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 Frida egg, the gridded Frida egg, Frida egg, Frida egg, Frida egg, bride egg.
Lie, I'm about ready to run off the golf course. And welcome to the Frida Egg Podcast. I'm Garrett Morrison, and today we're doing a golf architecture mail bag. We put out a call for questions on Twitter and you came through with some really interesting questions that Andy Johnson and I are going to answer right now. So Andy is here with me.
How's it going, Garrett, I'm doing great. Just ready to talk golf architecture. That's a fun, fun thing to do every once in a while.
All golf architecture in this pod. And we're going to dig into the questions in a minute. But first we have got a sponsor for this episode. This episode is in part brought to you by Fat Cork. So this is this is a provocative name here, What is this company all about?
It's a new sponsor and I think people that are into golf architecture will appreciate this. This is the owner of Fat Cork is a golf nut. What they do is they do champagne delivery, so they deliver champagne to your door. And one of the neat things that I've learned with getting to know Brian at Fat Cork is that you know, the champagne industry is super complex. But the big thing is that they get their champagne direct
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Yeah?
Okay, so we got a lot of questions here. We're not going to get to every single one of them, obviously, but I've kind of tried to organize them a little bit. The first category of questions I have is what I've called hot topics, so stuff that you know, people debate about in the golf world, Questions that kind of touch on those issues, right. So the first one from Chad Mum, who is currently has to be pretty busy right now getting ready for the premiere of Full Swing, the Netflix documentary.
But Chad Mum asks this, if Slash Win the ball gets rolled back for Championship play, what will be the biggest change architecturally for new courses that want to host tour events slash majors. So any takes on this, Andy, do you think that a rollback would result in certain architectural changes in the courses that we see on TV in pro tournaments?
I think yeah.
I think the one big thing is flexibility, malleability. I think that will be important having a wide range of teas.
Obviously.
The one course that jumps to mind that I think about a lot is Augustin National and one of the reasons I think about that golf course in particular is that they have two sets to teas, and like they're very you know, we have two sets of teas. We have a back tee and a member's tea, right, and it looks really great because there aren't tea boxes all over the place. But at the same time, when distance changes, as we've seen, they've had to build out teas further
and further back. But say we get a ten percent reduction, I think this is just hypothetical, which it doesn't seem like that's going to be the case. It seems like it's going to be kind of stop where we are. Maybe drivers are a little harder to hit and they go they're just you know, but if it got reduct or reduced,
they would need to move teas up. Now my question is like, are you then just gonna eventually have to build them back out, because what we know is that players are going to keep getting longer, Swings are going to get faster, So whatever the regulations that are implemented are at that, when they get implemented, it'll probably be the shortest this era of golfers ever is, and then they will begin to get longer again. This is just
the natural progression. So I think in terms of what new courses will need is that you want to build golf courses with that malleability.
You want to be able to do you know.
I think one of the things that we can take away from the Golden Age is that golf courses are going to get built around generally. You know, you're so you need to leave some space in case you need back to say the ball gets reduced ten percent, right, then these golf courses, the distance constraints are going to
be different. The important thing, though, I think is that infrastructure is only going to increase for big time tournament golf, so you're never you're always going to need that same space. Like space requirements are going to be the same. It's not like all of a sudden the ball gets rolled back.
Woo. We can host anywhere we want.
No, yeah, we're going to Cyprus. Point. Yeah.
Theynament golf needs more so than anything is space to put grand stands. I mean, I'll never forget talking to the tournament director at the PGA Championship at Kiwa and where I was just talking to him. I was like, man, this place is so cool for a Ryder Cup, Like, you know, you talk about the most historic Ryder Cup in the history of golf was there and it was an awesome Ryder Cup venue.
It is an awesome writer. It was an awesome match play golf course.
Like big swings, great shots, you know, get really rewarded. You can make birdies out there. But there's also disasters all over the place. And there's enough space. It's solidly golf national thing, right, but it's not big enough. It could host a major, but it doesn't have enough space for a Ryder Cup.
Think about that, yes, absolutely, yeah, Well, I mean the requirements for a Ryder Cup are just outrageous and obviously have increased so much since the War on the shore.
But we think that that's outrageous. But the Ryder Cup is probably the direct action that infrastructure needs are going to for a major championship, right, they might be on the on the you know what was ostentatious for this Rider Cup? Am I using that word right?
Over you mean like overboard?
Yeah?
For this Ryder Cup is in fifteen years, is probably going to be a normal PGA set up.
Gotcha, Okay? Infrastructure, Well, yeah, I mean this is a really good point about which venues are being selected for major championships. You can't just go to the best golf courses. You have to go to the golf courses that fit
certain requirements. And furthermore, this is part of the reason why the USGA, for instance, is booking these venues so out far out in advance, because these courses need to know what they need to do in order to have the kind of infrastructure that's necessary to host a tournament
like this. But getting back to the question, so ball gets rolled back for championship play, I would say if you see anything at courses architecturally that will happen because of this, it will mainly just be there won't be as much of a need to change in the future. We hope right that the pace of change is going to slow down a little bit and courses will be less required to continually length and continually move bunkers, continually make adjustments to accommodate the length of the game. That's
the hope. I don't know if that's actually going to materialize as a result of the rollback that is likely to happen, which is likely to be pretty modest, is likely to be not quite as much as you or
I would want it to be. But the hope would be that courses wouldn't have to spend so much money just finding new teeing areas, planting new trees and places to defend against the length that players are hitting the ball, moving bunkers, doing all this stuff that they've had to do over and over for the past couple of decades because distance has gotten so out of control. The hope would be just that that process would slow down a little bit.
Right, Yeah.
I think the other big hope is that on the forgiveness front. You know, there's been a lot of talk about about reducing the sweet spot in professional golf and just leading to a little bit more variability. And when I miss it off the toe, it doesn't go just
five yards shorter. It might go twenty yards shorter. Like you know, if you play with older equipment, it does I think, yeah, I you know, the reality if you think about equipment and regulation in the past, is when regulation happens, what happens then is it gives the engineers something new to innovate around.
So listen, like, there's going.
To be a role if there's a rollback and it happens, it's just going to start the new innovation trend.
Yeah, that's like, yeah, it's just been the reality.
I mean, that's been the story from the beginning, right, That's that's happened over and over for the past one hundred years. That's not going to change. And so yeah, we'll see how much of an effect a rollback, whatever kind of rollback happens, is actually going to have on the game. Likelihood is it's not going to be as extremes as people think it might be. All right, next questions. This is from j J jat X jjat X, jjat X. Oh, there you go, jjat X, there you go. Okay, that
makes sense. What will we look back on in the future and think was wrong with this era of golf course architecture. I think this is a really interesting question. I love this question. I have a couple of ideas. Curious as to what you think, Andy.
This is.
I'd hope this doesn't offend anyone. And this is not a shot across the bow at anyone. When I think about where golf is going in the next twenty to thirty years, and I think about golf architecture, new construction obviously constraints on resources that are at its highest ever. You know, water is becoming an issue more and more places than just California. Labor is an issue everywhere in
terms especially labor in terms of golf course maintenance. So you know, at a time where the inputs of golf are being you know, looked at, you know that this is one of the things that golf when when you look at golf from a lenses, there's a lot of positives. Right, there's exercise, outdoor time, all these things. There's a lot that goes into a golf course, whether it's water, maintenance, inputs into the turf to grow grass, all these things. And I think about all that and I see renderings
for new courses. I see new golf courses being built, and I think, okay, so we're trying to make golf more sustainable and make it a game that lasts what could be a time where it could be tough on golf given land use and different things. And you see some of the stuff that's getting built and you're wondering, what what's sustainable about that?
Yeah, so what does the what does the maintenance crew look like? What does the maintenance budget look like? Yeah? I wonder that a lot time. And you see some of these ideas.
What's the maintenance time look like?
What? You know?
And I do not mean to pick out anything.
There was a recent podcast a friend of mine, Rob Collins, like, I look at his one of his greens at Landman, some of his greens at Landman, and I wonder, how long are you going to be able to maintain that?
You know, could you.
As a thirty thousand square foot green really practical in twenty years if we you know, And obviously there could be autonomous mowing, there could be all these advancements. But at the same time, like when I think about which direction golf course architecture needs to go, is like if I wanted to be on the cutting edge, and I was just talking about this with another architect, if I was personally going to be on the cutting edge of
golf architecture, I would be lending. I would be aiming to build the most sustainable, lowest input great golf possible. And the renderings for Cabot or the Citrus.
Farm one Cabot.
Barons that doesn't look sustainable at all to me. That looks like a shitload of maintenance time.
And it's just a rendering. It's just a rendering, right, we don't know what the final product is going to look like. But the rendering makes it look like there's a lot of really intricate bunkering.
And part of what I wonder about is designed pushing what will take the best picture for social media and listen, like I take pictures. I know when I take a picure sure like of a certain feature, that it will pop on social media, right, And I think that golf architects know that also if I build this feature like this,
it's going to photograph really well. And people are I mean photograp photography and golf courses have been intertwined forever, you know, like you go back to like, you know, photos are what sell people to go visit a golf course. So I guess, like my thing here is that golf architecture should be very very aware of sustainability and be building golf courses that are more sustainable. And I look at some of the new stuff that's getting built, and I think it's the complete opposite.
I think that's a big mistake.
Yeah, I'm on the same wavelength as you. My response to this question of what we might look back on in this era of golf course architecture and regret is building to what I would consider overly perfectionistic maintenance standards, right, And this is me be more of an agronomy take than an architecture take. But a lot of courses are kind of built to be maintained in a way that is, as you say, highly intensive, and also you know, just built in an expensive way that's maybe not necessary for
good golf. So I'm thinking of these kind of fancy subsurface systems under greens that are going in all over the place, these new kinds of bunker linings, stuff like that. I just wonder about maximum economy and efficiency of maintenance and whether architects are really building to that or whether they're kind of giving in to this race to get more and more perfect turf, which golf really doesn't need and maybe isn't reasonable to expect golf to have going forward.
In certain areas of the country. It's going to be awfully hard to have grass in like ten twenty years potentially, And so you know, we're we're building towards this ideal of the you know, perfectly smooth, green, velvety golf course that's just not going to be a reality in some places. And I would love to see a push away from that and toward more kind of rough and ready maintenance things that you know, a small crew can do on a low budget. It's possible to have that kind of golf.
I don't think we're building to it right now, And we may look back in a few decades and say what we called minimalism in the first couple of decades of the twenty first century really was not minimalism in the most important sense of the word, which is minimal impact on the land and kind of minimal requirements for
keeping the course up. You know, it's pretty ironic that the stuff that we've been building in this so called minimalist era, a lot of it truly is not minimalism in that sense of the term that I've just slaid out. And so I think that that's something that we may look back on and cringe.
Yeah, I I mean, everybody likes to wax poetic about Scotland and how they want to build golf like Scotland and that so few projects that are doing that right Like, I absolutely I can think of one that like it has a very conscious effort towards like being sustainable, and this one being built in central slash Northern California, you know where, yeah, Brambles where it's extremely you know, the building a golf course there is, you know, just getting
to build one there is, you know, is difficult, and you know, so I just think that's the thing that I that kind of keeps me up at night, is the idea of, you know, where where the world and the worldview on golf is going, and seemingly the lead opposite direction golf architecture is going.
All right, let's go on to a new question. This one is one that I think you may sort of throw to me ultimately because I might have a little more context for it. But Amol Yazhnik asks thoughts on RTJ two in Golf Magazine, saying that architecture has gone too far in the direction of easy par hard bogie. Did you read this article? See this? Okay?
It was just it was posted.
Online like a few days ago. It was magazine only for you know, a couple of weeks, I think, And basically it was an interview with Robert tran Jones Junior in which he, uh, you know, lays out some criticisms of modern golf course architecture and defends the legacy of his father and his brother and uh, you know, just offers a different perspective on golf course architecture as it's currently practiced then we're used to seeing. So it was
a pretty interesting article. I'm not sure that the article really explained what rt J two meant when he said we've gone in the direction of easy par hard bogie. I could certainly dig into that concept more, and you know say that, well, I find it pretty easy to make bogie's at like Pacific Dunes and stream Song black. But there are some courses that have been built in the modern era that you know, maybe have gone too
far in the direction of user friendliness. That's a separate discussion, but I think that what rt J two is saying in this article generally is worth listening to. I've interviewed him before. Andy, You know that that that Bobby and I get along.
Right, Yeah, both both big fans of the literary world.
Were both both want to be poets, except I don't really write poetry and he's more he's he's actually a poet. But I find him to be a delightful, fascinating person. I really do. I have some criticisms of his golf course architecture, but you know, I really have fun talking to him and I think that he's definitely worth listening to. I wouldn't reject what he's saying out of hand. So a couple of things that he's right about. People do
tend to oversimplify his father's legacy. That legacy is multifaceted, and RTJ did the kind of work that memberships and green committees at that time wanted him to do. Right, it would have been weird if he had done anything other than what he did at courses like Oakland Hills and Olympic Club. You know, he was being asked to build these championship courses, and he did it in a certain way. And you know, we can criticize that now, but in the context of its time, it made sense.
RTJ two, I think is also right that certain aspects of the in vogue restoration slash renovation program are a little bit repetitive sometimes right, And I've heard him criticize Subairre. I echo those criticisms for sure. He also, I think deserves some credit for a varied and sometimes excellent body of work, sometimes excellent. I wouldn't say that everything that has come out of his firm has been truly excellent, Okay, but in the end, he kind of paints it with
too broad of a brush. He goes after the tree removal issue, right, makes it an environmental issue, says that removing trees is an environmental disgrace. This is it's more complicated than that, right, I mean, sometimes removing trees is the best thing that you can do for a golf course habitat.
Yeah, well, it makes it easier to grow grass, cheaper to grow grass.
And if it's done right, it helps the trees that remain be healthy. Right, And a lot of cases trees aren't able to thrive because they're surrounded by other trees. And so each site needs to be treated differently this tree removal subject. We need to approach it with a little more nuance than we traditionally have. So I would I would say that. And then finally, easy par Hard Bogie, Andy, what do you make of that? Do you think that modern architecture is too easy for players?
One of the things I see as a trend is the removal of consequence, and I think that's important to design. Is the idea of if I don't pull the shot off, I could be in a really bad spot. And I think there's some truth to what he said, I don't think that it is.
It is one hundred percent true.
Again, like I think with a lot of things, and it's very easy when you're doing a magazine piece to have quotes that get kind of that are very broad, that don't have a ton of context to them, right, Like I think that I think having space off the t, if you're going to have a golf course that has space off the t, it has to be married with a course that that has If you're not going to challenge people off the tee, it has to challenge them somewhere, right, Yes,
So you know this is the whole yin and yang, right, And I think that's what the best architects do so well, is that there's balance, right. You know if you I saw there was a question about you know what makes else Mackenzie great, and it's like, well, it is that simple. Like I think the greatest architects always know the right
like they have the right buttons to push. They know when they need to like kick it up and notch at the green, or they know when the green can be really quiet, because what you had to endure to get to the green was it was it was a big labor and then sometimes like everything's nuts and that's okay, but not every hole is that right, And I think some of what architecture, there are some golf courses that are getting built that like you don't have to think
about anything. You just hit the ball and you go hit your next shot. And I don't think that's necessarily there like the right direction for it.
But hey, variety is great to.
Have in golf architecture, and the fact that we're actually you know, getting to a point where there's so many there's enough golf courses being built that there.
Can be variety.
I think this is one exciting thing is that you know, not everybody has to build the same golf course. And so I would say that I think that there's some truth to what he said, but I don't think that it is a thing that you could brush with like all of architecture. I don't think anybody could go play like a course designed by Tom Doak and feel like they like got off easy, like the he.
In fact, that's like a big criticism of Tom Doak sometimes, which is crazy, that his courses are too hard. And so there is a lot of variety in modern architecture. But that also think that. You know, A point that you're implicitly making in there is that we have a lot of courses from the middle of the twentieth century around still we have a lot of penal golf courses out there with bunkers kind of front right, front left on the greens and bunkers to the right and left
of the fairway. We have courses with a lot of rough There are plenty of those courses out there. We're not lacking for supply on courses in the RTJ mode. Now we have some more courses that are wide where
angles are kind of the place of emphasis. What I want every course in the world to be like that, No, not necessarily, but we're just kind of right now there's a bit of a restoration of balance happening in golf course architecture where we're getting some more variety of courses, and that that is a good thing.
I think that's the thing variety, Right, You don't want every golf course to be the same, and not every golf course should be, you know, built with the same goal even you know, I think that's the thing is like, you know, I think good golf architecture and I think this can get really misconstrued, but like it should start with a goal, like what's the purpose of this project,
and then everything should be based off of that. And I think a little bit too much of what's going on now is maybe like we need to build a course like this instead of being like what should our course be and going from there.
So a healthy golf architecture has a variety of courses, a healthy gut might have something to do. I'm not going to even attempt to complete that segue because it's so bad. I need to Brendan Poraphne's to give me some lessons in how to do a segue properly when we're just rolling into the ad reads like this. But our next partner is Athletic Greens. I take ag one
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golf that I thought were pretty interesting. It's been a hot topic in CLUBTFE lately clubtf our membership program. Whenever we post about private courses, there is you know, there are some comments like, hey, you know, I wish this course weren't private, right, or I wish there were more great architecture that we could appreciate on the public side. Now, there is plenty of that architecture that we also post about, but this is an ongoing issue, especially in American golf.
So the first of these questions from b Deniso on Twitter, why has the COVID golf boom not translated into more interesting uni architecture and non resort affordable public golf. So we had this this this is a great question. We had this this COVID boom. Right golf was on the rise, there was some hope that public golf courses would make a comeback, that we would see more good architecture happening, maybe there would be some more money for renovations. So
far that hasn't really happened. That's not to say that it's not going to happen in the future, but so far we've seen that be pretty quiet. Things be pretty quiet on that front, whereas like there's some private golf course development happening for sure. So any thoughts about this question, you know, the COVID boom, why didn't translate to an immediate public golf architecture boom.
We've talked about this before on the POD, but it's really hard for public golf courses to do big projects.
It's extremely hard.
You know.
A good example would be last year LAWSNIA did an entire bunker renovation and they try they did it without shutting down holes. The problem with public golf like if I'm a member at a club and my club decides to do a renovation, They're still collecting my dues month and month out right, they aren't losing revenue. You know, they might be losing anecdotal revenue of guest play and you know, concessions and things that are bought on the golf course, but you know they're still collecting that month
and month out do dues revenue. If a public course shuts down to do a big renovation, they lose all that revenue. And golf's never been more popular these courses are they don't have tea times to spare, so like okay, like we don't have any demand, we don't have any supply, and we're just gonna shut down and turn off our golf course at the time where it's never been more popular.
That it's just not a smart business decision now, Like are these courses Like courses need work, they need to get like more play results and more were they're gonna need more of this stuff. So I think the struggle is that a architects are extremely busy. That's the other thing is that there's not a huge capacity, Like if you're buying doing work right now is not a good time. Like construction costs are through the roof, architects are hard
to find. So in a way, like I actually think like the smartest thing a public course can do is in a way just sit keep collecting revenue and hopefully they can save it and put it in a smart spot and then capitalize when the market's a little bit of a better situation. This would be like, you know, I've got a big savings account and the market's going crazy, it's at never seen before highs, and I've I've I'm collecting this, you know, I'm I've got all this money and I'm just gonna keep buying.
I'm gonna buy all this stuff at all time highs.
Right, it wouldn't be necessarily the smartest investig I'm not listen.
I'm I'm I'm not a financial advisor.
But like most success stories start from buying at low's and so right now is not like it's a really bad time for public golf to get to to do projects because A there's a huge demand for them, and B there's a there's not a lot of people out there to do work, and it's expensive to do work. So I think the other point inside of this coin is why haven't we seen an explosion in public new public golf development.
Yeah, I mean that's a complicated question. That's a good set of points that I hadn't thought about before. How you know, just the nature of the market right now sort of would would push public courses to wait and see right in order to do work. I think that would be probably the smart move.
Yeah, I mean, like why why try and getting an arms race with with private clubs that you can't compete with. I think like the big miss of public golf, the huge miss was that more courses weren't during doing work ahead of.
This right time during the downturn.
Yeah, well when there were when they could it, when a public course could conceivably hire like a great example Memorial Park, the renovation of Memorial Park. Who hire Tom Doak to do the renovation there?
Right now?
If they tried to hire Tom Doak, they're competing with like ocean front sites, Sandy Sites.
Or common Town is a good example too, And the common Ground project happened in kind of a similar time period where there was a downturn in golf architecture. It was an interesting enough project to catch Tom Doak's attention and that's where they went with it. Well, I want to get to your question of why they aren't building new public courses.
Though, I just I do want to talk real quick about like the best affordable public golf courses new courses in the country and when they were built and who they were built by. Right, Yeah, So if you think about it, it's like either at downturns with very popular architects, like established architects, but then you have like your rustic canyon.
You know what they did.
They hired a young, relatively unproven golf architect that built that golf course, Wild Horse. They hired two guys that people that a common golfer wouldn't know, but it had built some of the best courses.
In the world for Core and Crenshaw Winter Park.
Similar they hired Keith reb and Riley Johns, two guys that had worked for coren Crenshaw. Like if you think about the really successful affordable golf courses in America they in the modern age, not you know, old courses. They have a common thread of hiring young, relatively unproven golf architects because they're they're buying out a low you know. And the same thing could be said for Soul Park when they hired Gil.
Yep, absolutely, Gil was not nearly as busy when he built Soul Park, even less so when he built Rustic Canyon. And so public golf courses really, if you're looking to build an affordable public course or renovate one, then those are really the businesses that should be looking for the next up and coming architect. Right people are calling for
these up and coming architects to get new opportunities. Well, if you look at history, some great opportunities for up and coming architects have come at these kinds of projects, and then all of a sudden, fifteen twenty years later, people realize, oh my goodness, you know, Gil Hants built Rusticanan He's the biggest golf architect in the world right now, and there's a public course that I can play for
an affordable rate that he built. And so that's the cool thing that you can get if you're making that long term play. Now, why have there not been more
new public course projects? You've laid out a rationale for why there haven't been many renovations, and I think that one reason for this, one reason that there's a lack of public new course builds right now, is that, remember, we way over built in the US in the eighties, nineties and early two thousands, built way too many golf courses, and the market is still correcting itself, right that market correction has slowed down a little bit. The COVID boom
certainly made that dynamic slowed down. There have been fewer course closures, but we're still losing public golf courses. Public golf courses are still closing, and that's because we just had an oversupply and we still haven't gotten to a point where we need more. You know, I just don't think, you know, there's not really a huge market need for
new public courses. And then besides that, given the current conditions of the labor market, of the materials market, it's just so hard to expect somebody to build an affordable public golf course right now, the cost of land. I mean, it's just it would be a crazy thing to do. It would be a great thing to do. I'd love for somebody to do it just out of kind of principles to give back to the game. And there are
some organizations and people who have done that. The West Palm Beach Project, I think, is an example of that. And organizations like the USGA, the PGA of America, like local or regional golf associations can make big moves on this front because their motive is not necessarily to make a ton of money. Their motive is to give back
to the game. But that's really the attitude that you would have to have in order to build a public golf course and affordable public golf course nowadays, you would have to have the motive of giving back to the game because you're not going to make much money on it. It's really expensive and you're not going to get much in return. And that's why we see more private courses being built because there's a better business model for those right now.
Yeah, if we want to talk about the business model, right if I go about, like let's just say I want to build a new golf course, the outlay for a new golf course, you're looking at like twenty five million dollars. Okay, So if it's a private club, I
can immediately start selling memberships against that and recouping my money. Right, If I want to build a public golf course, you know, you don't make a dime on that investment until the day you open and start making green spees, and then your green s fees are going against your operating costs. So your time on re on getting your investment back is decades. I mean you're talking about like a very
long time. Because say I put twenty five million dollars into a new public golf course with all the facilities are twenty million right the the market. Then you know you're talking about let's just say we have a really good facility that turns a million dollar profit every year. So after I've put my twenty million in, it's going to take twenty years to recoup that twenty million dollars, right,
And that's like a great case scenario. Right, So in terms of like it's just like nobody is putting out that money with that type of like return rate.
Right.
So if I sell a private if I do a private club and I sell a full membership, I've recouped my upfront cost. If that makes sense. So I think like where people need to focus on is like listen, like, there isn't gonna be this rash run of new public golf courses being built. It's not gonna happen like the resorts happen because they buy at the in remote areas where lands really really cheap and good and they can build golf courses for cheap and then they charge very
high rates. Right, So that's the resort model. It's way different, right, you know you're talking about like buying really cheap land, not you know, you can't build an affordable golf course in the sticks, you know, with you're not how are you gonna get people there?
Right? It's gone.
Oh, I mean you know, if you build it, they will come. Concept but not alls can do that.
Yeah.
So so where this needs to focus on, and and this goes back to the first part of the question, is like identifying the really great facilities that are underutilized right now or that aren't what they should be, and focusing the mental and an energy towards like why hasn't this been renovated? This could be an awesome golf course because the reality is like there isn't affordable cheap land
close to cities. What there is, though, is there are golf facilities that exist that could be renovated or restored or whatever it may be, that are turned from mediocre or poor facilities into very good facilities for less money. And that is where business models start to make sense. So,
you know, that's where I think. The other thing is like, hopefully golf continues to push more towards the UK model, and I think, like, right now that's probably unrealistic given the sense of how busy private and public golf courses are. But maybe eventually that that changes and there's there's more more ability for private clubs to open their doors at the public.
There would have to be a cultural change in America and American golf for that to happen, but I am one hundred percent on board with it happening. And ifybody has suggestions for how that could be encouraged among private clubs more kind of public access, then I'm all ears,
I'd love to hear those ideas. You know. Another reality that is kind of sitting behind all of this is that COVID, as far as I understand, I'm not an economist, exacerbated income inequality, meaning there may be more people now able to pay for high end private club memberships, and there may be fewer people who are active in the
public golf market. And if you look at when the public golf market has been at its most active, you look at the post World War two era, when the middle class in America was really emerging and strengthening, there were quite a few public courses being built. Were they all great? Were they architect master works? Know? But that was when the public golf market in America really emerged, when there was a strong kind of middle class to support it. And right now that's kind of not the
direction of society as far as I understand it. Again, this is kind of these issues are above my pay grade. But that's another dynamic to track on this subject is you know, how many people are there who can really pay for private club memberships? Well, there are more and more seemingly, And how many people are there who can consistently support a local public golf course. I hope there are more in the future, and I hope there are more in the post COVID era, but that's not where
things seem to be moving. So a corollary to this question is something that Ryan Barrath asked, with so much new construction and renovation focused on country clubs and high end resorts, do you think great architecture is becoming elitist or un affordable to the biggest group of regular golfers.
I don't think so. I think that there's I think all the there's a lot of great affordable public facilities that are being highlighted more so now than ever before. I think, you know, if you go through it, there's there's a really great affordable public facility in every region
of the country at this point. And to me, to me, the awareness was always the issue of of where to play golf, and I think that's becoming less and less of an issue, you know, like the the country has always been out of balance in terms of where the great golf courses are.
I would just you know.
Is it is it? Is it worse now than it was five years ago? I don't know, because the awareness of facilityes some facilities is so much higher, right Like think about Sweeten's Cove when it opened in twenty fourteen, nobody knew what it was, you know, where it.
Was, right or I think, yeah, yeah.
So I think in a way that the discovery the country. Social media has made golf smaller, if that makes sense, the world of golf smaller, Like people know where the better place where great places go play golf are and it's easier to get to them when you know where they are, right. It's not like I'm going to go try this golf course. I'm picking this golf course because it's the most expensive one in town. I think that's the big thing is that there's been a lot of
highlighting of facilities that were great. Like I think back to you know, when I lived in LA before I did this. I I've found like two guys I played golf with and they were locals, Like I got randomly paired with them and I went and played more with them. The one guys I'll never forget it is from New Zealand. His name was Tony Parr. Get a good golf name, and uh, you know, I play. I played a bunch of courses in the area with them, and then we
played Rustic Canyon. And this was before it was really like you know, internet famous and uh, and I remember I was like, I want to go back there and play again. You know, this is the course I want to play more and I played like five more rounds there, you know, uh, in my time there. And and that's what I would say is like I didn't know though that Rustic Canyon was my favorite course of the area. I had to go play a bunch of other courses
to figure out that that was my favorite course. So in that way, the golf world has gotten smaller because, like listen, you can go out and try and find gems. But there's also like been a lot of content created by a lot of different companies that has uncovered really worthwhile, affordable golf.
I also think that it's true that it is very possible to appreciate, to enjoy good architecture at a very wide range of courses. You don't have to just look at the great courses to experience good architecture. Sometimes if you play your local public course, you can recognize that it has a few really great holes and you can dig into those, or you can just find what you think is the best design course in your area and
you can enjoy that. You don't have to necessarily go for these big white whales of golf travel private courses
to you know, pursue your interest in golf architecture. In my opinion, right, I think that there's a big potential to just enjoy good architecture as opposed to necessarily insisting on great architecture all the time, because the reality is that I spend most of my time, you know, I get to play some awesome places when I go on these trips with you and in the company, right, we get to go play some incredible places, and that's not a privilege that everybody has. I'm really grateful for it.
But when I'm home, when I'm out here in the suburbs of Portland, I play my regular golf rounds at normal public courses, the more affordable the better. Not all of them are great, but there are a couple where I can really enjoy some good golf architecture, and that gives me a lot of pleasure because I'm not paying that much for it. It's just my kind of local course, but I'm able to see something in it that gives me a lot of satisfaction, that makes the game interesting,
that kind of fills the tank in that way. So I don't need to go play, you know, national golf links all the time, even though it's an incredible privilege to get to go play a place as great as that. I can go appreciate architecture at Forest Hill's golf course. And I don't know is that a good response to that question, because I think when people focus on great architecture, they just assume that it's the that it. Great architecture
is the province of a few courses out there. But I'm saying that you can find great and good architecture in a lot of different places, including courses that maybe aren't that great overall but just have some cool things about them.
Yeah.
That's the thing is that, like I always feel really good if I go see somewhere and there's like at least one or two things that I'm like, wow, that was really cool. Yes, And like a recent round I played, there's a course by me called Bill Valley.
Yeah, Oh that's a fun place. That's a that's a good piece of land.
I mean, like an it's super funky. I mean it doesn't there's there's trees everywhere.
It's maybe not a good piece of land, but it's like a memorable kind of kind of golf course. Yeah.
Half the teas are like artificial, you know, you're hitting off like like little like practice mats, like rocket mats and uh but there's like a world class golf hol out there where I like I saw it.
It's the fourth hole.
Is this great part four that kind of like it's got like a reverse camera and dog legs around a tree. And then the green sites. It's an incredible green site that's partially blind.
You know.
It's just a really cool golf hole. And I saw it from like the third hole. I was like, what's that hole?
You know?
And then you go, you see it, you play it. It's like that's really cool. Like I walked away from that route. I mean, there's a couple of really great views and and it's like, is this golf course anything super special? No, but there is a golf hole out there that is really truly like world class and and and that's the thing is that, you know, I even think back to like some of the one of the course I grew up playing, uh my Muty and my Muny golf at, like where I grew up.
This is Lake Bluff, right, Lake Bluff.
Yeah, I mean there's something the greens just had this like steady tilt. It was almost like you know that where it really reinforced just like you had to be in the right spots because otherwise you'd get these like ten foot breaking putts. And it taught me from a like a yog like how to where to miss shots, like because if you were in the wrong spots, you just weren't getting up and down and these This is
like the most rudimentary golf architecture. You know, this golf course has nothing like really special about it, but just the tilt, Like it had severe tilt in the greens, and that was the thing that like, you know, you had to be in the right spots. And like to this day, I can go around that golf course like with my eyes closed and play good because I know where to miss the ball.
Yeah. So the golf course I grew up on was a Santa Barbara Municipal golf course, Santa Barbara Meini And uh, you know a lot of the stuff out there is not great, but there's some incredible land on some holes on that course and some holes that use the land in a super unique, like unreplicable way, and you know that are like no other golf holes that I've played in all of my travels. And that's the first eighteen hole golf course that I played it's the municipal golf
course in the town where I grew up. And so yeah, I mean, I'm not saying it's great that a lot of great golf course architecture is not accessible to the public. I'm not saying I love that state of affairs, right, I'm not saying that people need to accept that just because you know, you can appreciate good golf architecture everywhere.
But I think if there's anything, any one thing that we just try to do over and over and over in our work on this podcast and what we write, is to help people notice things in the everyday golf courses that they play that they can enjoy beyond just playing golf, which is fun in itself, but this adds another layer where you can see good architecture anywhere, and the hope is that you can do that at the
courses in the in the place where you live. So that's that's a response there, maybe a little too optimistic for what Ryan was asking, but I think that's how we feel, all right. That pretty much covers the question that I definitely wanted to cover. Are there any that you want to throw in here at the end? Were there ones that we didn't cover that you thought, were you know, we need to get to Garrett.
How about from Craig Mosier.
Any designers out there that you haven't played that you've been meaning to?
This is this is a cool question. I put this one down to the first name that came to mind was Wayne Styles.
A couple of those courses.
And I think that, you know, maybe not all of them are super well preserved, but that's an architect, you know, a Golden Age era architect. I believe that I don't know a whole lot about, but there are a ton of Wayne Styles courses in New England, up in Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, kind of that that was his area, and I haven't played any of those courses, and I'd really like to get to them. You know, another a big one, a big architect that I have not played
any of his work as Stanley Thompson. And so I need to get up to cann Uh or at least get over to Sleepy Hollow in Cleveland and and see some of his stuff. But for sure getting up to British Columbia and seeing Capilano I believe his out's pronounced. Maybe going up and seeing BAMF. Just seeing a few more Stanley Thompson courses from from what I've heard, just the sensational architect and uh, somebody that I need to learn more about.
What about you I've seen, I've seen a little just one course. I've only seen Old Elm.
But Harry Colt is a big one on my list in terms of just diving deeper into I'd like to see that. Another one that has international implications, I'd like to see Alec Alec Russell's or yeah, yeah, gotta go to oz yeah, or New Zealand Para there you go.
Yeah, yeah, Harry cold Is is probably the biggest hole that you and I both have, right, maybe the greatest golf architect of all time. And uh, you know, obviously his courses are mostly in the UK, so that's why we haven't seen many. Yeah.
Another one would be Devau Emmett.
I've seen Garden City, but I haven't seen a lot of his other work and I'd like to like to get there, you know. But these are all like I mean, there's a lot of Tilling hass that I want to see. And you know, this is a tough thing, is there's
there's only so much time. But you know, I think seeing multiple efforts from from architects is really important because this goes to that question that somebody asked about Mackenzie, Like you can't understand it architects seeing one of their courses for the most part, because like the really great architects are so different between the courses, right, you know, there's different you know, features and and and you know natural features that they had to work with and different
you know, you know, they changed too. Like that's the cool thing about some of these architects is the evolution of their style. You know, I don't think like their core principles change like I think their core you know, fundamental design principles stayed the same and beliefs, but their some of their styles and you know, aesthetics would change.
So seeing a good batch of stuff and that is hard. I mean, that's the hard thing.
I think one of the things that I got a question on earlier, you know, on Twitter at some point, was like it's impossible to see Like for the most part, all the great architects that worked in America for a long time have like one good public option that everybody
can go see, which is nice. But you know, the seeing their bodies of work and seeing a couple really formulate, and then I'm excited for some of these young architects, Like I'm excited to go see Rob Collins's second, third, fourth courses as they come online, just to see what they're because I don't think you can have like an accurate idea of what their work's going to look like from just from just nine Holes in Tennessee.
And that that Muni course in Memphis. Yeah, the King Collins built. The name is escaping me right now. But that's one that I'd.
Really like to see, God killing me all.
Yeah, it's well, you know recommendation. I believe will Bardwell of Lying For has has written about it. So if you want to find out more about that course, go there. But I think that that's going to be I mean, what we're seeing from King Colin far Overton, Yeah, there you go. What we're seeing so far from King Collins is interesting and how varied it has been, right because
we got Sweeten's Cove course build on a floodplain. Basically we got landman course built on land that could barely be golfable, right that they had had to make some major interventions in order to make it golfable. And then Overton where you know they're building a local kind of city course as far as I understand it. And so we've got some good variety already coming up there. We'll see some nice work from Kyle Franz coming up, some
work from Brian Schneider and Blake Conant. So new architects are coming online, and I think we're both really looking forward to seeing what some of these next generation architects are interested in doing. All right, any other questions or do you want to wrap up there?
I think that's a good spot to wrap up.
All right. To everybody whose questions did not get answered, my apologies, but I will dive in and answer some more on Twitter, I think, because there are some ones that can be answered fairly briefly, and so happy to do that. But thank you so much Andy talking against her. This episode of the Frida Egg podcast was edited by Matt Rusius. One quick thing that you can do to support the Frida Egg is to give us a rating
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