How Old Barnwell Got Built

preview play last year. I got to play it on the Sunday before the Masters, and I can confirm that it is an incredibly inventive work of golf architecture and just a fun course to play. But another thing that makes Old Barnwell stand out in the current crop of new private golf clubs, and there are a lot of them,

is it's vision for itself. This is a club that wants to have a positive impact on the world, and in this episode we'll talk about how feasible it is to have that kind of impact with a golf club. I realized that this idea of a mission focused club might provoke some skepticism, so we'll adjust that. My guest is Nick Schreiber. Nick is the founder of Old Barnwell, and this is really his passion project. He's there all the time, he was there the day that I played it.

This is really his baby, So I'm looking forward to digging into the nitty gritty of how he got this thing built and what he hopes it'll become. First, though, let's talk a little bit about good Walk Coffee. I was super excited to hear that we were partnering with Goodwalk. This is a company that I've admired from Afar ever since they launched in twenty nineteen, and it's really a company that sits right at the nexus of my two

big interests, coffee and golf. Goodwalk was founded by coffee nuts who also happen to be golf nuts, and they're very serious about applying the golf values of fair play and honesty to the way that they conduct their coffee business. They buy high grade beans from around the world at fair market prices from farmers who follow sustainable practices and pay good living wages to their workers. And importantly, these beans happen to be very very good. Specifically, the Frida

Egg Golf blend is delicious. That's right. We have our own blend with Goodwalk. It's a bright and vibrant organic coffee roasted to a medium light level. It has beans from Central and South America blended with a naturally processed coffee from Ethiopia to create a balance of milk, chocolate, and berry flavors. It's what I've been drinking recently. Absolutely love it. So go to Goodwalkcoffee dot com slash fried egg and use the code fried egg at checkout to

save twenty percent on your entire order. Or you can use the same code to start a coffee subscription that will save you thirty percent on your first order and then you'll save ten percent on all future shipments. You can pause, skip, or cancel your subscription at any time on the website. So again, Goodwalkcoffee dot com slash fried Egg. Check it out all right? So I am here with Nick Schreiber. Nick, how did the first Masters Week at

Old Barnwell go? That's a big deal for clubs in the ach in South Carolina area.

basically helps fund our mission programming. And so you know, we were able to We didn't we didn't hit halfway, but we got very close to hitting half of our mission programming budget for the next twelve months. So we were very lucky. We were grateful to have all the guests coming out there. And I will say that like

there's like mini golf celebrities. It's really fun to see like you know, like a Bob Ford or something like that that like only point zero zero zero one percent of the population would have any you know, would care about it all. But it was fun. I really enjoyed it.

part of how I understand the game of golf. And I mean I look back at those times quite finally, and the courses that I got to caddy at North of Chicago were pretty fantastic, though I didn't fully appreciate it at the time because you're a little focused on just not dropping somebody's clubs or you know, making mistakes.

and then they kind of let you go out. And after that first summer, I was at Old Elm basically, you know, which was a fifteen minute twenty minute bike ride from where I grew up. So I would go there, you know, basically every weekend and would we you know, during the summer, would be able to get loops you know, pretty much every day of the week. And so it was just a very easy transition into never having worked before into having a job.

love with the game of golf. After that. My father did not play, and so at that point my brother and I started to convince him to play. And though I was never a great golfer, by the time that I was in my professional career, golf had done something very similar to what it had done for me when

I was a caddy. I was meeting people that benefited my I was worked at a software company and I ran sales, and so you're starting to meet clients or potential partners and eventually, you know, you know, the private equity group that purchased us. You know, some of those relationships were honed on the golf course. And so that just always stuck in my mind as something that this is a game that we all love, but it's way more powerful than people, I think give it credit. So

you know how I got into this. You know, I mentioned this earlier and I think it's really important to acknowledge. So my parents have been remarkably successful. And so when we sold our business, you know, and I've told this story. I don't love telling this part of the story, but basically, I was the last kind of co founding executive standing at the company when we sold it, and I stuck

around for the transition. They merged us with a portfolio company of theirs, and then I actually went to treatment. So I had a substance abuse problem and a drinking problem that i'd hid pretty effectively for a long time, and so I actually went away and I had to get myself right. And as you can imagine, this is not a fun thing to talk about, particularly when I had an eleven month old at the time, and you know,

you turned your life upside down. But when I got back and you know, uncertain about what's going to happen, really in every category of my life, I was in this really unique and fortunate position one to have a spouse, my wife, Sarah, who encourage me to consider what it was that I wanted to do to make you know that I would be happy, you know, passionate about doing

because as much as I love starting a business. We're an HR tech, don't I don't love performance reviews or you know, employee engagement surveys, right, And so that kind of led me to consider something along those lines. And then yes, like my kids at two boys now, they are not they are taken care of because of the success that my parents have had. There's no other way

to say it. And so it allowed my wife and I to really think about or, in this unique and fortunate position financially, to do something as crazy as starting at golf club. And so that's really the genesis behind just the conversation starting between Sarah and myself.

if it'd be a golf club. I mean we talked about doing a par three course, something public, something private, like there were so many different options on the table, and I think that at the heart of all those uh, you know, options, was this idea of doing something that would make an impact on the community, as cliche as that sounds, and so as we kind of refine the ideas around it, you know, I'll go back to my catting experience and then the experience that as I got

older and you know, having the opportunity to play some of you know, not a ton, but some of the best clubs or you know, private courses in the country. You know, you realize that all great private clubs have two things at their disposal that they can use to impact their community in a positive way. And the first is the golf course itself, whether that's you know, literally providing a space for people to network, to being a you know, a location where you can have charity events

that benefit great causes. And then the second thing, which is much more important, is the members. You know, every great golf club has successful and a diverse array of experience within their membership that they can again bring to bear to benefit those in the community around them. And so that when we kind of thought about that, we

realized that we could do something a bit different. And so the mission is, you know, broadly stated, to bring people together through golf, and what that means for us is creating a community of members that's a bit more inclusive than you might see. So when I say inclusive, I'm not just talking about women or folks of color. I'm talking about beginners or families. Really kind of expanding

the tenth around that. And then the other component, of course, is then taking those members in the course and putting into good use for programs that you know, for I mean programs that support or celebrate groups that are generally underrepresented or underserved in the game. So that's kind of the idea behind it.

trying to offer it at a reasonable price. But in return, we're asking you to commit to participation. And so we're getting that buy in from members in a way that you wouldn't. It would be much tougher to do when you're dealing with the broader public. Now, I will also say that that those critics or those skeptics, are entirely correct in their skepticism. Right. The idea of an inclusive

private club is oxymoronic. It doesn't make any sense. But our thought was, well, golf does a lot of great things, or can do a lot of great things, and this is one idea that that we felt really comfortable with, you know. And then you know, from like a like a you know, nuts and bolts perspective, the idea of

a private club. You know, we're not again, it's not cheap at all, but with initiation and dues being significantly below what the market would bear, you know, it's not like we're we're not making money, right, but I will say that that does like extinguish some of the risk. So knowing that we could raise. You know, I think we've raised five million dollars through initiation fees so far with three hundred and thirty members, maybe a little bit

more than five million. That is a fraction of what it costs to build a golf club, let alone to operate it moving forward. But you know, just from a you know, you can't do a whole lot of good with a golf course or a golf that isn't functioning, and so the idea of that helping us diminish the risk at the front of the process is an important part too.

of great affordable public options around here. And so when we thought about that, we thought, okay, well, let's maybe we could create a public course in the area that would serve everybody, and you know, we could keep it cheap. But then you realize that, you know, if you're going to buy two hundred plus acres near a city center that's within driving distance, I mean, I think there's a golf club going up outside of Charleston now and they paid eleven and a half million dollars for I think

four hundred and fifty acres. That's a lot of money. And again that puts you in the hole immediately, and it puts a lot of pressure on Okay, now we got we got to turn a profit, so that sixty dollars, you know, you know green speed that you're kind of hoping to stay at or under it, like you're like, oh, well, maybe we have to make it seventy five or eighty,

and then the compromises begin. And so then we thought about well, what if we did like a par three course, And again some of that became there's not so much in an economy of scale around developing eighteen holes or thirty six holes like you'd think that there would be,

but there really aren't. But I will say that the what's the phrase, the juice wasn't worth the squeeze in terms of the amount of effort and infrastructure you have to build for any golf facility for it to be kind of effective, and to do that I think would have it just couldn't have had the same impact I think that we can have. So the idea of doing a private club where you've got members that can come

from all over the country. You know, this national membership model is popular for a lot of reasons, but for us it was ideal because again, we have people that we can we can provide this experience that are bought in on this mission, that are willing to pay again a not insignificant amount of money, but they're not going to be there every day, and it allows us to kind of build a club that is efficient, Like right now we have a very small team will continue to

grow as we add the clubhouse and the lodge which is both which you are under construction, but we're also as a result of the kind of the path that we took, we can now invest more heavily and more quickly in our kids course, which we'll have you know, public access certain days of the week, and we'll help

programming for our mission. You know. It allows us to think about building a third course down the line, maybe more soon, sooner than we had anticipated, which again we can provide up public access or do charity events or things like that. So it's a very complicated thing, but in our mind we try to keep it as simple

as possible. And we realized that we can get a bigger bank for our buck if we if we took the route of a private club that wasn't you know, twenty five minutes from Charleston or thirty minutes from Charlotte or Atlanta, but kind of in a great place that was maybe in the middle of nowhere, but two hours to everywhere sort of thing. And that's what turned out

to be. I mean, if we had found the land in central Georgia, we would have bought it, but it happened to be in Akin, South Carolina, which was a great, great thing.

have one hundred and twenty. Who have you gotten three or more loops that's produced you know, fifteen hundred loops overall and probably two hundred grand in the like local economy of kids, you know, like we to talk about, like, you know, how much it costs to take a loop plus you know, tips and then some of those opportunities.

So like we measure our programming in those ways, and in five years, I would like to have not only a large group of caddies, but a group of caddies that are really good at what they do and we've provided their ample training and we're giving them the right connections to our members. And the same is true with our partnership with you know, Vorhees, which is the local HBCU,

with the Anaka Foundation, and our aspiring female pros. So in each of those cases, without going into a ton of detail about them, we have these grand plans, right, but really we want to start small and in five ten years, if those relationships work out well, then we'd like to expand those programs a little bit by a little bit and maybe even add different mission partners along

the way, you know. And I think frankly, we've learned a lot in some of the relationships that we've tried to build and haven't worked, and so that next five to ten years will be really important as we make sure that again you know, get the most bang for

our buck and really kind of make an impact. But more broadly, in five or ten years, what I would love love to see is other clubs in the Southeast, for example, where there's not really a culture of youth caddies, they see this and they realize that not only is this a service for their members, but it's a service for the kids in their community. And it can be done, you know, by partnering with Evan Scholars. It can be done in a way that's really hands off, like they

do everything, they do all the work. Or if we can have a program that supports for aspiring female pros each year in Aiken, South Carolina, Like you can make one work in Jacksonville, you can make one work in Scottsdale. So that is all that to say. It'd be really really great if what we've been able to do and learn from our mistakes, and you know, if we can transfer those to other clubs that are interested in doing the same things, because none of the nothing that we're

doing is a new idea, not like nothing. They all come from other places. A lot of these you know, a lot of clubs are already doing these things. We just have the benefit of we're like a laboratory. We can build it from the ground up and hopefully we can kind of again, provide some sort of framework to export it to other clubs that are interested in doing some of the same things.

in some way. They're also passionate about what they're doing there, Right, Golfers are passionate, and they spend a lot of time with this activity at this club. And it appears to me and I wonder if you see it this way, that you're just trying to capture some of that energy and power and push it to some ends that you yourself for a passion about.

horse for youth development. I mean, yes, golf is like the idea behind it, but really it's not so much about golf for the participants, and I think the same is true for some of the things that we're doing, Like our caddies, many of them have never step foot on a golf course before, and they probably won't end up playing much golf, but they're getting to meet members who can really It sounds cliche or maybe sounds overblown, but like, I think it's really true, like they can

change the trajectory of an individual's life. And the same is true with some of our other mission partners. And so I think that selfishly, like I'm having the absolute time of my life doing this, and I love golf and I love what it can provide. And so there's that component like I like, this is not I am not, Like we are not Mother Teresa doing something for the goodness of others out of the goodness of our hearts.

We're having so much fun and we get to be a part of something like who wouldn't want to work with Brian Schneider and Blake Conant and see the drawings they come up with and walk land with them. But yeah, I mean I think that this is a great way to harness. Again, what I think every great golf club

has and just putting it to good use. And again, I think a lot of when I started this process, I think I came into it really of the opinion and I think incorrectly that all these golf clubs are like so traditional and it's all this and that, and like they have no interest in, you know, doing a lot of the things that you know, we talk about doing.

And then as you get to know people within the industry, you realize that some of the most traditional, you know, the thing the places that people think of as the stodgy, you know, backwaters of you know, nineteen twenties, you know, access like they're doing some of the most impressive work. I mean, I think like august National, I think is a great example of that. You know, they've got their own history, and I think they recogniz that and they have done more in the last twenty five years than

I think. I really think that any other golf organization to truly grow the game. Like when we talk about drive chip and put, when you talk about the Women's Amateur to say nothing of they don't ask for credit, but the amount of money that they invest in the community in Augusta, whether that's with the United Way or other organizations. It's absolutely incredible, and they're not asking for

any credit on those things. Like you know, we talk about the patch, which is a really exciting thing that they're doing, but there's so much beyond the surface, and so to me, you know, shame on me. I think coming into this, I would have thought that they were, you know, a lot of what's wrong with private golf, and now I realized that they are. Probably they're they're the best example of what golf can do to make an impact on a community.

nuts and bolts of building this club. Now that we've kind of talked about it on a on a high level philosophical kind of way, let's let's get into how this actually happened, how you how you pulled it off right, or how you're continuing to pull it off, because it's obviously ago. What came first. Hiring an architect or finding the piece of land.

I started to look at land. And then at the same time she said, okay, well be the first step, and I said, identifying a good piece of property. And then I realized to do that. You know, I can look online as long as I want, but really I needed somebody like Brian and Blake, Brian Schneider and Blake Conan to actually be the judges of what was good land. And sure enough, you know, so I met with them and it was very informal. We did not have any contract.

It was handshakes. Brian happened to live on Daniel Allend here in Charleston, and so we met and you know, they said, sure, we'll come and look at properties with you,

and you know, kind of take it from there. And I think from their perspective it was probably a good business development tactic, even though, and I think I told this pretty early on, like they were who I wanted anyway, Like, you know, having read some Brian's essays, having listened to him and Blake, talked to you and Andy, you know, it was clear to me that they were at the top of the list for me. So basically, after that conversation, if I found a piece of property that I thought

was good, I would go visit it. If I thought it was good enough to warrant, you know, telling them about it, I would and then they would come down, and you know, I jerk around about this, but like they would come down, they tell me why I was an idiot, and I would go back to looking for a new piece of property. And over time I kind of learned what it was that they were looking for that goes beyond just like sandy soil and you know,

land movements, it's more than that. And so you know, it took about, I would guess, eighteen months to find the piece of property that we did, and I remember Brian came down and it was not a great The shape of the parcel originally was not great. It was originally four hundred and forty four acres and it would have been tough to route because it kind of came together a couple of pinch points. And Brian, you know, as we're walking around and said, I don't care, get it,

we'll figure it out. And sure enough, you know, they almost immediately started routing golf holes on land that we didn't known, and so we kind of had to go from there. But yeah, it really started with both kind of looking for land and hiring Brian and Blake.

was like such a bit. I mean, that's that's what That's how you make money, right, you sell real estate connected to a brand name. But I think that we didn't want that. We wanted a really fun and interesting golf course. And you know, I've told Brian and Blake this, But originally so my idea was that I wanted to build thirty six holes, and the first course I wanted Brian,

and the second course I wanted Blake. But it turns out that I was I reached out to Blake via Golf Club atlass before I met Brian, and then the first thing he said was, oh, well, if you're in Charleston, you should meet Brian. So I was like, okay, perfect. And then they you know, having worked together at Hollywood, Atlantic and other places, you know, I give him a

ton of credit. They asked if they could work together on it and so and I you know, so that was for the first course, and then Brian is the one, Brian and Blake. But Brian came to me and said, hey, before we get to the next eighteen, what about doing a kid's course? And I was like, well, what's a kid's course? And so he told me all about that, and you know how they have these places in Scotland

that are truly for the kids. So like, at some point it became clear that Brian and Blake were not just hired for the first one, they were going to do everything on the property. And I think that what began is just you know, me being a how would I say, a very amateur you know, golf course architecture nerd, and having read the books and listened to the interviews, like their philosophy just seemed to jove and plus I think the biggest thing for me was I just wanted

to create something that was unique. And if you look at the greens that you know, Brian's famous for those are really unique greens. And then when you know, Blake on your podcast talked about I mean, you talked about a lot of things, but the sense of play, and you know, we wanted to be a good steward within the community, then we better be of the community. And so you know, to have those kind of philosophies come

together was really like it's perfect. And so to me, I didn't worry about the long term value because I knew that there was going to be a market of nerds like you know, you and me that would love to see a course by Brian and Blake, and the rest of the world would figure it out sooner or later if they did what I thought they would be able to do, which is what has been greatfully, very very true.

On top of making a difference to the future of golf, USGA members also get a number of great benefits, including a US Open or US Women's Open member hat, a personalized member bag tag, a subscription to USGA's Golf Journal, and much more. You two can give back to golf and get back some awesome benefits by visiting USGA dot org slash fried Egg and becoming a USGA member today. You know, involving Brian and Blake in the site selection process was a very smart decision and also an unusual one.

Maybe in golf development. Maybe it's maybe it's less unusual now, but usually when architects come into a project, the piece of land is selected and they just kind of work with it. And it sounds like Brian and or Blake went with you to view a few different sites and were able to tell you one that you might have thought was really looking good actually wasn't suitable for what you wanted to do. So I'm curious about what you

learned in that process. Were there any kind of big surprises or revelations that came up for you when you were looking at a piece of land and you thought it looked great, but Brian came over and said, actually that doesn't work for reasons X, Y, and Z. What did you learn in that process?

They were very honest about what was good and what wasn't. They weren't like angling for the job in a way that I think some understandably as somebody who comes from sales, like I get it, like if I want a job, like I'm gonna tell yeah, this this land looks great, let's let's do it. But the first piece of property that I brought them down to, I had spent like four or five days on my own just walking around and it was a bit It was like five hundred acres.

It had a lake at the bottom. There was some swampy areas and wetlands that we probably wouldn't have, you know, couldn't have touched. But there was some land movement. Was very sandy. And when they visited, they actually showed up maybe three hours before I showed up that day, and by the time I was walking towards them, they were walking up and like you could tell, like they were

just shaking their heads, like yeah, you know. And I think the way that they described it was they could build a good golf course there, but they couldn't build a great one. And their rationale was a few things. One, so some of it was like just completely logistical, common sense stuff that I wasn't thinking of. One, you know, that property owned eight of the shoreline of that you know, fifteen acre lake at the bottom of the property, but it didn't know on the other twenty percent, and that's

an issue. Two the land there was some good land movement and probably sixty to seventy five feet of elevation change. It was almost all in one direction going down to that lake, and you know, you want it doesn't matter if you've got five feet or one hundred feet for playing to go up and down, and you know the way that they would want to round it. They needed

something more than that, something more diverse than that. The other thing is, which I thought was really surprising, but you know, they, I guess in blake In, particularly given as fine er background, they think of golf courses in this like narrative sense, and so they wanted different environments

to work within throughout the course. And so what ended up happening at Old Barnwall is we've got, you know, a bunch of holes that kind of play in and around a central valley with no trees, and then a few holes that wind through you know, mature pines, and then a couple of hole that are on the edge of the property that are almost in and I guess we've lost a little bit of the original look but like prairie and so you know, that's not the only

thing that dictates the narrative of the routing for them, but it's part of it. And so that was a really that first property where they kind of walk me through all that stuff was really enlightening. The other thing I will say is that one of the reasons I thought that that property was really good is because there were very few trees and so I could see the land movement. They can see the land movement when it's

covered in trees. You know, it's not just looking at the topo maps, because those are pretty accurate, but they're not always accurate. But more than that, like they can they can really like the valley. There's a sixty five foot drop in the valley at Old Barnwell where we did end up building the course, and that was covered in like ten to twelve year old pines, so not tall pines, but it was covered and it looked mate.

I mean for me, I would have guessed it was like a twenty or twenty five foot valley and it was huge, and they knew that and they saw the I mean I remember the second time we were on Brian and Blake took me probably about twenty five yards from the first tee and said, looking out into the trees, like this is going to be your clubhouse, Like this is where you're going to see everything. And sure enough, and it's probably one hundred and fifty feet away from

where that you know porch is going to be. It's just incredible. So they just have the ability that I a visual the vision that I just don't have. So that's another component is understanding that no matter what I see, they see something different.

it's also got play. And so they and seeing the different pieces of property, you know, we could do again, we can do soil testing and all that stuff, but you can get a pretty good sense of Okay, this is really sandy here and this part isn't so sandy, but can we work around this or like you know,

so they take those things into consideration. Certainly, I think certainly the size of the parcel is really important, and so you know, I was looking at anything over four hundred yards or four hundred acres, and again that original parcel was four hundred and forty sum acres. And you know, they were pretty explicit that like this is great, get it, but also you're going to need more. And so they we were trapesing through the land that we weren't buying.

You know, we were reaching out to neighbors and asking if we could just take a look. And that also is really interesting because you know, they're thinking about the eighteen holes certainly, but they're also thinking much farther down the line in terms of infrastructure, in terms of you know, we're just a part like you know, what does the

entrance road look like? You know, here in Charleston, we joke around the like Yamen's Hall is a good example of this, like the longer the entrance and the smaller the sign outside, the better the club is going to be. And I'm not joking. So like the front, I don't know, one hundred acres maybe nine hundred, maybe seventy five acres of our property that front's Andrew Circle. The street that

we're on is pretty flat, and they like that. They liked that you could kind of come in and then there's this big reveal so that's unrelated to the routing. That has everything to do with the infrastructure and kind of the overall property. And again I give them a ton of credit because I would definitely was not thinking about that.

I mean, he's gone a whole bunch of things. Really in the beginning was just us and and Brian and Blink, and we had a deal with the potential, you know, somebody to take over as director of gronmy or to start as director of agron me who had a fair amount of construction experience, somebody with a great reputation, and for some reason it just didn't work out and he

backed out, and you know, no hard feelings. We kind of understood that he was he was a little concerned about the risk and the fact that to you know, tweedled and tweedledumb we're running the show. But so like, really the extent of my involvement was I hired a Timber Company to clear some of the land and that didn't work out so well. So like despite giving them GPS coordinates, like they started clearing land that like is now to the right of our ninth t that like

they were not supposed to clear. And so that's a good example of like why Morgan and I should not be doing these things. And so when we did, we were introduced to and I don't I still don't understand how this happened, but he's now our general manager. But John Levell was the person that we ended up hiring as our director of agronomy, and he you know, had helped I mean, he was the project manager and built Congarrie. He was the director of agronomy at Congree and a

Diamond Creek where he lived. And before that he was you know, part of Tom Fazzio's team that came in a two thousand at Augusta National to Tiger Proof and he ended up staying there for six years, seven years. So this is a guy with not only great experience, but when he saw what we were doing with like the clearing, he's like, we got to call Green Tea and Augusta they're they're they're great. They can do this, They're doing half the price, you know, like all that stuff.

So basically at that point it was kind of hands off, and which is the way it should have been. I mean I had to say yes or no to some of the you know, when we had to we had to line our irrigation pond, for example, and that's like a super expensive part of the process was building up

you know, spy makers. It's ten to twelve feet deep, and then we built half of it and it started to leave, you know, it was the water level was, you know, going down substantially, and so we had to okay, are we going to try to find the whole orre we just going to align it and understand that that's

the best investment for long term. And so to have somebody like John who had experience with those types of decisions, I felt much more comfortable saying, Okay, let's spend more money now because I really do think that it'll save us money in the long run. And sure enough, you know that's been the case. Because I haven't made I haven't played much of a role in the construction side of things.

had seven holes open for a time for previewpoint. We had we called it the Upper Loopers holes one through five and seventeen and eighteen, and it was just we tried to grasp a certain amount of holes so that our members could have something to play before we open the full eighteen. And you know, inevitably, and I think

this is actually great. Our members are really candidate about their feedback, and you know, the overwhelming response was so positive, but there are some people that say, well, you know, this green just you know, it doesn't seem the same as the other greens. And so my struggle is as a people pleaser by nature, and also as somebody who has taken those people's money, is how do I balance their opinions with the opinions of Brian and Blake, who are the true experts and know a heck of a

lot more than those members. I mean, now, even experts can be wrong, and I think like any course will make adjustments over time. But I think, you know, the limited changes that we have made since that opening seven holes have been kind of a compromise between what Brian and Blake like. They're not going to compromise on their their strategy period like water management and strategy are. You cannot mess with that in terms of their vision, or

at least I'm not going to. But they hear, they listen, and so they're willing to make some minor adjustments, and you know that's I think that's a great way to listen to your quote unquote audience. But also it's not least sight of like we're hiring them for a reason, like you don't want me putting you know, telling you where to put a bunker or you know how wide that fairly should be. I just I'm not smart enough. I don't have the experience. I'm not as well traveled

as you know Brian's. You know, Brian's been fifteen times more places than I'll ever be.

If the players don't like something about it, then it's almost like the customer is never wrong, except that we all know that sometimes the customer is wrong, and that often when it comes to matters of taste in golf architecture, golf architects often have the most sophisticated perspective on those things, and maybe some of those features that players don't like initially will grow on them over time and eventually become

some of their favorite features. So it must be really hard to negotiate that complexity as a decision maker within a club, because on the one hand, yes, you acknowledge that the course is for the players, but on the other hand, you acknowledge that the architects probably have better ideas about golf architecture than the average player.

what we were here to do. And I think that you know, the benevolent dictator, you know, the ability as a sole owner to make decisions and not have to go through committee is hugely beneficial and something like this.

But also I think we benefit from the fact that, again we are not cheat, but we are well below what we could charge and as a result, we kind of you know, it's like, listen, if you're not happy, like, we'd be happy to sell that membership to somebody else who's going to be more impactful for the mission, and we can charge more than we charge view you know. So I think that that it's not certainly the way that we would behave, but it's it's in the back

of our minds. If people aren't happy with it, you know,

that's okay, that's we understand. It's not for everybody. I mean, I think, you know, particularly with Brian and Blake, you know, my again with zero direction from my perspective other than to build something that they thought would be you know, something they wanted to build, Like, of course I knew that it's not going to be for everybody, and it's going to be I mean, like I don't really care where people, you know, what side of the tobacco road,

you know, controversy argument you're on, like is it great? Is it not great? I don't really care because to me, what that course does is it makes you think and it you know, I love that there are people that do or don't like it because they're actually talking about architecture in a way that they would never talk about architecture if they're just playing your ho home course down

the street. And so to me, I think that by setting those expectations, we've appealed to a membership that was totally open to a unique set of greens or some features that might be too severe for you know, a

regular country club. I don't know, I think. And again, we're still so early in this process that there will continue to be complaints from members and some of them will be well founded, like there's a green that maybe could use a little softing, or I mean, the same is gonna be true with our clubhouse in our lives, Like it's never going to be perfect, but we can always try to make it perfect or make sure our members understand that, hey, this is this is here for a reason.

which you guys recently featured something they developed. And I went to them with like numbers very early in this process, and they almost laughed me out of the room, very politely, but they're like, you need to double what your numbers are. And they were correct in a lot of ways. In some ways they were incorrect or they didn't understand what

we were trying to do. But one of the biggest differences that we had versus what they had is because they're in this this different categor glory of clubs, you know, they need the twenty thousand square foot twenty five thousand square foot clubhouse. I think ours is the footprint is like nine thousand. We've got a small upstairs area that's going to be for staff, So like overall, I think it's like eleven thousand square feet, which to me is still big, but it's very intimate by comparison, and I

think that's okay. I like, the only place I've ever been a member before Old Barnwall is to Chesa Creek, which again, I know you read about to Death.

it's not ostentatious. It is we want it to be a you know again, it's of the land, and the same is true with our lodge is one story, very much like the chest. They've got the twelve single rooms and kind of a low slung connected to the clubhouse building, and so ours is like an L shape. I'm sure they wouldn't love me saying this, but it's like a motel. It's like an L shaped motel with a lounge that connects the rooms and then two suites family suites on

the end with an interior courtyard, you know. So the buildings to me, you know, they should be putting upsiding in the next week, which is really exciting, and I think it's going to be exciting for our members to see the progress. But it's taken a while for me to transition from focus on the golf to focus on the actual infrastructure. And luckily we've got people that have

been focusing on that for a lot longer. So I think it's going to be far more important to the development of the club than I initially anticipated, and so I'm glad that we're working with people who really know what they're.

feet or twelve feet deep? And what became pretty clear, again working with somebody like John Level, is that the upfront costs, you're not going to regret that upfront cost if you do it the right way the first time. And so that was way more expensive than anticipated. I joke around that early on in the process. I you know, asked Brian and Blake like, hey, you know, you hear this. You know it's a million dollars of golf hole, Like

is that true? And if not, like, what are the things that you can do to keep costs lower and still create something that's really fantastic. And so they said, no, that's not true it depends on the land and all this stuff. But they said, but you know, to keep cost low. Really it's simple. You know, small greens and very few bunkers. And if you've been to old barn and walls, you have the greens are not small, and

they're over one hundred bunkers. So clearly you know they didn't they didn't get their own memo in that, and I couldn't be happier. Frankly, I think that again, the best thing we could have done is hire people like Brian and Blake and then trust them to do what they do best, and that's that is a great investment. Another thing I mean, I think drainage is something we didn't. We did not spare an expense on drainage. That's way

more expensive than I anticipated. Irrigation, even since we put in our earsgation system inflation, and like it's absurd to me having grown up on a place that didn't have any irrigation. You know, they watered the handwater the greens and that was it. Like it just bottles my mind how expensive a good irrigation system is. But I was warned about that, so it wasn't too much of a surprise. I think that there are a lot of surprises along

the way for somebody with zero experience like me. But again, having talked to a lot of people in the industry, I was at least given a fair sense of course. So in clearing land, Clearing land is expensive, particularly when you can't sell the timber. Those are the things I would say that come to mind. Is more expensive than I anticipated.

a half or three miles of pipe. And they're like, well, are you building houses, because if you're building houses, maybe we can like it won't cost as much because we'll be you know, there'll be more customers that are paying us for water. And I was like, wait, are you telling me that, like we can use our own water and like, yeah, totally. It's like, okay, well we'll just stick with our own water. I think that sounds like

a better idea. So there are so many things that we didn't have to experience that I'm sure every other golf developer has to go through. So we were really fortunate in a lot of ways too.

they're sneaky, but also I kind of love it. Like one of my favorite holes on the first course is the thirteenth, and that was originally going to be a par three, and when they were you know, building, they realized, you know, this is going to be better as a part four. So we're part seventy three and I think we're all the better for it because they just took what the land gave them there. So I think the

same so with the kids course. The I can't possibly describe how much soil you dig up when you build a five acre pond that is ten feet deep. We had two mountains and one was kind of sandy ish and one was play ish, and basically we sold or we gave the play away to a partner. But over the last like five months, our agronomy team has moved all that dirt to where the kids courses and then dug out more things to provide more dirt, to create a grading plan that Brian like, a very loose grading

plan that Brian and Blake wanted to work with. And so now there's going to be fifty holes. I think mostly Part three's, but a couple of short part fours. When I say short, Part four is like three hundred or less, and I think we haven't figured out all the logistics of it, but I think, like if you're an adult, like you can only bring your irons, like,

don't bring a driver, A three would. But the goal is that on the weekends you can't play there until three o'clock unless you're with a kid, and that's a pretty easy thing to stick to. Originally, we thought, well, it should, that should always be the case, but what we realized is that we have a really we have a large group of beginning golfers, whether it's spouses or kids, that we want to do programming during the week We also want to partner with like youth on course and

provide access via that realm. So basically on the weekends it's going to be kid focused. And then I think that what they are going for you should talk to Brian and Blake because I've seen these greens, but I still haven't seen a routing. I think it's going to

be a lot of fun. We had a contest, a design contest where kids could submit their designed for a whole and some of the ideas were hilarious and fun, including one that had a waffle house on the eighteenth green, which are on the green site, which was I mean, that'd be pretty great. I don't think we can pull that off, but one, the one that won had ramps because in his description he said, you know, it's nice to see if you hit a bad shot, it's still nice to see it going the year. So they're going

to be features like that. It's not going to be like a miniatured off course, but I think that they are going to be features so that kids can really enjoy it. A couple months ago, Blake texted me a Craigslist listing for a like an eighteen foot grain silo and it was for sale down the road. It was one thousand bucks and he's like, hey, can you can you get this? And I said, well, what Ford? He said, don't worry about it. Can you can you get it? I was like, I'm not, I'm not going to get

so we didn't get it. So I don't really know what his idea was there, but I do think that they're trying to create something that is it's not a part three course. It is something different, and I'm again I'm as clueless about it as I think the rest

of our members are. Although that the the greens look great so far, and then the third course we've got we've got a preliminary routing, and I think, what they want to do there is basically create two distinct nine hole courses in essence that you can rate and slope as one to eighteen holes. But their perspective is, you know, you've got to use what the land gives you. And so there's some really subtle features and then there's some

really severe. That valley that is on the first course extends all the way into that backside of the property. We have about one hundred and eighty five acres, and so I think what they really are focused on is creating variety for members. And so you know, those two distinct nine hole routing things will allow for you to play three different, four different I mean golf courses in essence when you come to o'barmel. So honestly, I don't know how many years you know, we're away from building

that course. I would say that we've been really fortunate in a lot of ways, so it's probably sooner than be an anticipated. But who knows what their routing will do over time. It could change, it may have already changed since I last book.

this is happening? Why are there so many golf courses being built in this area right now, and specifically so many kind of private clubs, often destination private clubs going up in this one region at the moment.

they have. I'm making this up, but I think it's seven hundred and fifty or eight hundred members, and so this is still a relatively new model that I think a lot of people are looking at and ships saying, you know, it's like as Andy would describe, like the craft culture, you know, the craft beer culture, golf course

architecture through the work that you guys do and others. Like, it's so much more prevalent I think within the golfing community that people are willing to pay a premium for a really interesting or new golf course by Bill Hants or Tom Doak, and you know, the the business model is pretty strong for the first owner in that case in a way that it hasn't been in the past.

You can get into like the next component of it is, of course you've got this whatever you know, like the one percent or whatever that can afford the five hundred grand that some people are charging or you know, again that makes your like like you know, you get basically you get ten members of that place, and you've filled up our coffers that we've gotten an old barn wall for our initiation fees, and so the you know, the numbers work out really well in that case, and right

now today they can sell those memberships tomorrow who knows, But The third thing I would say is that, as you know, pre COVID even but since COVID, everybody's moving to the southeast. And so you know, I've been in Charleston for nine years, but I'm from Chicago originally, and our neighbors here in Charleston almost all of them are from the Midwest. And so what I would say is that just like here in Charleston, the same is true in Atlanta and Charlotte. There are only so many great

golf courses or good golf courses. So for people that are looking for the private golf experience, they're sol like they can't get on a wait list, and so they're willing to drive two hours to Ache to play. They're willing to drive to whatever the mountains of North Carolina and willing to pay a premium. And so I think that again right now, that business model is sound. I don't know how sustainable it is. I am not an

expert on this stuff. The National Golf Foundation and you know, the Golf Course Owners Association would have a much better take on this than I do. But I am skeptical of like, if we were doing this to make money, if we were really like focused on profitability, we'd be doing things very differently. Ironically, I think that's what's going to allow us to have longer term sustainability. But I don't know. I didn't have a good answer for what the future holds. I mean, there's part of me the

things that like. And we kind of saw this a little bit during COVID. You know, the economy may go down a little bit, but the people who seem to be least affected sometimes are the ones who can afford a five hundred thousand dollars initiation fee. So maybe maybe this isn't you know, maybe this is what kind of keeps happening. I think I'll shout out booms Edge in Rembert, South Carolina as a really unique opportunity for private golf

to be affordable and accessible to the public. I do think that there's a model there, but nobody's figured it out. I think if we were, if we took a long view and could and I know this is some like a drum that you guys beat all the time, if you could change golfers expectations around maintenance and course conditions, I think you could create a really great golf club at an affordable price and still provide some public access.

But I think it's important to note I'll say this and then I'll shut up, but exclusivity that people pay for with private clubs, like that word has such a negative connotation, But I also understand why people want or need that exclusivity for their golf experience, right. I mean again, like I think about it, I don't want to go to Wild Dunes here in Charleston and pay two hundred bucks to play a six hour round. It's certainly cheaper

than joining a club in a lot of ways. But at the same time, you know, we all kind of pay for different conveniences, and so I think the real challenge is how can we make these courses provide that exclusive environment. When I say exclusive, I mean access for those members so that they can play when they want and they can have the experience that they want, but

also leave it open to public place. And so there are just a lot of creative ways, and I think we found that a lot of our members not only don't they don't care that we're providing public play access, they're encouraging it. They really like it and they want to support it because they want to show off the place that they've grown to like, you know, or love

in some cases. So I think that unfortunately, I would guess that at some point in the next five to ten years there's going to be some sort of reckoning with these really expensive private clubs. But I also think that there might be a solution to it. I'm not smart enough to say whether or not that's going to come.

few decades in different sectors of the economy. You know, it's almost part of the definition of a bubble that you don't know that you're in it. But there are definitely some people who are looking at this development surge and saying, how can this possibly be sustainable? And and so you know, from from your position as the developer,

the founder, the owner of one of these clubs. What do you what do you think are the characteristics that can make a club durable through these oscillations in the economy that that we know are eventually coming.

the national model. I think that food and beverage maybe plays an underrated component in this too. And this is somebody who I who will say that I've been a waiter and a dishwasher and all that stuff and worked in service before, but I think that that's an underrated component around community. And so you know, I had the chance to go to wade Hampton a couple of years ago because the father in law and one of our

members hosted us. And that's as nice as nice gets in terms of the experience and I have no idea what an initiation fee costs there. But one thing that I'll say that they did exceptionally well. One they have great staff, but they have like these community events that are all based around dinner or lunch or whatever, and so like it becomes part of that fabric for the people that live in that area. And to me, the more you can do that, the more you can create

that kind of programming. I think that's really healthy, not just for the golf club's economics, but also for it creates that stickiness. I come from software, so like, I'm constantly thinking about retention rates, like how do we make sure that we keep people in. I also think that, you know, when push comes to shove, a really great golf experience at a reasonable price is going to be

the last membership you drop. I could very well be wrong on that, and I think everybody's motivation is different, but I feel pretty good that at the price point that we're at, it'd be I'm not going to say foolish, but like if you had to choose between one that is, you know, equally far away or tough to get to and costs five times as much and the golf course is as good as you know, why why wouldn't you keep the one that's a little bit more affordable and

maybe a little bit more family friendly or you know, again that's my inherent bias, but those are the thoughts that come to mind. I suppose.

sorts of events happening at the local club. It was the local club. That's what you went and did that, and there were members who would play golf and stuff like that. But it was generally fairly open to the community. And it seems like some of that has been lost in the past few decades and would seem to be recoverable, you know.

place that you want to go to. And so like I live two hours away, I'd rarely stay overnight, but like I kind of want to, you know, like I'd prefer to stay overnight because it's such a great experience, you know. So I'll say that one of the things that I've seen in this environment. So there are a couple of clubs in South Carolina. So like Orangeburg Country Club is about an hour and ten minutes from downtown Charleston.

It's probably an hour and a half from Charlotte. It is a great older course, you know, a little rough around the edges, but totally affordable. It is a community club. They're seeing enough to in members coming that are from Charleston, that can't get off a wait list, that are willing to drive an hour fifteen minutes. Camden is a great course,

same thing. And so I think that the many, kind of the whack a mole of all this development and exclusivity may benefit some of those community clubs in a way that is kind of, you know, one of the unintended consequences. My concern is more about, you know, the clubs on the North short of Chicago where I grew up, caddying a lot of those clubs. Before COVID couldn't pay

younger members to join. There just wasn't and I don't know if it was generational, but and then COVID hit and then everybody wants to join, and they start, they raise their rates, they pay down their debt, and then they immediately go back into debt just now investing in these new you know whatever, it's new and shiny, and that is a recipe for disaster. I think I say that with such you know, lack of knowledge about you know,

their vision. And I'm sure we'll get to that point too, where we make stupid mistakes about what we spend money on. But like we have a like a treehouse. We spent a lot of money on building a treehouse, and I remember talking to my father about that and he's like, you are insane, Like that is the dumbest money you could have spent. And I will say that, at least

as it relates to our mission. I actually feel like the return on investment with that will be pretty easy to kind of measure because my son, Henry, who's six, really not in the golf yet. This is going to be the most miserable thing ever if my kids don't like golf. But when that treehouse was built, he was like, let's go to o'barnall, and so we went there. We spent an hour and a half on it, and then at the end of it he's like, can we go

hit balls? I was like, we don't have the driving range yet, but yeah, we can hit into the dirt like great, Like it got him to play a little bit of golf. So maybe there are things that clubs, like we stumbled upon that idea, but like, maybe there are things that clubs can do where you know, the grand scheme of things, it's golf adjacent, the golf related and it's not a huge investment, but it will bring again that's stickiness to their membership.

you for listening to this episode. We'll be back again soon with another