over, and so my business part of the time. Todd Matthews and I we came here and we met Chris Gone over at Eugene Country Club and he came out and helped us a little bit.
And Pat Cook, who.
Was a construction superintendent. He came out and they just kind of started to teach us the ropes a little bit, and we kind of took over on stuff and we got a little bit more involved in it, a little bit more involved in it, and that's just kind of how it started there. So it went from Avid Golfer to kind of getting into saying, you know, I might kind of like to do this.
So then tell me about getting more and more involved with Laurelwood Golf Course and how you ended up building up the turf operation here and the business as a whole. So I know that's probably a big story, and feel free to give as much detail as you want, But how did that all unfold?
Well, originally, when we first did some improvements in nine, I met the guys from uh Scratch Golf, Ari Techner and Patrick and they came out and they actually hand dug this bunker on number four every morning before they went to work at Scratch Golf, and they were telling me, they're like, you know, this piece of land is better than the country club's piece of land. At the time, I was like, yeah, I don't know, Ari, you might be a little wild here with that.
In one second, so scratch golf is the did they make the wedges and stuff like that.
They made those, like the hand ground wedges and all that stuff, really nice stuff. And so he drove me around, and you know, I didn't know architecture from anything, you know, twenty years ago untill I met Ari. And then Ari took me to uh, I guess it's eastern Colorado where bally nilis and we played golf there for like four or five days. We played with Hickory's and and and that was when all of a sudden, I was like, oh, there's more to this than just you know, teas, fairways
and greens. You know, that's when I, I mean, just seeing that dope course just kind of blew me away and saying, you know, staying there and they had the nice food at night. And so that's when I kind of started to read about it and learn about it and bought a couple of books and just kind of began to look at it differently. But when I was in construction, we always did a lot of creative stuff.
I mean I was always.
Looked at things a little bit differently, did different types of work. I liked the old school construction, the various like architecture of the craftsmen era, and then even just like taking that thought pattern to here and just looking at the land and seeing what needed to be moved and how you could get the traffic to flow better rather there be backlogs every evening on the back part of the property. And so that's when we just started, like move a tea box here, or at a bunker
there where we had to drainage issue. And that was just the very beginnings of making the course better through architecture and not just conditions.
And I want to get into the various changes you made because they are really interesting. They might be hard to you know, tell to, you know, non visually, but but I think the stuff that you've done is really interesting. But first, maybe like a little bit of history on Laurel Wood golf Course is there is there a significant architectural history here that we know about.
So it was Clarence Sutton was the architect, and I've heard various stories about different things over the years, but he designed a couple other smaller nine hole courses, and he was rumored to have been involved with Chandler Egan in terms of like being kind of on site construction overseeing what Chandler was traveling.
And then some was even claiming.
That those guys were involved with the work down in the Pebble Beach area. You know, I don't know how much design they did, but they were involved in day to day construction and that was kind of their deal. And so I think later in his life, I think Clarence Sutton designed this eighteen holes and he played in the league here for years. And then obviously Dan Hickson came here and helped us reroute seven, eight and nine.
And Dan's dad was the assistant golf pro here in the fifties and sixties, and we have the photos of Dan's parents getting married.
Here in the hall up there.
And then, you know, once Eugene Country Club kind of moved downtown and Trent Jones reversed the course, a lot of people went to the flat courts, and this place just kind of faded away until six seven years ago when we really started changing.
Stuff became a nine hole course. Had some issues. What were some of these specific problems that the course had before you arrived here.
So neglect was probably number one.
There was, you know, some attempts at drainage, but I don't know if they really had like a comprehensive view of how to get the water off of the course. Obviously we talked about the tea box on nine would just pummel the clubhouse. So the clubhouse was just wrapped in netting. The driving range had an eight foot chain link fence with barbed wire everywhere. I think the number three had a bunker that was like heart shaped on it, and they were just little brown bunkers like ten foot
by twelve foot. Six had one two, so there was three bunkers. And you could tell that they had shrunk the greens as they mowed in and in, so they were smaller. So they're all just little circles, and you know they had tea boxes that kind of pointed the wrong direction, and you know cart paths just cutting through holes and pinching stuff, and just I think it's just a conglomeration of two operators that I guess it was just a different era. They just weren't in They just
were maintaining it, running it as a business. I mean, the first guy supposedly just drank beer and played golf all day and that was you know, some of his family members did maintenance exactly the next guy, IRV, was an insurance agent. He tried to do some stuff and then I know there was some dynamics between him and the city at the time in terms of what it should be. He's trying to go back to eighteen holes,
so he settled on. He decided he was going to try and do two greens on every hole, So Hoole one had two greens two, and then whole three, and then there was no double greens after that. So then the pace of play and where people were supposed to go was so confusing because new people didn't know what green to hit to, and then they got to the next one, and you know, regulars had like hit around them to go to the other greens so they could go faster, and then they got back to five, six,
and seven. It would just be a clustered mess because nobody could flow through and play. They were always stuck in the evenings and it was just kind of a mess, is really what it was.
And then tell me about some of the main design changes that you've made here. I'm sure there's many other things that you've done as well, with the agronomy and and all that kind of stuff, But maybe we could just start with the architecture. You mentioned Dan Hickson earlier. He's been advising as an architect here for a few years, and just to make sure that people know who Dan is, he is a significant Pacific Northwest architect who has worked
a lot of different places. His best known designs are probably Wine Valley in Walla, Walla, Washington, Sylvie's Valley Ranch in Eastern Oregon, Bandon Crossings, which is the local public course in Bandon, Oregon. And then he has bar Run, which I just visited down in Roseberg, which is about an hour a little more or so south of Eugene. And so he has done a lot of work in the Pacific Northwest. He is sort of like the Chandler Egan of the modern era, and he does very good work.
And something else that he does is he he consults it courses like this and at Rose City, which is a municipal course in Portland. So that's a little bit of background on Dan for when he enters the picture of this story. But what were some of the architecture changes that you made here and why did you make them?
So the biggest one was obviously re routing seven, eight, and nine, and then on six We put the creek back above ground because in the nineteen seventy they plumbed all the creeks underground on the course, so whenever it rains, rather than the water going into the creeks and leaving, it all just sits on top and anything that flows into the property goes into pipe and leaves. So the creek was the first really big change. That's what we
did number one. And I'd been calling Dan trying to get him to come here, and then I was just struggling with how to re route seven, eight and nine. And I knew that I needed to get nine down the hill so that this upper area could be developed into multi use. And I was really struggling because where were we going to put these teas on?
It was going to be number eight.
I just it was just it was just going to be really difficult to get it to work that way.
And one quick detail. Nine used to be a par three playing up the hill. So if you can imagine the clubhouse sits on a hill above the golf course, Nine played from the bottom of the hill up to the top to a green that was essentially right next to the clubhouse. And so as you can imagine the clubhouse was getting beamed all day long by golf balls and the cars in the parking lot, and so safety problems.
And then also you know that this lovely practice screen that we're looking at right now wouldn't be able to exist because obviously the ninth green was occupying that spot on the property. So your goal was essentially to eliminate the ninth hole, the par three ninth hole, and do some sort of rerouting farther back in the course in order to get to nine hole and make what used to be the eighth hole this you know, longer hole playing up to where the ninth tea used to be.
Make that the last hole on the course. So and you were getting into how you're going to make that happen. You had to relocate the ninth tee or you know, find some new places for all these different areas on the course. So tell me about that.
Yeah, So whole number seven was a it's a neat hole, but over the years the trees grew so much that from the tea box you could not see where you're supposed to hit the ball. So I knew there was some old tees in the woods from when it was eighteen holes, and I'd always gone back there and looked, and I always thought, well, that's where we got to
go from these teas to there. And that also increased the travel time from six green to seventy, which allowed the flow to go better because in the old spot, people thought they could drive the green, so they would be waiting to drive the green, and then the people leaving the seven green would actually be walking back into play where they slice it. So I knew I had
to get over there. So then it was just the old adage of like how do you get out of the corner and create two holes to make this thing flow? And that's when I kind of was just standing there one day on what used to be the old ten green, which was be this first double green, and then I looked out through the trees and there was the old waste airy where everybody throw their garbage at Laura Wood for forty to fifty years, and I was like, well, this is a par three right here, if we could
just get rid of a couple of these trees. And then we turned nine into this par five that kind of has a blind shot, which I didn't think goes that bag because I grew up in New England. We had lots of blind shots when we played golf, and then the ninth hole that we're moving down the hill, that par three was completely blind too. It was one hundred and fifty to two hundred and ten yards uphill, you can never see your ball and it wasn't much
of a hole. So then I brought Dan out to show them my idea, and he was really worried about the guy's house on nine, and I was like, well, we'll put a net here and we'll do trees, and so it ended up working out. We had to remove some poplars so we could move over a little bit. And I mean, obviously I agree with Dan's idea that we should just reroute the whole nine and rebuild it and be fantastic, but it just wasn't in our budget or.
Time frame to do that.
So we kind of made the best of the situation, I think. I mean, obviously I'd changed one or two things for sure in that green complex on nine now, but overall everybody's really happy with it and play's gone way up since we've done it.
How did you get connected with Dan Hickson and what did you observe of the way he worked out here.
So I'm not sure how I got his number, but obviously i'd been around him. He I think he went to college with my friend Mark Keating, who's the pro up at Oga, and so they knew each other. I might even gotten his number through Mark. And so I
just called and a couple times. I mean, I knew he was busy, and he eventually called and came out and we just you know, he's telling me about his parents and everything, and so we went through the routing and we ranged everything, and so he told me, you know, I'll be there in like ten to fourteen days and we'll start building this ninth green. And about four or five days before he came out, he sent me a
text message. He says, Oh, by the way, we're gonna need twelve hundred and fifty cubic guards of phil to build that green. And I was like, I did not have the fill or anything, and so I went into I got into this panic mode. And they were rebuilding Hayward Field, so I was trying to get filled from them. But those companies were so big they didn't care about me.
And I was standing in the parking lot with my employee Eddie, and all of a sudden, this giant dump truck and a huge excavator goes driving up the road. So I followed him to their site and literally two blocks away they were digging a basement for a house and they had something like fifteen hundred cubic guards to dispose of, so they actually didn't have to drive all the way across town to get rid of everything. They just dug dropped everything down there, stockpiled it, and then we.
Had they're probably pretty happy about that too.
They saved a ton on that one, and so I got them. They they did the initial like kind of shape like they pushed it all over the excavator. They grounded in in the basis, time for Dan to come in with the cat and shape it the way he wanted.
Really cool, So you know Dan was doing a lot of the shaping out here initially.
Right correct.
I just rented him a dozer and we had a little sand pro and he cut everything in on eight and nine's green. He did the t's on nine and eight, and he helped a little bit up on seven grinding the tees and with the dozer, but it wasn't quite the right machine for it.
So we did that a little bit different after that.
Pretty nice to have a design build architect as opposed to hiring a big firm with all sorts of different people. If you can have the architect out on the dough, that helps you out, right.
Yeah, it helps out a ton. And then I learned a ton because I sat there with him the whole time. So it was my first I mean I used a laser a lot in construction, but it was my first time ever, like getting the degrees and learning about how you get the water around the bunkers and which way you slope the greens and kind of laying out with the posts in the middle of the fairway and looking back and building off that.
So it opened up a whole new world to me. I mean, I learned tons from Dan on that first run.
And I would imagine you applied some of these lessons to what you've done recently. There's a rebuilt green out here, so maybe you could describe that to me.
Yeah, So when it came time to do number three, Dan was super busy, but he drew me a sketch for it.
So that was the first green I ever.
Built by myself, So it was me Parrish and dug the excavator, and then Dan came in one afternoon right at the end, and he just did a little finish shaping with my sandpro just to be like, okay, you
guys are good to lay the sod down. And so then we did number seven Parish and I did number seven ourselves, and that one was kind of Dan was a little bit head scratched, like he wasn't sure about the idea, but it was just sometimes you just you only have set amount of space and you just use it the best you can.
It may or may not be perfect, but.
It solved a lot of our problems. And then the following year I redid number six. I didn't redo all of it, but we did all new drainage, all new bunkers. We lifted up the front like eighteen inches because it used to have like a seven percent slope on the front quarter, so if you put it anywhere near there, it was gone. And then four, I think it is kind of the culmination of all of it.
I redid four.
Dan came out helped me figure out that it was going to be two tiers no matter what. And then that's the first one I designed. The contours, did everything myself and so that one came out great. Almost killed me, but it came out great.
Yeah, So we've got a we've got a Dan Hickson out influence on it here and a Will Benson influence as well architecturally. So there's definitely a number of different ideas going on out on this course, a great piece of land, and so definitely some interesting stuff has come
out of this process. I'm sure a lot of people are interested in how you were able to pull this off, how this was able to happen at a course that doesn't have the enormous resources of a well to do private club, right, because that's most of the work that we hear about. Most of the really interesting architectural work happens at places that have a ton of money to
do what they want to do. Here, you have managed to do it at a local, public nine hole course, and so maybe you could just start by telling me about the ownership structure here. How do you work that out? How does everything work in terms of operating the course.
So there's two of us that basically run it. There's Nick Sam's who's been a restaurant tour his whole life, and he's basically like the CFO, and he's great in that realm. He's just very good with money, he's very good with employees, he's very good with people. And the restaurant business is not an easy one to be and the margins are slim, and so to bring someone with that experience to come into the golf realm was beneficial because it freed me up to just kind of get
to work. It wasn't where I always had to watch all the finances and do what I could do and deal with the employees. So he just took fifty percent of the crap off of my plate. It was just gone and you were free. And then we had the City of Eugene when they negotiated the last contract with us, we had an attorney, Larry, and they worked together for a couple of weeks, and so we had back funds that were not used. I think like sixty thousand dollars that were you know, put into account that we did
not use. And then the city brought another chunk of money to the table, and so then basically it was just up to us to you know, work with Dan do the improvements. The city agreed upon the improvements, and that's when we did the six, seven, eight, and nine improvements and then once that funding was gone, basically there's just a small chunk every year for improvements. And so that's where we've been redoing the irrigation on the greens and some of the greens, like two is such a
good complex. You know, we did the irrigation, but there's no reason to recontour it.
It's just it's it's nice.
But then like three, that's where we did new irrigation, we recontoured it in one year.
So that one year, I mean.
I was able to rebuild number three and number seven with all new irrigation with that one year funding. So doing it all in house, and we have an excavator guy that's great, you know, so he can it shaping, putting the irrigation in. The employees do it, so it's just a it's an in house effort.
Now, obviously there have been challenges over the past few years. You came to this business after the recession, and so that was one big earthquake in the economy, and then another one happened in twenty twenty. Yeah, and at that point I remember meeting you around that time and hearing about some of the improvements you were making, and it was sort of a punch in the gut. But things
have gone well for the golf industry after COVID. So how did Laurel would first of all deal with with that initial shock of COVID and then come out of it afterwards.
Yeah, so that was a wild time. Huh. I hadn't thought about it in a little while.
So we we really were getting more rounds once we did the improvements like I did. Definitely wasn't uptick. And then with the beginning of the outdoor dining there was definitely like an uptick and stuff. And then COVID hit and we closed for probably three weeks. And uh, our maintenance regime is different than a lot of courses, so we don't pull a lot of cores of that stuff.
But we're closed.
So Paris and I were just the only two here, so we just cored everything.
Because there's nobody around.
We're like, now's the time to do it and then
hopefully we'll open up and uh. And then Nick Sam's wife, Sadie Sam, she came and joined us, and uh, and then we're we're getting ready to open back up and we're trying to find employees, and there wasn't really a lot of employees and uh, and then this young gal from Thurston High School, her senior year was canceled, so she came to work with us, and so we just kind of opened up and it just started the process of I think I think restaurants were open for a
little while after that. I can't quite remember how it all went down, but so the course of stayed open after that three weeks ever since.
And it was crazy.
I mean, we've never seen anything like it, and we just got overrun for a while there. Then all of a sudden, they were almost killing everything because there was no pin positions on some of the greens because they're so sloped. And that started also to lead me into redoing some stuff with the greens to be able to withstand the amount of play that were suddenly having. And even coming out of COVID, we're still increasing rounds to this day, finding new people around here.
That's really good to hear. Yeah, one of the you know, great things that's happened is that the initial surge in interest in golf turned out to be more sustainable then I personally thought it would be. I thought it was going to be one year of kind of like, this is all we can do, so we might as well do this. But there has been a you know, it's not there's been a bit of a leveling off, but things have definitely stayed at a higher level than they
were before COVID. How do you account for that? Do you think there's a different perception of golf that has taken hold in the post COVID times here? Yeah?
I do.
I do think, and I wonder a little bit. Is just golf, you know? Is it hiking too? But it feels like like people think about life a little bit differently than they did before. I don't know, I can't necessarily put my finger on it, but I seen more people kind of hanging out together. I see more people, you know, wanting to be outside, kind of living a little bit. I don't it's odd. I just there's more people,
more diversity in people like here. And it couldn't have just been like, well, I just found golfing again and it's great. There's just some different switch in certain populations of people where they felt better about being out here.
Yeah, and and I hope it continues. But yeah, it's almost like we were reminded of of some of the things that were specific about golf, you know, being being outdoors and relaxing and tending to yourself a little bit. Some of those things seem to have become more important, and golf seems to have become a more important purveyor of of those kinds of services.
I guess, yeah, yeah, there's just there's just something about it. I mean they just you know, not kind of watching TV all the time, being outside, and then there's the comfort of being isolated a little bit.
You know, you're not.
I mean we went to a Chelsea Handler like comedy show at the Holt Center and you're just looking around at everybody around you. Everybody rump person coughs and the whole place looks you. But here outside like you just don't have that. There's no there's like freedom. I mean, I still go to the grocery store and I still still see people, you know, looking at you out of the corner of their eye, worried someone's got a mask, and it just feels like here like that worries not there.
Yeah. Yeah, it frees you up from thinking about it because we were all sort of collectively traumatized in a way during that time, and there's still a lingering thing about indoor spaces where you're kind of like, I don't know, yeah, exactly, that's that's I hadn't thought of it that way. So, you know, one thing that I've been thinking about a lot lately, and with the National Link Stress Symposium coming up in Washington, d C. That is kind of on
this theme, I've been thinking about it more. But you know, I like learning about different ways that municipal and local golf courses can manage to get a piece of the pie when it comes to money golf, because there's a lot of money flowing into golf right now, more than there was before, and predictably, quite a bit of it tends to be diverted to the usual places, to high dollar resort courses, to private courses, and there's you know, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that or that
that offends me. I just want local courses to get a little bit of that. But it seems like operators really have to fight for that and to be savvy about it. So I mean, if you were to go into advice mode for how different golf course operators or even superintendents could help fund improvement projects, like the ones that you've done over the past several years. What kind of advice would you give around that.
Yeah, I think, I mean there's so many different approaches to it. I mean, you have like Winter part down in Florida where the town themselves decided we're going to have a great nine hole golf course and you walk that thing and all the money is on those greens complexes, so they decided that's what they wanted. And there's some creative people involved there. Like when I went down there and I was looking around, I was like, look at
these clever shirts, look at these clever signs. You could tell that there's some very thoughtful people involved in that. And I do think municipal golf courses in general are leery of creative people and people with ideas, and people want to change some things. And I'm not saying, like, you know, I'm not saying that change is the most important thing in the world, but you do have to change in order to become different to offer stuff that
people want. And I mean, I have some their caddies down at Bandon, and I think it is there.
Catle Bluffs in Michigan are buffs. Yeah, bluffs. Yeah.
So they they didn't even call me or anything. They just sent me a DM afterwards and they said, hey, we'd heard about you on the Twitter or whatever. And we came out and played and we caddy and played bandon. We caddy played back there and we love what you're doing there. Just keep doing the improvement. It's just a little bit better.
It's great. I love it.
And and so I think that's also important too, Like everything doesn't have to be a five million dollar master plan and everyone doesn't have to have all nine greens perfectly done that year, and we closed for nineteen months and month everything's perfect.
Not a drop is out of out of place. I mean, it's okay to be kind of a little rough as you do it.
I mean I remember one guy left a review after we did seven eight nine and writes this review on Google or whatever, and he's like, well, obviously I didn't have enough money to finish everything and complaining about it. I was like, yeah, we didn't, but in time we have. And so that's the one of you that we've taken is you know, I don't offer perfection every day, but it's a hell of a lot better than we started.
There's something else about the process that you've gone through that stands out to me, and that is that Dan at the beginning was out on the dozer designing and shaping the greens himself, and then as that went on, he handed off more and more responsibility to you, and so now the changes can be more and more in house. And that seems kind of rare to me. It's pretty rare that an architect would be like, oh, you don't really need me. Usually architects want to say, yes, you
do need me. Maybe that started to change because architects are so busy. I know Dan is very busy, and so that could be part of it. But you have learned to do a lot of this stuff yourself, and that is kind of like the ultimate efficient, right learning how to do construction, to do design, and to be able to carry out some improvements almost on your own with help. But you are sort of the point person of it. Have you felt that kind of emerging over the past couple of years.
Definitely, And he got so busy. I mean it got to the point where it was like he'd call me like six or eight weeks after I called him, he'd be like, sorry, dude, I am just slammed.
You know, what do you need?
And I was like, I just when we redid four, I was like, I just need a little bit of help shooting the grades and getting this correct. And so he came out and we were shooting on it and he's like, well, you're gonna have to do two tiers.
This is the way it's gonna have to be. I was like, that's fine, that's fine, and then he kind of hinted.
I was like, oh god, he's gonna stay another day help me shape those things. That's so tired from getting the utilities in and stockpiling the sand. And you know, I have very inexperienced staff, very young staff, and so it's a heavier burden at times on a larger project. And he's like, all right, you're good to go, see you later, and he drove off, and I was like, oh, I got to design the whole thing myself here on the end. And so we just went for it. But
it has been like that. He's like comfortable, vere Matt. He's busy. I can call him, we talk about stuff. I see him at the shows and he comes out every once in a while and we just look at stuff and walk the property and just get a feel for it.
I think that's how a lot of the best renovations and restorations happen is just sort of piece me all over time. The ones that happen all at once can turn out great too, but those are pretty expensive and they don't necessarily achieve a better result than the little bit of a time. Let's try this, and let's see how it plays, and then we can learn something from
that to apply to the next thing. And so in a way, you know, the lack of funds to just blow it all up and then redesign the course is as cool as I'm sure a Dan Hickson course out on this property would be. It is there is something to be said for not having the funds to do that and having to be a little more clever and patient in uh in in the process. So you know, when you when you think about the next several years, do you have an idea of of kind of where you want to go next with the golf course?
Yeah, I mean I have a I have a list of things. Obviously, after four which was it was really difficult on me and to covid all just it was difficult to say the least, so everyone's like, when are you gonna do number five? I need a year or two oft to do that. So we're gonna do a little recontouring on the number one green, and we have a little bit of irrigation work to do on the
other side that we may or may not do. I've talked to Dan about doing a Himalayas Green over on the other side for the citizens, which I think would be fantastic use of space over there. And there's some drainage work to do. There's bringing one more creek kind
of above ground. There's a number of areas I'd like to add a few more bunkers, and then I, you know, for playability, I think we're at the stage where we can take X amount of that funds and start top dressing the fairways just to try and increase playability different times of the years. And so I think we're we're most of the way through a lot of the architectural changes. There's just a few more years of stuff to do to kind of tighten it up.
All right, Well, thank you for taking some time out of your busy day to talk to me. This has been a pleasure. This is definitely the best setting for a podcast that I've ever recorded one of these interviews in, so really appreciate that, and good luck with the future of this golf course.
Here, all right, Thank you very much.
This episode of the Friday Golf podcast was produced and edited by Matt Rusius. Thank you, Matt. One thing that you can do to help out Friday Golf is simply to rate and review this podcast. Apple podcast reviews and ratings are especially meaningful, So if you're listening to us there, then give us a hand, you know, go go do it right now. Actually I'm going to give you a second. Okay, did you do it all right? Thank you so much. That's so nice of you. We'll be back again soon.
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