Golf President Campaigns and Coul Links

a little bit more uh silly front end here. We're gonna be each running for president of Golf, and we're gonna we've got five campaign topics that we're going to talk about. Garrett, uh, Joseph and myself. I guess we're gonna we could come up with our party titles. We can see who's been influenced by big equipment, you know, based off their campaign uh campaign uh uh preferences and and and sides they choose here. But we're gonna run

for for President of Golf. You guys can be the judge of who wins this debate, and we've come up with a couple of topics and then we will kick it over to an interview I did with Rue McDonald, who is with the DP World Tour, used to host a a a podcast about Scottish Scottish golf, who came on to talk about the critical juncture in the Cool Links story, which is a potential golf development just north of Royal Dorniic in Scotland, which has some important moments

in its potential development coming up. So we will kick it over to that on the back end of this episode. But welcome on Joseph and Garrett. I am. I'm extremely excited to share this debate platform with you guys.

Grow the Game initiative. You have We have tasked everybody to come up with one Grow the Game initiative. Equipment and uh, golf course industry. Those are the big topics. We'll we'll debate and propose our our thoughts on each topic, and then uh, maybe we'll have PJ to clare winter end.

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our presidential campaigns here. All right, so let's kick it off. Let's kick it off with the the first topic. We'll start with men's professional golf. Jessep Leamanya, you are up first.

Players are gonna have an absolute uprising. But PJ is gonna love it, which is the most important contingency here. And there's the only one sport right now that is actively compromising the field or the court. You don't have cameras getting in the way on an NBA court interrupting shots. We're doing away with TiO relief completely. Let's restore some consequence back to professional golf.

of support there. But make it the Tour Championship, not this weird, staggered star thing that we have right now and then. And this is really appealing to Andy rather than PJ, so I should probably change this. But bring back the Western Open. Make it a rotation between Olympia Fields, Harding Park, Chambers Bay, Cherry Hills maybe or Castle Pines would probably be the most likely candidate in Denver, but Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, Denver or three great cities that are

underserved by PGA Tour golf. Right now, that is the good MW Western Open. You can keep the sponsor. You know, you could have some nice BMW ads with with golfers driving across the desert or the great planes or whatever to get wherever they're going. It seems like an obvious sort of partnership between a brand and a concept for a tournament. That's my proposal. Focus on creating great tournaments

on the PGA Tour schedule. Abandon these notions that you're ever going to generate an enthusiasm about a season long race on the PGA too. I just don't think it's gonna happen. This is not f one. So make those tournaments great. What's valuable in golf is an awesome tournament, like the Masters or the US Open or the Open. That's what we should be focusing on.

You know, they're trying to get every tournament run by championship management, which is basically the death to any soul of an event. If you want to if you want to kill the soul of an event, turn it over to championship management. Is abolished champions So one thought. One thought, I was, I was there was. There's a large contingent of people, a big collect cohort of of of funding sources that was trying to say it was trying to convince me to just say just end ment pro golf,

just end it. But I I said, artists, I said no to that money. Instead, I am I'm going to run on the platform of everybody's saying, make pro golf smaller, make it a you know, like, make the the top end of the tour really small. I'm gonna say, just make it really big. Have a thousand have a thousand person tour. Just put the the European Tour, the PG eight Tour, Live Golf, Cornfieur, the Challenge Tour, and PGA

Tour Americas all it. Call it the same tour, but have different levels and exempt statuses that you cycle up and down. You play for the same points, and it's one giant tour that feeds up and down constantly. There's no relegation event. There's relegation events. Every single week. You're either up, you're either down. If you fall out of the top fifty, you're out. You know, Oh we're playing a tournament in November. If I'm forty fifth, I don't get an off season. I gotta go play. I gotta

go grind to keep my status up high. And I think, like, actually, like everybody's like, Ben, this was just a thought this morning. Everybody's been talking about making pro golf smaller. And when you think about the idea of pro golf like and you think about it, it makes sense off the off, the b off the bat. Yeah, we need a smaller tour. But in reality, most things in golf are completely the

opposite of what you think. You know, if you're if you're hitting the ball right, you know, if you're hitting a slice, you swing right. You don't swing left like naturally you think, oh I need a swing left. You know, everything in golf is actually the opposite of what you your natural instinct is to think. So my my platform is going to be make a giant tour and have just playing up and playing down all the time.

the game better. I don't really like growing the idea of growing the game, because usually when people say that, they just mean I want more money from the game. But I believe this would be good for the game in the sense that one thing we need right now is a greater supply of golf courses. And one place where we can find that is struggling historic courses in urban centers. Right now, those courses are closing down rather than you know, getting to the next level because it's

so hard to make the finances work. But the demand is there right now for golf. We need, if anything, more golf courses. Right now, we are under supplied with public golf courses. The public golf courses that we have, especially in urban areas, are booked up to the gills. People can't find tea times, and so we need to preserve the great golf courses that we have in city centers, historic golf courses that have been there for a long

time but just need a little bit of TLC. And that's what this registry and grant system would do.

some level of access. It might not be like a perfect priority order where everyone's getting an equal booking time, but I think that we could do a little bit. We can make some strides on getting people who are interested in playing golf out onto the golf course. I'm interested in looking at dynamic pricing. I think it's sometimes crazy how tea times that are sixty dollars all the time go on un used, and then nobody's using them when they could pay I don't know, twenty four twenty

eight dollars. I know that there's some pushback on dynamic pricing, but I want to explore it. I'm going to take solutions. We're going to solicit solutions from the smartest minds. I don't have a full plan to lay out here, but I want to completely reimagine the way that public golf is booked in this country and potentially in the world.

in like a year or two. So make these golf sets like you go in, you sign out. If you don't bring it back, you don't get the next size up. And yeah, sure, Like is this gonna cost a little bit of money, absolutely, but this is a way to actually get golf clubs in people's hands. Like have you have you tried has your kid tried golf? Oh no, I heard its super expensive. Well, actually, kids get freak clubs if they go and they you can go pick

them up here. Like there's nothing special about kids clothes. You go, kids clubs. You don't need like big time teching them. You don't need anything like that. And the thing about it is like there's great programs like Youth on Course that offer affordable golf for kids. Why don't we make the golf clubs really affordable and easy to use too. This is like one of the great virtues of basketball is that literally the only thing you need to play basketball is a basketball. Yep, and there are

hoops all over the play soccer. The most popular games, uh in terms of participation generally are the easiest ones to play. So let's remove some of the barriers for kids playing sports. Let's give them free golf clubs.

it like a pair of shoes. And that's a problem too, because for six months or whatever, they're using golf clubs that are kind of way too, way too big for them. But I do like how we're working the deficit here. We are really milking that. We're just living on the edge of that huge deficit and just you know, living there.

is gonna help brain in distance. It's a very practical solution. Bring back skill address the distance issue. We're shrinking the driver head on day one.

that's a good message. That means you don't have to go spend eight hundred dollars or one thousand dollars every year to get the new tech. So my my proposal, let's go back to persimon. Have there be modest you know, innovation. You could like I remember I have a set of Ben Hogan woods that I shipped away to Roberto Castro that had like this little cut in the side of the head that was like a speed slot, you know that, Like the idea was to increase the aerodynamics. But like Persimmon,

like you can't hollow out per Simon. You can't, like it's just a solid block of wood. And the thing about it is like once you find a driver you like, you just use it. That's your driver, And I think that's fine. Like that's kind of the way I treat drivers in general is once I find a driver I like, I usually use it until it cracks, and then I move on to the next one. The great thing about Persimmon is that it won't crack in six years or seven years. It'll it will just be good for twenty

five years. I never have to buy a new driver. So go back to persimmon heads for woods, and you would immediately reduce the cost of the sport. Like once again, like my platform is like how do we increase participation and reduce the cost of the game really in general, And and that's where I'm going to be on Persimmon driver heads And guess what, it's more fun to hit

a personmon driver head. I can't tell you how many times I go places with either my Hickory's or my retro clubs and say we play through a group or a group plays through us, whatever it may be. Everybody in the group's like, oh my god, is that a Persimmon driver or is that a Hickory driver? And I say, oh, do you want to try and hit it and they're like, oh, absolutely, and then they hear the sound of it and they're like, oh my god, that was amazing. It was way easier to hit than I thought it was.

And you know what's cool is watching sho Heyo Tani swing a wooden bat. It just wouldn't be as cool to see him do what he does with a metal bat. And sorry for bringing up traumatic things.

level of the game. So this is not just a professional golf issue. But we're agreeing too much here. I feel like people don't have enough of a reason, or PJ doesn't have enough way.

Will go with three majors for the time being and see if a fourth emerges. Somewhere along the way. But right now, these are not majors. Nobody feels like they're majors. It's just a big charade. We're told they're majors, but we know in our souls that the Avon Championship and the Chevron Championship are not major championship golf in the way that the US Women's Open is, in the way that the Women's PGA Championship is, and in the way

that the Women's Open clearly is. So that's something that really needs to be fixed, because if one thing absolutely has to work in a professional golf structure, it's the major championships. That's the one thing that men's pro golf is doing right right now. It's the one thing that's going well on that side of the game. The majors are still the majors and are still great. Needs to get its act together with these five majors, two of which are really not majors.

Tour Plus. And I don't no longer are people gonna have to worry about where you can watch it if it's gonna be tape delayed. I don't care if five thousand people are watching it or five million, but we're gonna have an app specifically dedicated for it. And if there is this infusion of fan interest into women's golf, I don't know how popular women's golf will be five years from now, but it's going to be set up and ready to capture that fan interest if it arrives.

That is my platform, LPGA Tour Plus.

Like I never go on like the Twitter or the Instagram and see, like, you know, tons of great shots being played like and I think like a lot of this is just like resource allocation, you know, like I would be dumping money into making our sport more visible and right now, the best way to free into you know, effectively at cost, effectively increase your invisibility is through social media.

And I think their social media pages are leave a lot to be desired, and I think it's probably in a lot of ways just about not having enough people. So I would maybe look at, hey, can we reallocate one hundred thousand dollars here, one hundred thousand dollars here, and maybe double are our media team, amount of people and the resources they have, so that we can put our sport out in front of people as much as possible,

so we can garner viral moments. Like I think like a lot of probably like great moments happen on the LPGA that could be Sports Center Top ten moments, but they just don't tell anybody that they happened. That we don't We don't know what happened because like a lot of times, they are never it's never shown. It's either shown on tape delays Joseph put suggested, or it's never clipped into social media or never was televised in the first part. So like my big thing would all be

about visibility. Let's get our product out there as much as possible on these free, potentially viral channels in order to garner more fan interest.

how are you doing? And you're as a media member, You're like, wait, what, why are you asking me how I'm doing?

up sponsors. It sounds like Cognizant is maybe out. So there's something odd going on with the leadership of the LPGA Tour. I'm not sure what it is, but it feels oddly low energy at the moment.

that's great. But I want to store all of the original drawings of a golf course with the architects an explanation for the architect's vision for the golf course, so that years down the line, we're not looking back trying to scrape together drawings and understand if the architect who's hired to do the renovation is betraying the original vision. I want it all documented somewhere from one central source.

If someone's hired to do a project on a municipal course, we're going to put what that cost and what the work was on it all in one location. Remove all the ambiguity around what the architect's original intent was and what the golf course looks like one hundred and fifty years later.

harbor Town, et cetera. He said, if greens are maintained at speeds over eleven feet on the stint meter, no architect in their right mind can build any contour or character into their greens. When you take contour out of the greens and speed them up, you only make the game easier for the average putting tour pro and harder for the club player. There is much more skill required in putting slower, undulating and grainy greens than there is

in putting flat ones that are fast. So at some point we are going to have to figure out what we really want from our golf courses. Do we want interesting tests of skill with lots of character and perhaps a little grain on the greens, or do we want level but slick putting surfaces that only make the game less interesting. I think that puts it really well. By slowing down greens, you incentivize architects to do more interesting work.

You incentivize clubs to maintain the character of their courses.

just lay it dead constantly, over and over again. You know what that is. That's someone with supreme speed control being rewarded. You know, somebody that hits the center of the putter face over and over again being rewarded. We saw perhaps Scottie Shuffler's worst putting performance this year at the Open Championship. He was awful on putts of like six feet eight feet And one thing that popped in my mind is like, oh, he actually has to hit the putt solid for the ball to stay on the

line and go in the hole. I had one of my worst putting rounds of the year at a course called Wolf River Golf Park. They were perhaps the best greens that I put it on all year in terms

of what we're talking about now. They were rock hard, so firm, and they rolled at about a nine maybe a ten, And I was when I had a wedge in my hand, I was like terrified about like thinking about, like I need to land this ninety two yards and if I land at ninety four, I'm probably gonna miss this section of the green that I need to get this wedge into But then when I got on the green, if I had six feet in the putt and the and you know a lot of the cups were on

you know, slopes. I was really I was struggling that day with my stroke, was not hitting puts solidly, and I was missing everything. And I think about like that day as like, oh I putt it probably the worst I put it all year that day, And I think that a lot of it had to do with me actually having to hit puts solid that day and being just not stroking the ball well that day. So I just think that this is a it's just such a it's such an easy way to bring We're always trying

to bring skill gap together. This is a great way to bring skill gap together. PJ. I'm gonna run slightly on the opposite.

actually the culprit. I think Garrett, some of what you're mentioning with the lack of interesting strategic intrigue to the greens is the true culprit. And yes, speed, when you have small greens and you crank them up to fourteen, they can't be interesting. I'm with you on that, but I'm going to stand up a little bit for fast greens in certain instances like an Augusta.

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amount of abandoned cards you have. They also have a billing product that works if you have like complex bill if it's usage based billing a subscription. For example, we use it for subscription. Uh it works really really well, So I would if you were going to want to check out Stripe. If you want to use Stripe, if you want to learn more about Stripe, go to stripe dot com. Thanks to Stripe. Now back to Rue McDonald and cool Links. All right, Rue, I'm excited to talk

about cool Links. This is a development in northern Scotland, the Highlands. Tell us a little bit about the history of cool Links the land, you know, kind of how it's come to be as this somewhat I don't know if this is the right word, but embroiled topic in northern Scotland.

Honestly an incredible site. And I before I joined the DP World Tour, where I've been working for seven and a half years, I ran my own podcast. It was the scottis Golf Podcast. It was all about, you know, speaking to people that have been on golf trips to Scotland planning the next golf trip. And it was just

a blog really in a podcast. And I went on the site of cool Links and I walked the site and I actually walked into literally walked into Mike Kaiser and at the time, you know, his right hand man in Scotland, Todd Warnick. That was the first development application

for the golf course. Todd Warnick's an American. I think he's actually from Chicago and a successful businessman who loves Dornich and who has this incredible hotel with Doric and between the two of them, they were planning to build a golf course and have Bill Koor and Ben Crenshaw designed the golf course. And I think, you know, for every for all that Todd does for the community, he's

very philanthropic. He puts a lot of money back into the town and developing things there and for whatever reason, the locals didn't take to another American coming into Dorak and trying to do something, and that a lot of pushback. It went through the courts and the courts, you know, despite public opinion being in favor of the golf course and the local council approving the application, it was eventually rejected on environmental grounds. So that's the short answer. That's

where we are, and there's been a new project. Locals came together. They didn't want to turn away the opportunity

to have a golf course there. So the locals got together, Communities for Cool and six local people, business people, people that worked around Dora and got together and they resurrected the project very much as a public a local project, still going to be backed by Mike Kiser, but you know, with very much the community in the spirit of resurrected it and they've got Really the first thing they did was put it to the local vote. They asked locals,

do you want a golf course? And almost seventy percent of them voted in favor of a golf course. So they've they've got the application, resubmitted it past planning. It got the support of the local community. But unfortunately there's still some concerns around the environmental impact, which is is

very small. We can go into it and it's going to be decided in a couple of weeks now in Scotland's sort of in the capital Edinburgh, where the national government will decide if the economic and social benefits of the golf course outweigh the minor environmental impact. Long answer to a very difficult subject matter what.

So a lot of locals leave Dork and leave the Highlands and move down to the south where the population is. And the strongest argument was, you know want to we want to keep population high in this part of the world or do you want to increase numbers. It was the most recent census saw an uptaking older people like moving to the Highlands as a retirement sort of thing

as well. So that's the biggest thing, Like, you know, you know the power we all know the power of golf tourism and the money it brings and how do you retain you know, the population, how do you keep people in the area. And tourism in the Highlands of Scotland is a massive thing, and golf tourism's very, you know, a very affluent sector to be working in. So Royal Dorrick, you know, they have seventeen hundred overseas members at Royal Dornic.

They do you know, twenty thousand visitor rounds. So there's there's already appetite in the area for great golf, great links golf. What cool can be is you know a visitor only addition to that, And anyone listening to this podcast knows about Bill Koor and Kaiser and the golf courses they get involved with. It's very difficult to maybe portray that to people that are not wanting to educate themselves.

And the frustrating thing for me and the people involved in this project is the sort of lazy argument from the other side who just perceived golf to be one thing and we know that, you know, modern golf course designers is it is with minimal, minimal impact on the

environment and trying to be is. Certainly Bill Kohr, I mean, you know that's more than me, Andy, but you know, talk to his golf course philosophy and how how little earth movement there is and with the environmental constraints here, this will be all This could arguably the most natural wings golf course built, certainly in this century.

most natural routing that he can find. Obviously, like sand Hills is a great example where they really only moved earth to build one green on on the entire site. I as you know, in terms of Scotland, what do you think cool Links would do to elevate the general area the Highlands as you spoke about, you know, in terms of economic impact, it's an area where most of the people that live there move away to work somewhere else and then it sounds like come back to it

later in life when they are done working. What type of impact with cool Links have to the to the Highlands as a as a golf tour the market.

When I met Mike Kailer and Todd Warnick that day and I was invited in to have a drink with them and discuss the project, I actually asked Mike Kailers, as somebody who loves Scottish golf tourism, is you know, are your successful resorts at Bannon June's good for Scottish golf tourism or is it taking people away? Are you going to band in June's and you know, thinking about, you know, having your golf fix, And you know, his answer is very much like if people play band in June's,

they'll be inspired to come to Scotland. It's almost a flavor of it. And he told me that day that when he when he thought about creating Van and June's, he thinks of his time at Dornach and the bus loads of people arriving there and then leaving. And that is,

unfortunately scenario that Dorak faces. People driving these mini buses and I heard today people nobody's taking a self drive shift stick now in Scotland, despite the you know the rumors, ninety five percent of some of these golf travel agents are sending people on golf buses and being driven around the country. But that's another point. Unfortunately, Dornick's like a a day visit and it genuinely means people show up there in the morning playing the golf, which is one

of the best golf coaches in the world. And I'm sure one day we can enjoy that privilege together andy, But they then get on the bus and they drive off, they drive off to Mbness perhaps you know Tabot Highlands, which is you know, formerly Castle Stewart is one of my favorite places and it's great, but it's a long way away. It's over an hour's drive from Dornack and the economic impact of the golfer isn't really felt in

the town. And Dornock's one of these great towns. We were lucky enough to be at the opening St Andrews in twenty twenty two and you get a sense of

what a great golf town is. You were obviously recently in North Berrick and Gullan and they're great golf towns, and Dornucks another one, and I would really, you know, I really believe that in addition to that area of another top one hundred links golf course in the world would turn that into destination really And unfortunately those people that get to Dorac at the moment and get off the bus and back on the bus don't make time

to go visit Brora. And Brora is famous for having the livestock roam the course and the Highland cows and the sheep that maintained the fair way just like golf used to be in the nineteen hundreds, and it's one of the best golf experiences anyone can experience. And a lot of Americans don't experience it in they you know, they're visiting Dornut and it's only thirty five or four minutes away. So that that is the impact that an

additional golf course could have. It really would transform the area into a destination.

a golf course a second time. It's like usually when you start to figure it out and learn a lot about it. But it's hard to like pass up the opportunity of seeing six or seven to see three or four if you played, you know, to every everyone twice. And I think like the other aspect of this is like getting one tea time at Royal Dornik is tough enough,

getting two, doesn't you know? That doesn't work for the economics of the town when you can only get one tea time, right, Like, there's there's more at play than just you know, hey, people just aren't staying. It's like they don't have a reason to stay, and that cool links would give them an additional reason to stay and and and potentially you know, really transform an area. That that is from what I understand, I haven't been one of the most you know, beautiful areas in the in

the world. As you said, Broers there, Golspie's there. You know,

there are there is enough good golf there. And I think like one of the things that an addition of a of a real you know, like I think like you know, there's there's great courses that people know about, like you know an elee a, but like there are there are courses that that draw greater interest and and you know, the Kaiser name, along with Bill Koorr, has the opportunity to pull in a greater appeal to an area and then all of a sudden you look at

golspeak cool Links, Brara and Dornik and it becomes a potential two three nights day.

you know, they've dislabeled at golf. When I do believe if you did, you know, ten minutes of research about Mike Kaiser, ten minutes about Bill Kourr, you realize that these people care deeply for an environment. They they build golf courses with golf and great golf at the forefront. They don't build any of the other bs that goes around it. They they care for great you know, great golf, sandy soils like that is there. That's their footprint, right,

And you know this more than me. And you've been lucky to be in Bill Courr's company like that guy deserves, you know, deserve you know, in the grand scheme of things, it's not a big deal, but like his legacy would be fitting to have a great Links golf course in Scotland, which you think time is running out. You know, there's not many sites left and there's not many opportunities left, and you know, by all accounts, his routing is really exciting,

it's very natural, it's conducive to the environment. I mean, the the environmental impact of the golf course is going to be less than one percent of the Triple s I And it's really going to be greens and tea boxes that are going to be maintained. And you know, even even you know, landing areas maybe being preserved by sheep initially just kind of help mitigate the fruit print

and the damage done to the environmental areas. But I really don't think people understand like who you're dealing with here in terms of people that care for the environment. And I said this to you before we recorded, like golfers do love the environment, like I love being outdoors. That you love being out Gopher's very much part of the experience and the days of golfers not being that way I mean, I think, I don't know. I'd love

to hear your thoughts from that. In terms of, like, you know, I think more and more golfers are enjoying, enjoying taking care of nature, and I feel obligated to enjoy the environment a bit more.

nothing I love more than a twilight round playing golf. Really, I love playing by myself a twilight around and just being alone in nature like and I think like the golf courses that I personally am kind of drawn to when I think about it, are often the ones that that blend in with nature the most, you know, and are are really that embody kind of the natural features that you would have encountered if you were just hiking the golf course. And I think, like that's you know,

from all signs with this project. What's interesting is it's almost a constraint where they have to be so environmentally sensitive with their with the creation of the golf course that it could yield, you know, one of the most natural golf courses built in the modern era, which is a fascinating you know subject matter, right, like the idea of like building a golf course without disturbing the environment.

And I think that there's been some some uh credit to golf actually being a wonderful way to stabilize dunes into preserved dunes because there's a aspect of the golf course that has inherent benefit an interest in preservation of the dunes land that these golf courses sit in.

very minimally. But yeah, I mean the current site as well, despite it being you know, classed as a triple S, I like the highest rating that you could have on a site. It's very purely maintained the Scottish government that managed this Nature scott They have dwindling budgets, you know. I know for a fact my father used to work for Nature scut weird enough and the budget that the Scottich government set aside to preserve sites like this have reduced and reduced and reduced to a point where the

Scottish government are now encouraging private investment. And part of cool links is initiative here is to invest money into maintaining this site and getting rid of evasive species. I know Americans love gorse, but it's an evasive species. It overtakes the links, and there's there's trees on the site, there's other evasive species and it's falling into disrepair because nobody's putting any proper money into it. And the cool Links plan has, you know, investment into that. It has

investment into public walking paths. The greatest thing about Scotland is you know, and they haven't been the right to rome everywhere and this this is it like it's not gonna be a gated community. This is They've got a beautiful beach as it is. You can go in any speech in Scotland and it's public and they are encouraging that. They're encouraging wildflowers and all that to thrive. So if it gets approved that there's a hearing in a couple of weeks time, it has the potential to be special.

It has a potential to be inclusive. And that's what I love about Scotland is how inclusive Scottish golf is. And yeah, here's open because we know that people involved, you know, care deeply and you know Bill Kerr thing you've spoken to him. I've actually watched your content and Bill talking about this. Bill looks for these landmarks on the site and figures out ways to play around it and not interfere with it. I mean, make them, make them part of the player and experience, but don't ruin

them that they're they're their interesting subject matters. And I don't think the opposition and people that look at golf negatively understand that kind of philosophy, which is super frustrating.

be done. You're not moving you know, you're not moving thousands of tons of material. As we say, it's gonna be a very natural golf course. So I think you'd be looking at sort of two two and a half years sort of from now where you can look at

getting something. And you know, I'm not too intimately aware of the Kaiser model in terms of you know, the the memberships that they hand out in these playing experiences that you can have, but I don't see why it wouldn't be you know, quite a short period really, given that we have a sh or growing season, but the actual build and again you're far more educated and what goes into building golf courses in the timelines, but you know, with with nature kind of not being interrupted too much,

I don't see why it would take too long. Another thing to add theirs is also the fact that we mentioned these other golf courses too. That we didn't mention were ski Bow, which is kind of a links course there, it's a little bit, it's sort of limited play, but it's it's a links course, beautiful setting, the home of Madonna's famous marriage to Cheyritory. But that's not that through that put you off. And then then the news last week that Dornuk's second golf course, Destruy, is going on.

There's some significant course improvements. So a lot of people don't realize that Donald's got a second golf course, but they do. It's not on the greatest pieces of land, but they've purchased new land and they have plans to improve that golf course. So I can't tell you how how much you know, investment in an opportunity there is here in Scotland. I don't think there's ever been greater

demand for people to come to Scotland. And that's another case in this argument is to say, well does Scotland need another golf course? That's the opposition saying that, and again me and you know that, you know it's not Eddie golf courses that Bill Coo or Mike Kyser golf

course and it's a Lynx course on incredible land. And I think dun Barney here in in Saint Andrew's, you know, opened up three years ago part of the true golf portfolio, and they're already seeing like huge numbers of golfers and they've only been open three years. So there's a huge demand for golf travel, as you know, Andy, and I don't see any scenario where this doesn't become an overnight success.

the past, and getting people to just a venture a little bit further north would be would be a huge win for the greater area. So UH we will follow this the story as it as it happens. Rue. Thank you for coming on and UH and and giving us the insights into what's going on with cool links.