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 brid.
Egg Friday egg, the dreaded Friday Friday fridagg bride egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the hump.
Welcome back to another edition of the Friday Golf Podcast. I am your host, Andy Johnson, and I'm I'm excited about this episode. We are back. As a reminder from last week, this cadence will be every Wednesday this year, so every Wednesday morning you can expect a a new episode of this podcast. I'm excited for a couple of reasons. We got TGL debut tonight as of this recording Tuesday night, so we will see a new form of golf. We did a podcast last week about what we were kind
of thinking about TGL. I'm really excited to see it rolled out. I think it's a really big opportunity for golf. I am interested to see how it all works. I think they're you know, I think we all should exercise a little bit of patience because this is a brand new thing. They are going to definitely figure stuff out in the first season, and ideally it is successful enough to get a five year window to really grow and flourish, because primetime exposure for golf on ESPN would be a
wonderful thing for the greater golf community to have. And so I'm really excited to watch that tonight. But this podcast is going to focus in on a couple of topics. It's going to focus in on Cappalua and the PGA Tour's massacre of scoring on Capealua. I bring in Joseph Lamanna from Friday Golf to talk about it. He did some interesting numbers analysis to kind of showcase really what's happened to this venue over the years. And then later I am joined to talk golf architecture with a friend
of the program, golf architect Yeger Kovich. Jeger is the owner of Proper Golf, that is his architecture firm. After working with Tom Doak and Gil Hants, Jaeger is now fully out on his own with his own firm. He does a ton of work in the Northeast. He's been a former podcast guest, so you could search in Spotify or iTunes wherever you could find earlier episodes that discussed his story how he got into golf architecture. But this podcast, we're just going to talk about some of the hot
topics in golf. So those are the two interviews and we are excited to have this thing rolling. So one other bit of housekeeping with the TGL in mind, we did a design contest in CLUBTFE our membership. It was really fun. We put we did a design contest and we went through all of the designed holes. We had help from John who built all the holes in PGA Tour two K so it was a really fun thing. We actually put that video up on our public YouTube page. That's an example of one of the hangouts we do
every month in CLUBTFE. So if you liked that, if you enjoyed that, then consider joining our membership and you can join at the Frida egg dot com slash membership. Again, that video is free for everybody on our public YouTube page, so go check that out there. There were a lot of really fun designs. Without further ado, let's get to Joseph Lamanna and let's talk about Cappalua and the state
of modern professional golf. All right, Joseph, we are through the opening drive and we are met right out of the gates this year was scoring discussion, a popular topic every time it rolls around to Capealua, a par seventy three golf course built in nineteen ninety one by Bill Kre and Ben Crenshaw that has seen I would say, an assault of scoring over over recent years. Two years ago the scoring record was set at minus thirty four, the all time scoring record on the PGA Tour two par.
This year it is broken by Hideki Massiyama, who gets to thirty five under, and a lot of takes flying around about Kapelu. There are strong rumors, if not you know, assertations that the par will be changed from seventy three to seventy two, which really does nothing. But Kapalua is in the crosshairs of the golf community as as not you know. I think a lot of people are questioning is this a worthy test of the best players in
the world. And I figured this would be a fun little topic to bat around as we welcome in twenty twenty five on the PGA.
Tour, Andy, thank you for having me. I'm pumped for this conversation. I think it's a great conversation that doesn't necessarily do well like in a tweet, and there are multiple angles to talk about here, so I don't know where you want to start. I think there's at least like two to three different angles of this that we have to talk about, right, Like there's it's a resort course, and when the wind doesn't blow on a resort course,
like this is what you're going to get there. Also the equipment, like all of those things are are contributing. So I'm eager to dive into this conversation.
I think maybe the place to start is you did you you produced your antual golf course tears on Twitter? You had Capelua very high in that. What do you think Cappalua does well?
What?
What are the virtues I enjoy this golf course. I'm just gonna throw the thing I really like about it. You see pros hit a lot of shots that have elevation and uneven lies, So two really distinct difficult factors for hitting golf shots are uneven lies and elevation change uphill downhill. It requires a lot of skill, especially when
you mix and win. But what in your mind is are some of the things that Capelua does well and in the modern game of testing, modern players I believe it was like the fourth or fifth highest golf course in your rankings. This is just PGA Tour courses, not major championships, so just PGA Tour annual hosts. Yeah.
I had it on a tier titled something like Great Test with Houston Memorial and some of those memorials in the Houston golf Course, not Mierfield Village.
Which I've hire.
Last podcast, we talked about a couple of criteria of good architecture for professional golfers, and two of the three criteria I said are that it makes you hit different types of shots, and it uses the ground interestingly right, like you have to control the golf ball on the ground. And I think one thing you've seen with trends in professional golf is that as scoring has gone down, you
can call this the Tiger effect. There's been a narrowing of golf courses over the past twenty five years that has made the ground less and less of a factor. Which I mean, it does raise the scoring average because you're covering up fairway with rough like it often will raise the scoring average, but it's diminishing shot value. And I do think we've completely lost how much ground should be a factor at the highest level of professional golf. So when there's wind, Kapalua is dynamite and wind does
function as a natural rollback. Right, you don't hit the ball as far. Get one shot into the wind and one shot downwind, that's gonna net out to losing distance. So when it's windy, this golf course plays very well, and I think that's an important part of the conversation. You have to hit a lot of different types of shots off uneven lies, as you're saying, a lot of crossover with players who do well at Augusta and do well at Cappealua because you're hitting those demanding iron shots off of good.
Elevation change and uneven lies is a hallmark of Augusta National.
Can't fake it, yep. You got to be able to strike your irons. So we wouldn't even be having this conversation if the winds had been up but.
Or or we wouldn't be having this conversation if this golf course was TPC Minneapolis or Blaine. But this is one of I think one of the golf courses that people look forward to the most on the PGA Tour calendar. It's one of the I think most popular golf tournaments that the Tour owns and operates.
Yes, but it is a good golf course to look at within the state of professional golf in the golf world as a whole, to understand when there's not wind, there's zero teeth, and equipment has completely overrun the professional game to the point that it's just shoot and score, throw darts all day. There's another part of this that I know you'll want to dig into, that the greens have been softened at Kapalua and that has also contributed
to lower scoring. There's a lot of things happening in one here, but I think it's a really good case study for the direction professional golf has gone and some of the challenges it faces.
It also provides really interesting lens because this is a modern golf course. This isn't like you know, it was built in nineteen ninety one. It gives you a lens of like shelf life on Tour, trend on Tour because we get to it's really it's hosted high level golf, like it hasn't had gyrations of level of players. It's always had the best, the best, like elite golfers there year and year out over a sample size of massive
equipment change right the first year. You know, they started hosting in the late nineties and it's run till now, and it gives you a really interesting lens because the golf course hasn't changed much until the green softening, which I think we will get to but has led to a flurry of low scores. But also in this time that's that's been its host there is you've effectively gone from wound balls and small heads to solid core golf balls.
Track man, Uh you know, I think, uh, you know, four hundred and sixty cc heads and modern strategy, which I think is another big part of this is the mass adaptation of modern strategy. So if you if you couple all those things together, it has led to a perfect storm of this golf course. I still, I still firmly believe it provides a unique test. But when you see the scoring in the scoring average, I think there's
a max home a tweet. The year is twenty twenty five and it sixty sevens are no longer good on the PGA Tour. And the reality is this golf course, if you wanted to put a real par to it is a par sixty eight for these guys, you know, that's that's the reality. But they are not going to do that. They aren't going to say that eighteens a par par five are par four. When was the last time you didn't see a guy go for eighteen? You know they have to miss the fair away, right, So
it's a part four you know in all actuality. But anyways, the I think, like, let's talk about what you think. You think you think the technology is the real big factor. How has that changed? Capaloua.
I think all of them are significant factors, just to be clear, right, like modern course management is a huge, huge factor, and that you're trimming out a lot of big numbers, like you just not seeing golfers make double bogies or worse very often in the modern era. I've made this point before, but I think the period of twenty fifteen to twenty twenty five is just a rapid,
rapid evolution of strategy principles taking root in all sports. Right, Like the NFL coaches who don't go for it on fourth down anymore are dinosaurs and they've been rooted out of the league in the same way professional golf. If you were if you were refusing a lot of the modern course management being too conservative off of t's being too aggressive and pin seeking on your approach shots like you're just underperforming and you're being washed off of the tour.
So and the margins are so narrow you can't stay on tour.
No, you'll just be gone. So that is a big part of it. But Andy, do you know so just as an example, the par five fifth hole, five hundred yard, this is.
The hole that they believe there that is believed to be changing to part four for next year, Like thirty one hunder is going to make a difference, thirty five to thirty one. What a big change.
I know people are kind of proponents of changing the parts. I actually am not. I think it's obfuscating a real issue and that we shouldn't will that. Actually we did.
We did a podcast years ago that there's a there's a a formal study that was done. If you just changed part down, the will score better.
I'm a little skeptical. I actually don't think that would be true anymore.
Version it's all loss of version.
I don't think that would be true with the modern golfer. Actually, I think that they would. They know you're I think you're incorrect. I think I would love to see that. I'd be willing to bet that it wouldn't that it actually wouldn't change.
Here's here's why. If you ask any of these tour pros, I guarantee they make more part putts than they make birdie putts from the same range.
Honestly, I'm very I'm very skeptical of it. But sometimes when you do your own do your own little study, Yeah, sometimes find me birdie pus from eight feet versus par puss from eight feet. I almost guarantee that tour pros make more of them. Some of the problems though that some often the difficulties a little harder on some of them. But that all aside what I wanted to get to the par five to fifth. Do you know what the scoring average was for that whole on Saturday? And Saturday's
round no win five hundred yards. Guess what the scoring average was on that hole four point one, three point nine eight. I almost went under three point nine eight. And of the fifty nine players in the field, I think all but seven hit the green in two. I mean, we're just talking about a completely different sport than when this golf course was designed, and I know I sent these numbers over to you, Andy, but just to give people a little feel for how much scoring has changed
in the last twenty five years at Kapa Lua. So I have data going back to two thousand and one. It's it's important to call out that the winner in two thousand and three was thirty one under par Ernie Els, so that was already under par.
That was when he had the provy. That was the debut of the prov one acts, which he could just rip knucklecuts with this is so that's like the chain, that's the start of the big change. Like I played, I recently played around golf with original prov one. I was shocked at how hard it was. Like so like one of the things like people are always like go back and play belata. You can't go back and play ballata because the liquid and the course have evaporated, so
the ball doesn't perform. But the prov one being a solid corps ball, it played like two thousand and one. It was shocking how hard, how much it spun, like how much the wind affected it. It was so much harder then golf with the current pro V one. But this the first I would say, like everybody says the prov one was a huge change. It was a huge change. The pro V one X was the one that really really changed.
The game, and it's important to be given context of what equipment changes happened with it. So I'm glad you called that out. In two thousand and three, the winner was thirty one under Erniel, so thirty under is not unheard of. I think it's important to not go, you know, chicken little the sky is falling every time there's low scores.
It's happened before. But what you're looking for is like trends. Yes, so you're looking for like you you know, what people like to do is cherry pick like one stat like a detractor who who often says that I straw man argument, he would probably say, look thirty one under exactly this
is this happens out here. But what you need to do is almost look at like a lot of a lot of statisticians would say, like a five year regression line, right, A rolling regression line is at least way right, at least because you're only talking about in most years, like thirty players in the field, so it's not a huge sample size. But I think there are some important numbers
in here. So since two thousand and one, there have been one hundred and eighty two rounds of sixty five or lower at Kapelua, So that's eight under sixty five or lower. One hundred and nine of those rounds are in the last four years, so sixty percent of the sixty fives are lower are in the last four years. And those those represent twenty two percent of the total rounds played at Cappelua over the last twenty five years. So sixty percent of the sixty fives are lower over
twenty two percent of the rounds. It's a massive, massive number. And to the people who say, well, it's all wind, wind is a huge part of this, but there have been plenty of years in the past where there wasn't a ton of wind like this past weekend and you didn't there scoring outbursts like that.
There's there's a handful of tournaments in the last few year with a lot.
Of wind, twenty twenty, twenty twenty especially.
So I'd like to call out your stat comes at twenty twenty. After the twenty nineteen tournament, the tournament organizers had Bilcore and Ben Crenshaw come out and soften all eighteen greens at Kapalua. That is another undeniable factor, and this was PGA tour driven. The reason that they needed these greens soften was to accommodate pin positions at a at tournament speed. That is, that is the reason for
this green softening. And since that green softening all that your stat coincides with the exact year that the green softening debuted.
Except for twenty twenty, which was a really windy year where there were no sixty fives or lower. So it's not like a perfect but yes, they don't even run the greens that quickly at Kappealua either. So it's just mind boggling to me that the direction of professional golf includes instructing golf courses that they're one defense, not their only defense, because wind is a primary defense Atkapellua. But the slope greens need to be softened. I mean, who who is that servant?
Well, it's a crazy thing because you think about like the courses that have endured the most, and I know, like Augustina National has done lots of tweaks to their greens, but what are what are their greens known for from the most slope in the world. Think about like other enduring test Shittakok terrifying greens, Oakmont terrifying greens, like tons of slope in them, wing foot loss of slope in the greens, like the greatest, the greatest courses for the
most part have severe greens. The Tour, I would you know, if you were going to build a golf course for just express for the PGA Tour. One of their biggest things that they would they would push on with you. And I've heard this from numerous architects, is is that they would be very heavy handed with percentage slope in pinnable areas insane. I believe the number is one point five percent slope in a pinnable area. One point five
percent slope is a tiny amount. So I think like one of the things if I think about as a kid watching Kapalua, I mean, this is a tournament that's like basically spanned my life as a golf fan, and from watching it early on till now, I think the last couple of years. This year was it's just like the more you see it, the more alarming it is. I Mean, these guys have like twenty five foot putts that are just right edge putts. And this was always a golf course historically that you saw putts just rip.
You just saw these putts that broke, and you were you were astonished. It was like, oh, this is a six footer that you need to play two feet or two cups outside right now, with the way they set this golf course up. Maybe I haven't been out there, so I don't know how exactly flat the greens are. But with where they at least put the flags, you rarely see anything any putts outside the hole, which is insane. It's a it's a golf course on a mountain.
It's crazy. I mean, everything seems makeable, right, Like you got golfers who aren't great putters, like Kadeki Matsuyama standing over fifteen footers that he's expecting to make at Kapalua.
It's just crazy. The thing that's crazy is those fifteen footers don't move.
Yeah, right, And this is all happening a softening while equipment's getting easier to hit right, like while the driver head is becoming more forgiving wild course management is evolving, like to be steering the other direction. Defies any kind of logic that the wind here and it not being windy. I just don't like that people can kind of use that as an excuse to distract from what is also actually happening in the with the rest of professional golf
and andy. Honestly, the course that I would compare this to that should be near and dear to everybody's hearts is Saint Andrew's, which has become completely defenseless and honestly a bad test of I think, a pretty bad test of professional golf.
Unless the wind blows.
There's no defense out there anymore, in in calm conditions and it's just point and shoot, shoot twenty five thirty under. I think if we had a Saint Andrews where there's no wind and there wasn't a ton at the last one, it would be alarming what golfers could do to it in twenty twenty five.
Yeah, I mean, and think about what that golf course has done to you know, like you the teas are on other golf courses, right, like they've done everything. And that's an example of a golf course with really interesting greens like right, you know, and very penal bunkers.
But if there's no wind, it won't matter.
Mm hmm, yeah, I would agree with that. What uh, what are so obviously explosion and scoring? Was there?
Like?
Was there a lead up to this? Is that, you know the obvious explosion was in twenty twenty one is when this scoring, you know, has really exploded. But was there any signs of this brewing in the numbers of under sixty five rounds leading into that?
I mean, you generally see I just picked a random number of sixty five. I could run this for you know, sixty eight and you'd see something similar. Generally speaking, you don't see a ton of them really until twenty twenty two. But COVID in twenty twenty, I think, is when a lot of these ideas took root across sports and across all the courses on the PGA tour. So you're gonna see just these massive explosions in scoring everywhere.
Like I know I've done that.
I've banged the drum on fifty nine, Like you're gonna see a bunch more fifty nines coming up. So you can look at Cappelua, you can look at WHYLEI this week. If there's not a lot of wind in while I like at the Sony, we're gonna get some ridiculously low score.
So to me, the warnings are all over the place, not necessarily with sixty fives or lower and the lead up to the green softening at Cappelua, but just in general in golf, I think you have to have your head stuck in the sand if you can't see that there's massive explosions in scoring when the wind doesn't blow.
Yeah, what uh? I mean, what would you do if you're a Cappaloua. What what do you think? Where do where does the golf of the PGA Tour go? What's the logical thing to do here out? You know? I think like we could talk about like the you know,
what's a realistic thing to do with the scoring? And then I think like we're probably in the same boat that the logical thing to do is like look at this, and this is just like marathonors that are running insane run times, or swimmers that we're using a swimsuit that also broke all the world records and their sport said no, no, no more of this, you know. But like golf, a tiny rollback that really is going to be inconsequential by the time it's done is coming in twenty twenty eight right,
twenty nine, twenty thirty, twenty twenty eight. So inconsequential rollback that'll set them to basically what they are today will happen in twenty twenty eight. But like, what are some smaller measures that the tour could do to maybe mitigate just the I think there's a pr issue with this.
Yeah, I mean Kapalua can't do this, but we clearly need to shrink the driver heads and every we've heard from a million voices that that's what needs to happen. Dodo Molinari said it on the pod. Rory said it, Tiger said it, like it's just so in your face and sensible that we got to do it, and that'll
introduce some more off center hits at Kapalua. People would find more penalty areas, especially when the wind is blowing, and you'd see a little bit of an increase in score if you couldn't hit it anywhere on the driver face. In terms of what you would change about the golf course, I mean, I'd love to see maybe some of the slopes reintroduced, but I wouldn't want to do much. I
would not start narrowing things. I would not start covering up areas of the fairway with rough I think one tweak that they should make that I've always maintained is that the center line bunker on number five should be shifted a little to the right because going right of it is very It shortens the whole and you're not taking on a lot of risks. So I think that center line bunker is not very strategic, so I would probably tweak that.
But outside that, that bunker infamously was deeper in it's original iteration, and tour officials got into the bunker and said, wait a second, this is uh, you can't get to the green from here in this bunker.
Insane?
Then and then it was it was it was shallowed so that players could hit from the bunker to the green.
Yeah. I do think that's a better hole if you shift that a little to the right, and it encourages players to go left of it and leave a long approach in or take on a little bit more risk and go right of It's like, that's a small alteration that I think would be a positive one. Other than that, I wouldn't want to go around changing too much of a golf course that was built very intelligently and that plays very well in the wind.
First of you know, arguably the greatest you know, living architect's career first at Core Crunchhaw Design. Yeah, you know, I think Tom Doak and Bill and Benner at the top of the mountain and and it's like, you know, like that's the tricky thing with this golf course is like you ideally want this to just be able to endure, but you know, the game's changed so much.
Yeah. Only the other part I'll call out that I don't know the answer to is are we getting a little unlucky with how the absence of wind over the.
Past four years? Softness too? It was so soft?
Sure, but is it abnormally soft in a lack of wind? Or like, what should you expect on January fifth in that specific part of the country. Like, I don't know the answer to that. But even if you determined that the best date to have this is a month later, like, I don't think that works particularly well for the PGA tour schedule, So I'm not sure you'd take a lot
of action there. But I do think in general, the lesson should be for professional golf that if you have a golf course where the only defense is wind, Like you better be prioritizing putting that on the calendar at a time of year when there's reliable wind. So don't know if if we just got a little unlucky the last forty years, but if it's windy in twenty twenty six, legitimate wind, you're not gonna see thirty five under Like it'll have some teeth.
If you removed all the par fives and made them part four, as the winning score would have been fifteen under, let's not do that.
That's that's just a band aid.
I just well, here's I have like a you know, I guess like one of my my my questions is like do par fives even exist anymore?
Not really? I mean thirteen Augusta people complained because only like fifty percent of the guys could go four and two after they lengthened it.
Mean, there's there's a handful, Like I think, like fourteen at Pebble is one. You know, it's a shot of that stands out. And the last ten years was Gary Woodland getting home in two and during the final round of the US Open, because it was such a rare feat to get home in two. That's what a par five is what.
Does pebble have? What is what does pebble have? Cold air and wind that changes how far the golf ball flies. So yes, that's a huge part of it. There aren't give me a warm golf course where there's not a lot of wind that you you can think of a true part five.
I think so. I think one of the things that's happened that's permeated with with the PGA Tour is that they they've looked at other sports leagues and they see the that scoring is good for business. The NFL, the
NBA dumb. But what they what they and the way they've gone about making scoring good for businesses equipment, So giving players better equipment, let's just that, you know, there's there's obviously been like receiver gloves in football that people will point to that have made catching a football easier, you know, but like the general idea of like equipment making it easier is is that's not going to happen
in any other sport. The other way that they've done this is with week to week, week in, week out, predictable conditions and and and course setup and course golf course architecture, like dumbing down stuff and what they're doing. Then, Like, I don't think anybody would find the NFL product more more interesting if they said, hey, guys, we know you like scoring. We know you love when your fantasy football
players go off. So this year, so the tour is neutering golf courses in design with their weekend week out setups and decisions around venues and what they need to have. I think that the best comp would be if the NFL said, we want to produce higher scoring games. Defense, you have to play a set coverage. You're only allowed to play cover two, and we're going to take one player off the field, so you get players. The offense gets eleven players because the quarterback is man on man.
You know, the quarterback doesn't count, and they set up the game that way. That's what it feels like the Tour does from a week in week out. What they don't seem to understand is that the interest the friction in other sports is the defense. The fact that the defense can present unique challenges, the fact that the defense can adapt, the fact that the defense can game plan. The PGA Tour setup crew should be acting like a
defensive coordinator in football. They should be looking at the players looking at the field, looking at what happened the year before, and devising a unique way to set up the golf course to produce, to try to thwart the way that the golfers have game planned to take down a golf course. And to me, this is the issue with the tours. They don't understand that the key to the sport is the friction, because why everybody loves sports is that friction, the dynamics of watching somebody do something
that you think is impossible. And the issue the thing that golf is the hallway that the PGA Tour is walking golf down is that this is not hard. These guys are so good. This is just you know, a
shooting gallery. The issue is they are walking themselves into bowl closer to bowling and darts and further away from sports like football, baseball, basketball, hockey, you know sports where there is a real dynamic, a back and forth between defense which is the golf course in the setup in golf, and offense, which is the players.
I'm really glad you went here, Andy One. I think they would argue that they do that, and that's what they did at TBC River Highlands, where they looked at the data and decided to cover up certain parts of the fairway with rough and I would push back very hard on that that they have a fundamental misunderstanding of what tests professional golfers and that removing options and just making them play into one reducing the surface area that's
playable to short grass, is not actually creating a better test. The other point that I feel like I have to make is that I want to throw the challenge flag on this notion that sports fans like more scoring.
I think it's a.
Misguided, stupid idea. And if you were to survey somebody and say, hey, would you prefer more scoring or less scoring, They're probably going to vote and say more scoring. But if the way you got to more scoring was with less defense, like you are saying, they wouldn't want that.
It's just that these reductionist arguments argue that they want more scoring, and I think you are seeing now in the NBA a sort of backlash and an outcry from fans that the homogenized high scoring stop that they're playing right now in the NBA is not interesting. And I think it's a very good analogy for what's happening in professional golf, and a good point that, hey, you know what,
scoring doesn't always result in more fan interest. If everyone's playing the same style and everyone's shooting threes and has these rangy perimeter defenders and we're all building our personnel the same way, and all the teams start to play the same style. Just like in golf, how you're seeing a lot of stock fades with huge driver heads and wedges to twelve feet. People don't really want that.
People want tension, and that is the key to compelling sports. That's the dynamism. Yes, you you know, like that feeling that anything can happen. And the more that pro golf becomes driver wedge, the less inherent tension there is because the outcomes of a wedge from whether it's fairway or rough, the number of outcomes that can happen from a wedge is so small. It is like twenty five feet or two feet, you know, like that's kind of the range. It's the ball either, yeah, the ball doesn't roll.
Soles don't matter nearly as much.
I mean, I if I was gonna like think about and it's hard, it's hard with set up a grand stands and everything, But if I was if the PGA Tour said, hey, you can. You can have one tournament where you set up everything. This is this would never happen, right ever, you can set up everything. You can be in charge with the venue. I would create like a lot of variable grass heights all over the place, like really like almost random, but thought out, where like certain
places roughs are shorter, certain places roughs are longer. There's in between roughs like very variable in.
The pine a little pinehursty.
Yeah, but like you know, like on a on a three hundred and fifty yard part four, the rough from fifty yards in might be like a foot long on one hole, I'm shot, But then on the next hole that's around that same yardage, it might be you know, like I want to just get people thinking, I want to get them on their heels. The other thing that I would do a lot of I would change And we saw this at Chambers Bay and they went nuts. I would change pars of holes day to day and
day out, and change tea boxes radically. And this is the hard thing with grandstands and stuff. But let's be real, like so of these smaller like Century doesn't have grandstand requirements. Nobody's there, there are no fans, so like I would have, like all of a sudden, like one day we might play the longest part four from the forward t and just create a situation where they like they need to understand, like they have all these guys know where the tea
boxes are going to be. That's like saying, Hey, Tom Brady, we're going to run We'll just use a modern Patrick Mahomes. We're going to run a cover two with a spylinebacker, and we're not going to disguise anything all game long. Like these guys have all built their strategies, make them at least build a strategy on every tea box on the golf course. Don't tell them where they're going to be, you know, make them understand like how to play from everywhere.
And this is the way I would start to think about like these the setup crew of the PGA Tour should not be there to hold the player's hands and coddle them and create a Marriott like experience where we can wet. It's the same thing, right, Like I know, I'm checking into my room and I know what to expect.
I've got my bottle of water here, I got my king bad and I got my desk, you know, what I want those guys to do is I want it to be you know, the the Bill Belichick scheming all week on how he's going to get in Peyton Manning's kitchen, and it would be really cool to you know, you talked about like value adds of of like how you
can make fans get more into it. You have these setup guys come on in on Sunday and be like, here's what we were thinking this week, and this is the game plan we just devise to try and thwart these guys. This is what you're gonna see today. And this was why we moved this here and this here was like it brings this bunker into play, this little this rough area with this pin. It might you might think you want to push it up, but if you push it up with this pin, it's gonna be a
really hard pitch shot. You might want to lay back. Like that is what people want out of a sport. They want complexity, to dive in and really understand it. If if modern media of sports like that is why people like podcasts, That's why people listen to these football podcasts that get into like the x's and o's and you know, like Nate TICE is like a fascinating football podcast.
He's talking about coverages. I don't know what he's talking about, really, but I appreciate the complexity of the sport, and the PGA Tour is just dumbing it down every chance they can get.
Unfortunately, I think they would argue they have those people and that's what they're doing, and they're sitting there on Sunday saying, here's the game plan for the next four to eight Thursday, the next tournament. But I don't think they have an inherent understanding of what actually tests professional golfers. I don't think they have the courage to test golfers provocatively.
And.
They're just trying to not upset anybody every week.
They want the morning to play like the afternoon on Thursday and Friday. Like there's so many of these considerations that tame the golf course. And to kind of bring this full circle, like I know this isn't a TGL pod, but this is kind of the appeal of TGL, Like you don't have the constraints, You get to set the conditions however you want, and you can have an eight hundred yard par four like it doesn't matter because you don't actually have to have the land and find a
venue to host. So I really like this conversation because Kapaalua just hits on all of these different things, and it's gonna come to a boiling point every year at this venue when there's not a lot of wind.
I think this could be a theme of the year. Is this exact conversation a week in week out. They might do something like Riviera if it's wet and calm, without whether it could be something, you know, some record scoring and I think this is just going to be
a nail. And I think like we're starting to see people say, you know what, like for for twenty years, it's just been like these guys are better and better, They're better and better, and I think we've reached a point where where fans are starting to say they aren't better. This is you've just devalued the sport. And I think that's where we're at. It was an interesting first week.
I love Kapalua, and I just, you know, I hope that there there begins to be an awakening that that defense matters in pro golf and it can't that Bertie Bonanzas are not the best way forward because what you're doing is you're really limiting the number of shots and the amazing things that these players can do. And you're you're you know, they want to build superstars, and and this is the way you build superstars is by having more compelling tests.
Oh and by the way, the four tournaments that prioritize defense are also the most popular.
I don't know if the PGA is one of those four, but that's kind of got a little a little better. But that's yeah, yeah, So all right, Joseph, we get see all of your work the wildly popular design Disasters, the Fridagg newsletter and on the Fridagg website. Thank you for coming on, Thanks for having me. All right, big thanks to Joseph for hopping on. Let's get over to our architecture segment of this podcast and our guest jaeger Kovich. But first let's talk about our friend at Club Champion.
We are thrilled to have them back in twenty twenty five. I've been going to Club Champions since probably about two thousand. It's probably been about twenty five years of my life. They started in Chicago, where I was a high school golfer. When I first visited there, I remember, I think I got the set I got they built for me, the first set they built for me. I believe we're the ping I three pluses or the ping I threes for those equipment junkies. A trip down memory lane, I'll never
forget I had. I think they were. I think I got rifle shafts in them, and that was a big deal for a kid back then. They now have grown from just a little one man band to a massive, massive company. They have a ton of stores all over the country. Really, if you're in any sort of major metro, they have a studio where you can go get fit
by one of their highly trained master fitters. They have an in house university where every fitter goes through an education and comes out really really technically sound on how to fit clubs. My favorite thing about their stores is they have all the brands, every brand, and every type of shaft, so you know that you are going to get the clubs that are best for you. It is not like so many times I've gone into one of their studios with an idea of what I'm gonna get
and I walk out with something different. Because the numbers don't lie. So if you're interested in getting a new setup for twenty twenty five. Go to club Champion dot com slash Frida Egg and use the code fried Egg no spaces. That's Frida Egg. So club champion dot com slash Frida Egg and you get a free driver or iron fitting with a club purchase. So if you use that code and you can get a free fitting uh
with a purchase of a club. So check that out and thanks to the Club Champion for their ongoing support. All Right, Jaeger, Welcome on the pod. Frequent guest. We've had a couple episodes with you over the years and excited to have you on. At the start of twenty twenty five, I wanted to do a little golf course architecture check in from an active, practicing golf course architect and really see what ideas topics are rumbling around your
head for twenty twenty five and beyond. But first I got to ask, dude, are there what are like New Year's resolutions? Like as a golf course architect, are there professional resolutions? And what are they? Are they? Mostly? If I had to guess, they're mostly centered around getting plans turned around, not at the last minute.
I wouldn't define that as a you know, resolution as much as just like everyday anxiety. You know, this year, in all honesty, I did not make a resolution. I have been years past, you know what have they been? Probably less like super work related. You know. One of them was trying to shoot in the seventies at least five times a year, and I did. I did achieve it that year. You know, I kind of started like
mid year sort of change in my life. I guess, doing a lot more working out, trying to I took my first lesson golf lesson in twenty years this summer. So I feel like I tried this like switch in my life, mostly because my three year old can basically outrun me and beat me up and trying to keep up with him, but also just like you know, the daily grind of being in the doser, in the excavator, constantly walking. I still drive the mini Clubman you made
me famous for many many years ago. Folding myself into that honestly is now hurting, Yeah exactly, it is now quite frankly just like starting to wear on my back Between all of these So, you know, I kind of got on this routine more in the midsummer. So I'm really just trying to keep on the pace I've been
in and not fall behind. And then I feel like, you know, you know, we're like three to five months like ahead of the curve here with all these resolution people that are just showing up to the gym like we're we've already been there, we know the routine. So that it's that's kind of that's kind of where my head's at right now for a lot of stuff. But maybe that maybe the Mini Cooper is not that long for the world. I'm it's it's tough.
The key, the key to the gym stuff, I believe is you got to get in early. You've got to start your New Year's gym routine in November. You got to beat people in there at the minimum and and then feel like you're regular by the time January hits. Otherwise you got no hope.
Yeah, I yeah, totally agree.
I think we're Is the excavator hard on your body, like I imagine, does it like move around a lot like jolts and stuff.
You kind of like watching if you're watching, you can see I do a lot of rocking. So the machine does a lot of like the buckets going down and even if you have like a blade on the front where you can stabilize yourself, you end up doing this a lot. So it's really hard to like maintain like good posture in there. And then the dozer can be you know, the smoother you are, the smoother and easier ride it's going to be. But you're backing up and you pop up, you know, run over a rock like
you absolutely feel it. So you know this year, we're going up to Rocky, Connecticut in the middle.
Of the year.
Uh, so we're going to be prepared for uh, we want to make sure we can last for not just this year, but you know the long term, right, I expected be in these machines for you know, a good you know, thirty plus years more. I guess you know probably uh, you know, everybody's you know to go retire these days, right, so you know you never retire, correct? You know, Gil still in that machine too. I don't know how he's been able to, uh, you know, do that.
But I'm starting to think a little bit room your car might also be. So maybe that that folds into your resolution.
Well, Tom's saying he is going to retire, He's going to buck the trend.
I guess we'll see, we will see, we will.
See how much different, how much harder do you feel it when you're working in rock and Connecticut versus sand on Long Island. Is like there is a noticeable different day and day out.
Yeah. So last summer we did about a month long project at Old Sandwich and just this absolute sugar sand. It wasn't even like slightly rocky. It was like pure sand because they had dumped feet and feet and feet and feet just to fill this area many years ago before we even got there. Of like screen sand. Its just like so smooth, it's so much quicker. It's you know, there's other it washes away, it shifts a little bit more.
You had to do some other things, but yeah, it was it was a big delight versus where where we're heading out later this year.
All right, Jaeger, what let's just do a little quick twenty four and twenty five look ahead. What was your the golf course that you saw in twenty four that you maybe think about the most or had the biggest impact on you? And then in twenty five, what's one course you really want to.
Yeah, well I had a pretty good twenty twenty four golfing wise, I finally got to make a bit of a trip of a lifetime, a bit of a delayed honeymoon. I spent two weeks in Australia and New Zealand in March and February. My design associate Nick Mills got married at Kingston Heath. We even helped to play on the morning of his wedding, which it was pretty cool. I don't think even missus proper golf wouldn't have allowed that.
But so with that trip, there are two golf courses that I think about all the time, and that's Royal Melbourne West you know when probably the composite when, because I was able to play both and just thinking about the mashup of the two of them. And then Tara d in New Zealand there you know, the two without a doubt dope tens that I played this year and there I Everybody always asks me what my favorite golf course in the world is, and I used to give
an answer of three. I've had to expand my answer beyond three.
At this point, is it five? Now?
I kind of I kind of say it's five and then I mumble six, What's what is it? Well? Those two Pine Valley National Golf Links, uh Bally, New North, Barrick West. Those are the six I mentioned.
That's good. What so if you were going to distill down like one thing about Royal Melbourne that you really you know that that really stands out one thing about Terry e D. What are those things?
I mean, they're very different. The the entire day at Terry e D. It's exceptional. It's a bit of a lower key vibe. There's you're probably not going to see as many people. It's you know, I think to a degree, as natural as Royal Melburn is is on a whole other level. With that and the beauty the golf holes are exceptional. I think it really starts to you know, it builds nicely. The turf is unbelievable. It's basically just
a beautiful sea of continuous short grass rescues. It's it's just it's just a magical day in every way, shape or form. You know. Royal Melbourne is bit of a different It's obviously a much harder golf course. It's, you know, probably the greatest championship golf course in the world. I think I have not played Oakmont, I've only walked it. But I think given the amount of fine turf uh there, the firmness, the more natural beauty and things.
I just.
I just there is such an incredible diversity to the holes, the strategies. I just I walked it in the morning, I kind of charted my way through it, and then I went out there in the afternoon and I really tried to like execute on my plan and it was really unbelievable. You know, it helps when you occasionally as are able to do that and execute even at my level. And you know, the people in Australia and Melbourne I
met were beyond friendly. They were super kind. They really wanted to share their golf course with you and ask you about each and everything after are you playing here? Like it's it's again, It's just like remarkable in like every single way. You know, there's without you know, I just can't wait to plan my next trip down there to wealth of these places.
It's what you said about Royal Melbourne. It was so evident. The first hole of the President's Cup of like that idea of like charting your way around where the America that first hole of the composite course, the Americans were
trying to hit it up close to the green. Yeah, and the the Internationals were all laying back and it was like a bloodbath the first all like the Americans were playing American golf, just blasted up by the green and the and the Internationals laid back and it was like it was the Internationals just smoked them, like they understood they respected the golf course.
So and I watching that and watching where people were hitting it, like ow one hundred percent helped me on that hole, among others. You know. I walked you know,
the course in the morning. I saw there was a way back left pin onto which is a part five, and I'm like, oh man, I'm going to go this far right as right can get on the with the mash in a three wood up there that you know I can't get there, but just get the angle and like if you're able to do that and come it just like all of a sudden, I just got zoned in and there's that's a place that you know, the It has some very heavily contourt greens, but I would
say it's certainly known for firmness, speed kind of everything. But it still is able. The Mackenzie's green complexes still are able to have tons of whole locations available for use. You know, it's not like you get the speeds going and you have one or two hole locations. You still have a huge variety with them, like throughout, even if it's there's maybe one or two that you know, probably a little tighter than the others, but in general, you know, it just it works so well at when you dial
it up, it just is magic. You know. I wish, I just hope one day I'm able to play the composite and I probably need to be either a member or where they get to do it like once or twice a year, or I have to somehow qualify for a tournament, which is never going to happen.
So you are maybe a media member before a Peak Cup. Maybe well transitioned to media.
You know. I know architects never retire, but there's like a twenty five wait list year waitlist to you know, Royal Melbourne. And I was like, you know, I was thinking about it really really really hard when I got do we just you know, kid'll be in college. Do we just try to be like instead of going to Florida or something like that, you know, there go there in the winner, hanging out with Nick play some you know, amazing golf. There is like.
Still very tempting this you you, those are two of the places I most want to get to. And uh and I'm I feel like I'm running out of time on this year already we get there? What twenty five? What's what's the one course you'd love to see a twenty five that you haven't seen yet?
Uh?
Realistic or non realistic?
Wherever you want to get nonrealistic is better.
Non realistic at this point, probably for different reasons. I'll name too barn Google. You know, I really wish I somehow could have found an entire extra week and gone and done a trip to Tazzi and seen some more stuff. But Barn Google would have been the absolute number one of those Australian courses New Zealand Corps. I didn't get
to see that I'd really like to see. I think it's got the you know, it's the Bali Neils down on your cousin and I'd really like to check that out one day, and I hope it's not too long. And then I guess maybe the second one, partially because I have walked in haven't played it, because of you know, just everything I would I would like to see Oakmont and play Oakmont. Probably be a tougher year with the open there, it's gonna be probably be a little restricted
to uh, you know, people like me. But I think that you know, that's that's one of the very best golf courses that is incredibly unique that I have not got to play. I was able to see. I got a lot, a lot of boxes checked last year.
So it might be a down year, that's what you're assuming to be hunting at.
Well, I don't know, man, I mean, I I still am very, very determined to at least see a minimum of fifty different golf courses a year. It's going to be very difficult with the work schedule, which gets bigger by the day, with our projects that you know, it's gonna be bigger than ever this year. But I've I've seen fifty for the last there's maybe been two years in the last decade, or I haven't seen fifty in
some years it's been more. So I'm gonna push for That's just a regular that's not a resolution, that's just a normal life.
That's it. I would love to be at that number two.
It's I do you count them?
Do you track your account? Yeah, I don't know if I hit fifty last year, I probably was around forty something. It's hard. It's hard to hit. I always had a lot of time on the road, it is.
But you know I can the area here. It's easier, right, I mean, it's a little bit easier in the if you want to stick it to the northeast. I could probably force my way there if I wanted to.
Let's get to your your things real quick. So what's the b the first burning thing on your list?
I mean, I don't think you could go any cost has to be the first one. And the price of projects, the price of materials, the price of golf, and you know what the cost of all of these things has been doing over the years in relation to projects, in relation to clubs and memberships and how things are being funded,
and you know how busy things are. It's just there's so many different ways you can look and dive into the cost discussion here, you know, So like even you know, there's there's, like I said, you know, you have material costs, but like you know, they just keep going up. There's lots of trucking costs and things related to this there's sand, there's materials, there's all these things, and it keeps you know, you haven't seen any real reduced demand. There's definitely been
more and more I think, tightening to a degree. But yeah, at the same time, there's another club seemingly behind next in line that almost wants to do more and more, even faster than some of you know. So it's crazy and it makes you think about how long this will continue.
It.
You know, it definitely is having an effect on the memberships and clubs looking to do projects. You know, it's like everybody's still in this. You have a wait list, you have a busier t sheet than ever so in my area right I'm in New jer I work in New Jersey, New York, Philly, Massachusetts, like generally throughout the region here, and you know, these clubs have witless and like there's not like another cheaper, easier place to go
down the street. It's like another option if you don't want to buy into the things, so you see less junior memberships. It's just it's wild. You know, we could get into you know, break down more of the construction costs and you start thinking about different ways to reduce things. It's just it's you wonder how long it's all gonna last like this, but you know, some people tell you the next four years are going to be even better. It's hard to say, you know, I don't know.
And I mean, that's that's the thing, right, It's got to be hard to be in your position too. You you create these proposals where you're saying, this is what it's going to cost, and then for the most part, a lot of these projects happen twelve months, eighteen months, twenty four months later, and you've been dealing with a extraordinarily, you know, rapidly increasing cost basis for everything. So have you noticed that, like just figuring out like a way to bid a project, like a way to price it.
Has that been a challenge? I think.
A handful of years ago, and certainly at the start of twenty twenty and probably going and shifting into twenty twenty two, it was dramatically changing. I think at this point, in all honesty, it's much more predictable. I work with a handful of golf contractors in the area pretty much, so we're pretty we're always doing projects in different places, and these are longer term clients. A lot of them so you can kind of you know what you did last year, we know what we're going to do the
next year. We know that there's going to be some increase of you know, moderate percentage for the most part. And but you know, I think a lot of the materials are generally starting the level off, but there's certainly nuanced. And the thing is like where I am in the East Coast, everybody's buying sands from two or three sources. Or Pennsylvania, you're always doing this, do you buy the
Ohio sands? There's two sands from Ohio that like I would say fifty percent of my clients are deciding two pro angle and what's called or was called the best nine hot, yeah, which was the nine hundred or something. And then you have another plant in Philadelphia which was like the go to sand for everybody for like I would say, a good five years leading into COVID, and then COVID sort of changed some stuff with that plant and now people are a little weary of it.
Is that so like?
But it's a little bit cheaper. It just like everybody's making some decisions based on risk, on price, on what they played at the other place. And then you've got obviously the liners. So like for example, right now that pro angle sand, why I have to purchase it for we have to purchase it for a club this spring in March, and you know it's one hundred and sixty dollars a ton, but know, yeah, I mean if.
You fact, like it was like eighty a couple of years ago.
Right, so when we did like you know, twenty sixteen, when we did all the ironomy, it might have been sixty four, Like you might be going from sixty four to that much. And a lot of it is you have trucking, you have labor, you have fuel, you have like all of these things. And then there's certainly seems like there's a golf tax. And then you know, some of these things aren't like always the like number one priority for some of these plants that like create these
materials like the liners. Right you know, say capillary concrete, for example, is like a liner that everybody's heard of on the East Coast for sure, but like you know, concrete plants aren't in business to make capillary concrete. Like it's a micro percentage and like they've got to change a bunch of stuff to do it. And when you've got building work at all time high and roads and
everything else at all times. You know, it just goes up and up, and it just there's so many different factors, like you can get into the nuance like that, but I definitely think there's you know, golf tax, there's everything, There's inflation, there's just it never seems I would say in general, it's somewhat leveling off. You know, I do,
and I've learned since twenty twenty. And the higher the total numbers get, I feel like the much greater detail you need to get into in terms of budgeting, in terms of how you're measuring things, how you're calculating things, how you're tracking things, predicting things like because when the numbers are two to three what they were ten years ago, and the numbers are so high, people get much more nervous and you need to like how did it get
that high? Like how? And so I need to be able to, you know, kind of prove where each little piece of the puzzle is going to. And that's how we're able to. You know, I have a really good track record at being on or a little bit under budget, you know, because of that and really trying to work with concert and clubs to fine tune it because it's it's very difficult, and it's the thing I worry the most about building bunkers, shaping bunkers, coming up with those ideas,
Like I'm not very worried about that anymore. I'm not even worried about presenting, which is I hate public but you know, don't. That's not my favorite thing either, is speaking in front of large audience. But it's the budgeting and the fear of having to ask for more is the thing that keeps me up at night the most.
It's you know, sand is like just a fascinating topic because the sand that everybody's buying is like the least hazardous sand in the world. M it is the bright white sand that the ball like everybody loves it. Every golfer loves it because they get in to it and the ball just magically pops out.
Like it is the easy you have if you have good club head speed and you can you know how to hit a bunker shot, You're going to produce more spin and control it out of these perfect lies because it's not going to plug with the liner and the roller faces and the high flash sand Like we can make it come to the bottom like every time.
But now it's what do you think about it?
Funny because like I heard you talking about the Kapelua thing the other day and I was like thinking about the reduce, was like, well, what if you just let me let me just beach sand and make the hazards matter.
So the Kapalua this was on the shotgun start, So I just want to put this out here on this pod. Capala is one of the few PGA Tour venues that uses non standardized sand, so they use the same sand at basically every tour stop. If you go to a TPC course, they have the same sand. There's another The goal of PGA tour set up really week in week out is they want it to be like a Marriott where the players check in and everything's the same. They know exactly what to expect, which, like as a golf fan,
is probably the complete opposite of what you want. So you know, this maybe the start of the product problem. But Kapalua is historically the hardest place when you're in a bunker, and it is one of the few courses that doesn't have that standardized sand. The sand you're talking about from Ohio or Pennsylvania. Is that type of standardized sand that is the sand that PGA tour players love. You know, if you remember back.
Super tested for the ideal firmness, the least amount of washing, like this is it. It's a dream. You know, if you had the amount of rain you had in in our area at points last year and it washed all the time, you would quit your job, if you worked on the maintenance staff, and you would never want to
fix bunkers ever again for your life. So it makes all the sense in the world for every club to be pushing out because it's harder and harder and harder to find people that want to do it or the clubs that should be paying labor hours to do it. And then you have the exact It does the exact opposite. You know that it has this playability factor which is different.
So you know, the sand's very expensive and it erodes the actual point of a hazard. It erods the point of a bunker. It makes it extraordinarily easy to play out of. It makes it reduces the impact that a bunker has. I think, like a great example, have you been to Sand Valley not yet? Bandon would be a great example. Too, when you you know, Bandon just has like the native sand. It's just like beach sand. What were you just brought up? So it has just beach sand.
And I think, like something, if I'm playing I'm just gonna say, if I'm playing wingfoot, yep, if I'm at Bandon, I'm exponentially more terrified of bunkers than if I'm at wingfoot because of the sand profile. I know, at Wingfoot I'm going to be able to hit a high lofted spinny shot out of a bunker and it's probably not
going to plug. At Bandon, I am terrified of it plugging sometimes, Like I don't have I don't have the capability of like having like six sets of wedges like pros, but like I have to go down to like I need a little more bounce out of the out of the bunkers when the sand gets heavier, so I go down to fifty six. It reduces the ability for me to get up. It makes short sight and misses more penalizing.
But anyways, like, yeah, I guess I'm a member at a club that is exactly bally Isle right correct, totally natural sand. It's just what's there, And you know, I know that like a lot of my personal preferences of what like you know, the places, you know, I call it my happy place over there. You know, it's just like I love it more than anything.
But that is not.
Not what the desires and the intention of almost not all, but most of my clients are like we used at Old Sandwich this summer as an example. I mean they've been mining sand on site there. We didn't buy any materials. They screened from a pit themselves. We used it for mix. We didn't need to do like you know, and that was a place where we could get away with that.
We do some much roughly roughly what percentage savings does a project like that have, Like if you could, like so you did it, I'll show you.
Yeah, well I think better if you have we'll just we'll say a ten million dollar renovation generally speaking, you're about fifty to fifty materials to labor, okay, or within the forty to sixty realm.
So I think that's that's a very big cost.
Sure, you know, so is sod and grassing, and there's lots of nuances to it. Like we could go forever on those things. But we'll say your bog standard Northeast renovation. It's in the fifty to fifty materials labor forty sixty kind of thing. So the more you know, if you don't have to buy greens mix or bunker sand, you know, like I just mentioned, for an eighteen hole renovation out of time, at the cost of sands. Currently you're probably
figuring five hundred thousand dollars line item going to sand. Wow, that's just to buy it, not to put it in, not to reshape it, not to do the drainage, not to do the liner, just to buy the sand.
I think if you think about where one of the ways that golf in America, I think like using the term where I want to preface this. I don't think like lost its way is necessarily the right term, but it's certainly a term you think of. Here is the idea of what you are entitled to in a bunker if we were you know, if there's a rain event and bunkers are washed out, but we will get to them when we get to them. Like I had this
takeaway actually from Pine Valley. I don't know if I've ever played like a super high end, super well regarded course with more inconsistent bunkers than Pine Valley, and you know what it was, It's demanding. It is like a true test of skill, Like you get in the bunker and you have to figure out, like what's this lie and what is it going to do? And the better, the more knowledgeable, the better player and the better bunker player, the more shots you have out of the bunker is
absolutely rewarded. It is. It is like it's actually like something like I you know, everybody talks. Is the biggest thing I took away from Pine Valley was like, you know, people go to these places and they want to mimic the Green Speed, But here's like what a lot of people think is the greatest course in the world. Why
don't people ever mimic the bunkers there? Because I guarantee the bunker maintenance expense is pretty low there in you know, they have a lot of but like in comparison to most clubs and it's arena, I would guess it's in the low end of bunker maintenance.
I'm not certain there's a lot of hand labor that has to go into it because the amount of them and the plant varieties and things, so there's probably more I mean, Hin Valley is not known for a low maintenance budget, but you know before but but you know who is It has that exact same variability in bunkers and it's suggest a general region and it's due to probably the greatest material for golf courses on planet Earth. And that's the Melbourne sand Bell I took. You know,
Garrett just came back. I took my first trip there in February March, and you know, Nick Mills, who works for me, is from there. And you know, you had the greatest variety of life. Sometimes it was hard packed and it could change in this corner of the bunker to that corner of the bunker, this course, that course, one side of the green, and the other different parts of the property. You know, you will occasionally get a plug lie in the face. But there's all sorts of
different amounts of sand in these things. They're they're extremely variable. I found it a much much different shot than I would. You know, I'm a pretty good bunker player at home. That's that's like, you know, that's probably the best part of my game. And I really struggled there. And you know, Melbourne sand Belt certainly known for the bunker and they're really known for that magical you know, black sand kind
of stuff that just compacts and it's just gold. But you know, I think part of you know, what makes you know, probably Royal Melbourne one of the great you know, probably maybe the greatest championship course some the world, is stuff like that, and it makes those courses, you know, makes the hazards matter in a in a different way.
And I think that you know, as we started this segment with like the cost thing, like how do we how do we figure out how to you know, reduce the cost of bunkers is definitely the most expensive part of Northeast maintenance. Right.
It seems like just in general, the every every club and every maintenance team and like this is you know, this is what the club ass and that's what you know, like a superintendent does is like the you know, and I think like the practice, like you know, doctors try and make surgeries more efficient and more successful, like the success right right, Superintendents like are trying to make conditions more consistent and more and better yea, you know, more
optimal year over year. I think like one of the things that's that's happened, especially like I noticed it from when I was a kid, especially like and you see it at like the municipal level, like municipal golf maintenance.
The level of maintenance at municipal courses today is world's better than twenty years ago, like war leaps and bounds, Like I don't see the spongy greens that I grew up playing where a wedge would bounce like twelve feet in there, but the green was super soft because it's just all thatch, right, Like those those days are kind of like a way like gone. But like one of the things that's happened is that this like strive for perfection across the property has just created this insane cost
basis for the sport. And that like that to me is like if and I wanted to ask this question, if you were going to attempt to do a project as cheap as possible and run a affordable, really good, let's just call it a doke six golf course, how would you what would be the things that you would stress and an attempt to do in order to in order if you even thought you could the realm of possibility of having sub one hundred and fifty a dollar golf and a really good golf course in a you
know at this point in time that had to do a big project.
I mean, if you have to get it to that number, I think probably the key is you have to build it yourself, right, like you have to take a little bit longer, You have to almost field it with your maintenance team, and while a lot less on on the outside labor and you know, the more and then if you have to certainly if you have to purchase materials for that project, right, if it's not blessed with sand, then you have to reduce the labor portion. And then
you have to do it kind of yourself. And you can do some things to cut out the materials that you're unwilling to spend. So do you decide to do significantly less spunkers that would probably be truly on the table. The more short grass you do, the higher you know you're going to have to maintain that at a certain
standard going forward. You know, I think there's a lot of options you come to, the size of greens certainly matters, especially if you're purchasing mix, but those add more and more locations at you know, faster and faster highly desired speeds. If you're looking to do a public course or whatever and make a bunch of you're gonna need big enough greens where you can have you know, forty thousand rounds a year or whatever on it and have six different holocags.
So you need really big greens at the speech that you want. And that's something that like you know, probably is somewhere else down on my list here of things. But like you're gonna have to make some decisions like site based. But I guess the thing is you got to prioritize which materials matter the most and then which
for for that given sight. It could be a hilly property, it could like, you know, how can you use the land to not have to do as many bunkers to do things like that to create you know, use natural features to create strategy and hazards and that sort of thing.
But then I think again, you're gonna have to figure out probably how to do as much grasping on your own, how to do as much you know, shaping and just general construction and drainage on your own, because you know, you're always gonna have to like you need shaping equipment, you need people, you know, shape architects, you need irrigation you know, it's like you get to like greens mix and the method of how much drainage you're going to put under it, which mix you're going to buy, you know,
you're probably you know, time is going to relate to seating and sodding and how long do you need to take to get it to open and standards and varieties and things. And then you know if you saw and then you got to roll it out and that takes people and labor, money and dollars. So you're probably seeding and now you're saving a lot, but like it's not going to open as fast. You got to do more things.
So I mean you could go through everything, t specs, we use a lot of different things, like you know, it just you'd have to you'd have to do a lot. You'd have to do figure out how to build a team to do it a lot on your own, which is pretty rare. I guess uh.
It's fascic. It seems like seems like Greens is one area where you if you keep speeds down, it can save you considerable amount of money. But if you keep speeds down for the public golfer, they think they suck. Yeah, It's like it's almost like a double edged store, like there's a no win situation. Yeah, you know, and then your greens have to be bigger because you have less pen whole locations available with.
Slope correct Yeah, and you know, I I there's probably some places where you can do this. Obviously, it's something that you and many people have talked about for many years. But like if I was a superintendent at a highly regarded golf club in this area, like and you had maybe you were younger, had like you don't want to be known as the club with the slow greens, so like you're probably not going to get the next job, Like that's a little bit. You're going to have a
quick change. Someone's gonna be like, oh, these greens stink because the member maybe not get it. And then and then you're going to be packing up and looking for the next thing. I think it's very very difficult, and it takes certain like a real cultural buy in from a certain place to do that, and it's it's rare, and it's very difficult, and it's something that comes came up really pointedly in one of my master plan projects,
and it just keeps coming up. But you know, the you're going to see more and more and more Golden Age greens get rebuilt over the next few years, you know, without a doubt, for a variety of reasons, whether it's the speeds, whether it's the improved technology with GPS, total stations and the scanning and all that sort of stuff that we can do, you know. And then I think it's just continued pressure from you see this great club,
that great club. You know, there's how many of you know, there's a lot you know, everybody's you know, top restoration architect Like you see a lot of greens being rebuilt at those clubs, like the top end, and it trickles.
What's fascinating. And this is where I think that the powers that run pro golf and golf in general are have their head completely in the sand. Is around green speeds and the idea that a fast green is more challenging than a slow slope green is bananas. So and the other part of this podcast, Joseph and I talk about the record scoring at Kapalua. Do you know when scores under sixty I've exploded at Cappelua. Can you just venture to guess the year that these these record scoreres
just happened? To explode at Cappelua.
I would imagine it's the pro v one changeover right.
The year after Core and Crunshaw softened all eighteen greens.
There you go.
It turns out when when you don't have to, you know, when you take one factor out of putting slope, when you take one of the two factors their speed and their slope, and when you take one of the two factors out, putting gets a whole lot easier and players
shoot lower scores. Who would have guessed? But I don't understand how like the us GA, the PGA Tour, the PGA there, the RNA seems to be the only ones that understand that slope and interesting whole locations is far superior to smooth, fast and flat greens.
Yeah. I do believe that the bigger stroke putting stroke you have to take, that is a greater sign of skill. Right, the slower you have to take a bigger stroke versus just nudging it on the line. I do think that that proves who is a better putter. You know, there's more factors in the whole thing, right, the slope, the speed,
the lines. I totally agree, you know, by the same like I do I you know, I have a lot of fun playing some greens that are very very fast, you know, but I like a little bit of the balance between. You know, you're never going to see a twelve or thirteen at you know, BALI neil my home course, So I'll just continue to reference sentence my home It's easy versus you know. So I've played some of the courses I work at. One of them had the greens
rowing like way faster than even the US Open. It was the firmst fast I mean, we had look in New York this year. In New Jersey we had like sixty seventy days where it did not rain, It did not rain at all, like zero. It was crazy. And we had optimum temperatures once you get to October where you're not getting super hot at night, where the greens are cooling, and it if you wanted to have the fastest, firmest turf in like this was the greatest like combination
of all factors you could have had this fall. And so some places absolutely scent it and it was wild and I think, you know, I think when the conditions provide for it, I think it was pretty neat and you could see wish greens could still you know, uh, and courses could still handle it and still be fun to play. But man, like I can tell you there's plenty of them that you couldn't even get halfway there.
And then it becomes I have one place and it's I've never even changed the cup for a month, like if it's going to be like that, so you know, it's it's it's I think it can be seasonal for the most part is probably the wise way to think
about it. I think it's fun on occasion, but you know, I wouldn't want it have to, you know, manage it like every day like that if you were expected to produce just world record US Open speeds in sticky areas around here in the middle of summer, like you definitely sleep.
The other aspect of this is like we're chasing it seems like the whole industry is chasing homogeneous golf conditions, and to me, like the whole reason golf's appealing is that you never hit the same shots. You never hit one shots, never the same as the other ever in your life. Ever, because the winds are slightly different, they air slightly different, the turf is slightly different, no matter what even a shot off a tee, it will you'll
never hit the like. That's the beauty of golf. The beauty of golf courses is that they're all different and they all have unique settings.
Yep.
And I think there should be like if you if you wanted to get into like the ideals or how I view the game. You people can disagree with me about this, but like, every golf course should be its unique self. And if if you're a golf course because of slope and and you know, y greens, green cans struc it can accommodate no faster than ten, ye, then
that's you're unique. You're of a one of one. But as we as we continue to soften greens and spend, you know, spend the hundreds of thousands of dollars to soften greens just to then turn around and spend hundreds of more thousands of dollars to keep the greens faster and then rip away the uniqueness of said things like
this is idiotic in my mind. This is this is you're just chasing your tail around and you're just gonna continue to soften the greens and flatten the greens until we're just like you see this on the tour, the tour and professional golf resemble more is more and more resembling darts every day, and it would be such a shame if the recreational game in the in clubs that never are going to host a pro tournament continue to try and chase after what is happening at major championship
venues and professional golf venues.
I I just have so many different little things here there to kind of react to that. You know, when you play your modern equipment, right, it's a driver web show for you. Yeah, pretty much everywhere everywhere.
You know, I have to play, I have to play seven seven seventy.
The trajectory stuff in the way like on top of that, Like I don't really have that at my length, but you know, Nick co works for me does, like the desk guys do. It's interesting, but you know, uh, I think a lot of what you're talking about with the greens is correct. But I think in general, one thing I have really found through my work is and you're talking about clubs being true to their unique self. I think that's like the most important thing because not all
of my work also is restorative. Some of it is very much a renovation. And you know a lot of times you have unless all of a sudden you get hired and they want to do a project because something happened and the greens got smoked and they're just dead. Maybe chemicals spray this and that other thing. But like most of the time, you don't have three hundred, four hundred whatever it is. Members. They join a place because
they hate it and want to start over. They join a place a club, and every right, everybody loves their home club, no matter how good you or I might think it is. Everybody loves their home course. And you don't want to tell them it's the.
Why they spend one hundred thousand dollars to join, correct.
And then you got to spend this and so to Now I joined for this, and now I want to spend the same amount blowing it to spit like. That's very rare. And there's some cases where yes, that might that might be the thing. And we've seen, uh, you know some of that. And I do to a degree renovate with the pretty heavy buildozer Blade too. But you know, you have to figure out a way with the architecture, with the proposal, with the whole thing is to show a lot of times that like, I love you love
this golf course. I love a lot, a lot a lot of things about this golf course. I think we both agree. Is the reason why you know you're talking today is because we both agree there's things that can be better about it. But how do we find the way to kind of walk that balance? You know, it's an interesting thing at and it's different at every place, so you know, it's like most clubs also don't have eighteen greens that are as severe as like you described.
Maybe they have a handful or a couple or you want to just so then then you're like, how do you how are you matching the profiles of the greens? How are you creating consistent you know, you know you don't want you could have native stuff, you could have USGA, you could have this, that and the other thing, And then managing it becomes difficult and there's always a degree of hey, you know, I know this. You know the boys know, don't don't roll that one. We're better. Just
don't roll that one. We're gonna get a lot of phone calls if we roll that when we're put that pin there, when we do roll like if we're going to do then you can't do that. So, like there's a lot of that when you spend time and like we try to tweak it and you try to do things to make it play relatively like that. But yeah, there's lots of new in doing the specs of it and like create like how do you walk the line
of all this. It's very tricky and it's really unique to each each place, and you got to do a lot of listening and you got to do a lot of washing golf and a lot of spending time with the superintendents and the pros and you know, think about the cost and the culture and everything and try to come up with the best ideas for you know, three hundred and fifty people for the next thirty years.
Really, right, what's the next thing? We've talked about costs enough, what's the next thing?
Well, I mean, to be honest, we kind of dipped a lot of into I kind of had this you know, mini topics within the restoration renovation market and trends I see here, and I mean we've definitely ticked off a lot of these boxes with green speeds, with GPS, total stations, with hull locations and moving things, you know, having enough
you can move it around for the increased play. Every club has the detailed planning and stuff that kind of you know, you know, and how I guess if you want to like really shift, There's a few other things into that, but one thing a little bit different, and maybe it does factor into the cost and the demand
and just how my region and stuff works. What I've seen, like industry wide, I think a little bit or certainly in this country and definitely a bit internationally as well, is like the popularity we're gonna a Balie Neil member is talking, so take it with a grain of salt. The popularity of the new like remote destination clubs is wild to me. There are new golf clubs in the furthest remote places constantly seemingly opening right now. There will
most of them look incredible. There's you know, the guys I used to work for doing most of the work.
I know they're going to be great. But it's just really interesting to me to see how many of these there are, how many that are coming online, how many of these like how are they going to age over ten years, fifteen years, thirty years, you know, even more than that, you know, I think it's interesting, you know, I just we kind of mentioned, like I think there's certainly a market for cheaper urban golf because of how expensive the current urban golf isn't my area, you've seen
some more locations. South Carolina obviously seems to be a real hotbed over the last years. Florida, parts of Florida, not all of Florida, but parts are wild. But you know, there were times and the only reason I was able to get into you know, BALI new is because like they had, they had tough years for a stretch, they went through some really hard times. And then also one thing is like someone on the inside, it's really difficult to live at these places for long periods of time
and work. If you're an employee, it takes a special person to want to go to the middle of nowhere and raise a family ninety minutes from a Walmart, you know, at at minimum right, So like not, it's how are
you going to continue to find that many people? Quality superintendents, quality labor assistance, business people, food people like all of this for for decades And that's something that like, you know, I think about a little bit and I wonder when you know, you have not just these private clubs that are doing it at you know, like we talked about before, probably five x the cost that was, you know, ten
years ago. But you'll, you know, like you also have all the resorts they're doing it at these places, and you can just rent a bed and not be stuck to that bed for the next twenty years. And you could shop around and go to you know, this resort in Florida, this one in Wisconsin, this one in all over the place and do ten trips a you're to different places versus go to the same you know, three for the same one at that same initiation. So it's interesting, I think, and.
I think there's a lot to unpack here, and I think like something that doesn't hasn't really ever been talked about his is the history of destination golf in America, or just a history of destination golf really as an American and destination golf in America really was like you go to a resort with your wife and kids and you play golf, or you know, you go to a resort with your partner and you play golf and there's a spa and there's you know, dinner and everything, and
there's a couple. It's a couple's type thing that I almost want to say that like an entire entirely new like where you went on the just strictly golf trip was the UK. That was like the place where you went on the strictly golf trip, but there was still in the UK, there's still things for a non golfing partner to do. There's towns, there's restaurants, there's shopping. There was a whole new version of golf that was created with Bandon Dunes, and it was like, I have a
friend he told me this great story. He went to Bandon Dune's like the first year it opened or the second year it opened. His wife actually told me this story. His wife does not play golf and she was pregnant and he's like, it's a resort, there's can be stuff for you to do, and she found herself abandoned with nothing to do. It was because like that was the way destination golf worked. It was like, yeah, there's spa,
there's all these other activities, there's a pool, there's this. Yeah, and I think like what we're seeing with the like everybody's like how can this sustain? How can this sustain Banded Dunes and then Sand Valley and Cabot and all
these things they created. Banded Dunes really created a new version of golf in America, like the idea that you go somewhere just and it's just golf and it's very remote, you know, and maybe sand Hills had a piece of this too, but then this is now like it's the same thing with public golf, right, people go to a public golf course, and I think what what these destination clubs are is the people that have gone to Sand Valley, gone to Banded Dunes, and they they walk away and say, like,
I really like this. I you know, it would be cool if there was a more intimate experience and I and then I get this home course, right, the ease of booking, the all the conveniences. It's the same thing as a local country club to the municipal except you know, Bandon is still an out of the world and San Bailey is still an out of the world experience for anybody. But these private clubs are effectively, you know, the private version of the golf that Bandon created. I don't know,
that's just kind of my theory. As you we're talking, Yeah, I guess. I think the other things that we that has to be has to be talked about is like the economic factors of the last four to five years and the economy. The extraordinary wealth that was created by the upper class during COVID is another aspect of this.
Yeah, I think because people it's easier to fund these things more than ever. Right. I think what I'm interested is is now that they're all funded and they're all popping up, and I don't know how successful some of the membership sales have been. There's certainly some that are thriving.
I don't know how all of them. I don't know how much it matters to some of the guys that are funding it, quite frankly, and that's their thing, Like, Oh, I'm really most interested in twenty years from now, ten, fifteen, thirty, Like you know, what's going to happen at that stage, because right now there is I don't see any reason why it would and continue for at least a little while longer, like the vast majority of you know, the rest of my stuff seems like you know, and yeah,
but I guess the two places that occurred to me as it were, here's here's the question that don't fall that our family ish town ish more to do than just golf.
You know.
The stuff was the two uh ones that that us picked and that's Pinehurst and Pebble have like the most family, non super golf specific things along with like those.
Are but those are that's the old style, But those are that's the old style. That's the like, think about the disruption that abandon caused to Pinehurst. That's the reason
Pinehurst did the renovation to Pineherst number two. So the reason that they built number ten, the reason gil a project that you worked on, renovated number four, you know, like it's the reason they have the cradle is all because of abandon and the disruption it cause, like everybody's like been like, how's this is this going to sustain? Is this going to sustain? And like I don't know the answer. I don't, but like one question I have, are we not even at the point of reaching the
cap of of what demand is? Like Sand Valley Bandon have never had more demand. Ever, they've never had more demand. Land Man, a destination eighteen hole golf course, sold out tea times in an hour last week. The demand has never been higher. So part of me is wondering, like, have we not even reached the mass adoption in the golf market of the idea of a strictly golf trip.
Like That's another question I have is like, have we not even reached the top of the mountain of of people experiencing this golf only trip.
Yeah, so I think at the moment, maybe not. But what I think a lot of it comes back to the certainly in my region and we'll call it the majority of the East Coast. Even at that rate, WHENU factor in the cost of the Florida where it's very hard to find a game, the Northeast where it's very hard to find a club that you want to play every day, I think that's when it's that hard to get in somewhere, or a younger to then join, the cost, the waitlist, everything like that, it becomes, you know, it
makes more sense to do this. But if you're able to create more of that local game, I think you could then start to pull a bit away from that. And I think some of it's an age thing for the people that are doing a lot of this, I think, and how that they can either do those trips versus the like you know, it just go play the weekly morning Sunday game and not be home with the kids for those. But I think it's easier to just like get away for a couple of days then do that.
I think it's easier on the rest of the family to a degree. It's forever reason. It's like it's just how us, you know, millennial type people are able to explain that to our partners. Perhaps I don't know, but.
I think, well, I think there's also the idea of like what you said, there's less junior memberships, Like some of this is that you're going to go for a forty year old a thirty eight year old. Yeah, the cost of a local club, especially if you're in New York or Chicago or San Francisco or wherever, Austin, Texas, Austin, Texas,
you can't get into club. There's ten your weightless everywhere, you know, So like the these are actually clubs you could join, Like there there is like a part of this demand that is like wait, I could actually join
a golf course. That could be great. Like you look at the people that joined Old Barnwell right or Tree Farm and these two these people joined a world class two world class golf courses that where like if you put Old Barnwell in a metro area, it would be a fifteen year wait list, and you know they might be you know, but like you know, you have this opportunity to get in at the ground floor, which has never happened, you know, never, There's never been more opportunities
to get in to somewhere at the beginning. And there is like an aspect of that that I think is appealing to people as well.
I agree, And you know, at the same time, like I said, I think that there's one thing that I I see a water think about is like, how can we how can you know, just make find a way to build more relatively you know, it comes back to the cost relatively cheaper golf options in these markets that are not able to keep up with the demand.
You know.
So that's like is it is it less than eighteen holds? Is it the one without the bunkers? Is it?
You know?
How do we how is it there? You know? I think that's what will eventually start drawing people back away from from that to a degree. But it again, you get to the cost where if you're going to buy an existing golf course and redo it from scratch. It's a thirty million dollar job. So like now, it's not one hundred dollars, it's it's it's three peel. It's the same as the rest. So now you know, you might get a little bit of slide around, but you know it's a bigger, it's a harder to pay off thing.
So that's why you really needs to be at a significantly reduced build cost, and that's much more difficult in certain areas right now.
All right, Jaeger, big thanks for coming on. Was this was great. We I feel like we covered a lot of ground. We might not cover it all the ground, but this was fun to talk about the stuff that you've been thinking about, some of the same stuff I've been thinking about. But look forward to seeing you this year.
That would be great. I've been bugging you to come see some of our work here in the Northeast.
They got to get to fifty right, you got a part of my.
I mean, we're we could go on a proper golf tour to start in Philly at Cedar Brook work our way north. I think that'll be.
Great, that would be that'd be delightful. All right, Well, we'll talk soon and and thanks for thanks for coming on.
Welcome, looking forward to the next one.
All right, thank you for listening to another episode of the Friday Golf Podcast. I'd love feedback. If you like the new format of the show, let me know. We are going to be, you know, doing this every week all year, so if you have if you have other things that you'd like us to cover, I think we what we are excited about with this new format is we have a little bit more flexibility to do smaller segments and in different things. If you want to hear from us on on topics that you think we haven't
really broached on this podcast, let me know. Anyways, big thanks to PJ PJ Clark for editing, producing this podcast and you know, just helping me navigate life at this point. So we'll be back next week, and thank you guys. I hope everybody enjoys their week and we will be back next week.