I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset. When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset. And when I find my ball.
In a bride egg, Frida Egg, the dreaded Frida Egg, Friday, Frida Egg Egg, Frida Egg, Bride Egg, Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the hump. Hello and welcome to the Frida Egg Podcast. My name is Garrett Morrison, and today we are talking about Chambers Bay in the future of USGA venue selection. The us Women's Amateur was just held at Chambers Bay this past week and I was there for the last day of it. It was
a delightful experience. So we'll talk a little bit about that, but also talk about the general context of venue selection for the big championships that the USGA runs, PGA of America as well, and where Chambers Bay might fit into that and other courses as well. I think it's a kind of rich topic right now. There's a lot of things happening on that front. But to discuss all of that with me today, I have none other than Andy Johnson. Andy,
how you doing. You're back You're grounded again after an active few weeks of travel here.
Yeah, yeah, back at the end laws. So you know from live from the in law's basement, just a place the podcaster belongs. You know, if you haven't recorded a podcast from your own parents' basement or your in lass basement, you're not really doing podcasting.
Right, So the stereotype is true.
Yeah, exactly. How was the weekend You've been on the road too, how's the weekend at Chambers?
It was fantastic. I mean I scheduled this not only because I live fairly close. I'm about a two and a half hour drive from Chambers here in Portland, but also because I remember, I think you and I discussed this. I attended that live event in Portland, right, So I spent a few days there covering that event. And the first thing I did when I came back from that when that concluded is I reached out to Julia Pine at the USGA. By the way, Julia Pine as good
at her job as anybody in golf, She's fantastic. Reached out to her and said, hey, how about a credential to the US Women's Amateur I need a palate cleanser after what I've just experienced to live. And it was
just that it was really wonderful. I wish I had gotten to be there more, but we just had a trip to Sandhills, the Nebraska Sandhills this past week as well that we needed to do, And so I came back home on Friday evening and put in an appearance at home with the kids a little bit, and then left again on Saturday afternoon to get up to Chambers Bay. Stayed the night there and was able to be there for the entire final match at Chambers Bay between Sake
Baba and Monet Chun. Now it just lasted twenty seven holes, which was a bit of a bummer. I wish it had gone the full thirty six, you know, being at Chambers during the sunset hours and watching golf what would have just been wonderful. But Saki Baba had other ideas. She was she was really really dominant on the weekend, just a terrific player and uh and so that was fun to watch in its own right. But I got a good look at Chambers Bay as well.
Yeah, what were were your what are your impressions of Chambers Bays. It's a place that I haven't been obviously. I enjoyed watching the the US Open out there. But you know, there's a lot of on course and off course controversy with that one, and uh and uh. I. You know, obviously they've put in a lot of work since that US opened. They've resotted their greens with a POA bent mixture, So the greens were obviously the divisive topic among a few other things out there. But how how was it?
Well? It was incredible, But why don't we start with like how does it look on TV? You know, the twenty fifteen US Open, which which was held at Chambers Bay and was pretty controversial, is not one that I really watched. I kind of missed that open. What did Chambers Bay look like on TV? For that US Open? What do you remember of that?
I mean it was it looked great. I think That's always the thing is like when you talk about a venue, it's interesting because like there there are so many factors that go into it. Is how is it for the competitors? How is it for the championship conducting a venue there, like in terms of infrastructure everything? How is it for the crowds? How is it for you know, people that attend and paid ticket, pay for tickets and go and
then how how does it show on TV. I think from the television standpoint, it showed really well, Like, you know, any time that you have golf on a body of water,
that's always going to provide amazing visuals. And then with the weather in the Pacific Northwest in the summer, it's so predictable that like you know, you're going to get a firm tournament and out there the course is designed to have balls bounce in and bounce, and that golf course, I'll never forget the videos leading in when people are bouncing balls, you know, like a basketball on the turf.
But like that's the thing about that golf course is that it I it's hard to look at the leaderboard and especially the demands that were placed on competitors in twenty fifteen and not think that it deserved another shot after if it fixed the greens right, you know, especially because like we're not talking, this course isn't in New York. This course isn't surrounded by like a plethora of championship
golf options. This is a golf course in a large, huge part of the country that's devoid of championship golf but also affords any tournament the excellent primetime viewing for
the biggest media markets. That's the thing, is, like I just like I really wonder, Like, you know, obviously, having an event in New York City is great for a local market and they can go, but I'd imagine that more people from New York City would watch an event in Washington because the hours that it would be on in a time of the year when there isn't a lot of stuff on TV.
Yeah, West Coast is great for TV viewing across the nation basically, right. We hear people say this every time there's a tournament in California. Oh, yeah, this is these are great hours. This is primetime golf essentially, right, And it's just interesting that we haven't seemed to figure out a major championship venue in the Pacific Northwest that really sticks. You know, There've been a couple of majors at Saholly Country Club, which is a really heavily trade courses, very narrow.
I believe that nineteen ninety eight PGA Championship was held there, and you know, it hasn't really made an impression that really that course has not found its way into the rota for the PGA Championship or the US Open. Pumpkin Ridge was another potential major venue. It held a couple of US Women's Opens, but never got a US opener PGA championship. And now Pumpkin Ridge is fully in the hands of Live Golf, right that's now going to be what looks like an annual venue, and there's a thirst
for high level golf in Portland. You know, there's a great LPGA Tour tournament, the Cambia Portland Classic, that has been held mostly at Columbia Edgewater in recent years, and that's a pretty cool venue and it's a very good event. There's been a corn Ferry Tour event in Portland that was held at Pumpkin Ridge, but that's no longer going. And so I think that this region is just underserved.
I know that everybody feels like their region is underserved by golf tournaments, but the Pacific Northwest has two really big cities, Portland and Seattle, that have active golf cultures, and I feel like it's a missed opportunity not to be taking big championships to this region on a regular basis. And I believe that Chambers Bay is far and away the best candidate for a consistent major Championship venue being
there for the US Women's Amateur on Sunday. My big overall impression of this course, and I think this comes through on TV as well. It's this huge arena. Right. There's this walking path on top of a bluff that overlooks the course, and the course is sort of in this bowl that's right against Puget Sound and the railroad that runs along the shore of Puget Sound, and so when you're in there, when you get up high, you can see the whole course and all the action is
just kind of happening in this huge bowl. Now, a little bit of history for this site. The reason that the site is shaped in this kind of un unique arena like way is that before it was a golf course for decades, it was the site of a mining operation sand and gravel and stuff like that. And so essentially that activity took a huge bite out of this piece of land, pushed the big bluff back inland, so that it formed this bowl or this arena that the golf course now sits in. And I haven't really been
to a golf course that is quite like this. I really can't think of a comparison. You know, it's a unique looking and feeling place. It's really really beautiful. The views are sensational. I thought it was a great place
to watch a golf tournament. The architecture of the course is also very interesting, and we can get into details of that if you want, But as far as the spectator experience is concerned, I thought it was fantastic for a US Women's Amateur, with everybody kind of walking down the fairways without ropes and following the play like that.
The problem will become for a tournament of the size of a US Open, that the galleries are going to be pushed to the sides right, and they're going to be walking through sand and these these really abrupt, dunelike shapes alongside the fairways. And I think at the US Open in twenty fifteen that spectators had a hard time getting around the course.
There are a lot of sprained ankles. I believe. I think they had to, like eventually like pos strategically position paramedics around the course to be able to field all the sprained ankles.
Well. People were eating it constantly out there, even at the US Women's Amateur, where there wasn't as much of a crowd as there obviously would be for a US Women's Open or a US Open. People were falling down those dunes a lot because they are pretty sharp, right, They have this peak and then they go down.
Sharply, and the grass is slippery because it's like a fescue, So then the grass is especially in the rpprey.
Yeah, I slipped and fell on my butt like on the second whole of the final match, like, and it just sort of came out of nowhere. I was going down this dune and then all of a sudden, I was on my ass, and you look around, and this was happening a lot. At one point, I was filming the train going by the seventeenth hole just as the players were playing. The train kind of comes by on that railroad that runs by Puget Sound in between Puget Sound and the golf course. It's kind of a cool
little local color thing. So I was filming the train and in the lower corner of my screen, a guy just comes tumbling into the frame, you know, falling down a dune. I didn't obviously didn't expect or intend to catch that, but that was just what was happening. And so I think that people who attended the twenty fifteen US Open probably didn't have a good on site experience. They need to build grandstands there, right. They need to set up that site so that it's not as kind
of walking dependent. It should be a place where you can sit and watch, because if you sit in one place and you're up you can see a whole lot of holes all at once. Get a pair of binoculars, you'll be able to see golf pretty much throughout the course. There are very few holes that you can't see if you're up high enough, and so I think that that's
got to be the method that they use. But you know, for a tournament like the US Women's Amateur, if they bring a US Amateur there, I think that it's really fun to walk that course and look at the views. It's not the easiest walk in the world, but it's definitely walkable. It's a walking only course. In fact, when during regular play, and I just had a wonderful time being there, seeing the sites, watching these great players play
these holes in a strategic way. I thought it was wonderful and I just sort of wished that bigger tournaments would come there with more frequency. Now, the reputation of the course took a hit in twenty fifteen, not only because of the on site spectator experience and what people said about that, but also because of the TV watching experience. People saw a brown course, heard the players complaining about putting on broccoli, which is how Hendrik Stenson put it.
The greens died basically in twenty fifteen. They screwed up. But the course is terrific and I wish that the optics weren't such that it's hard to take a big championship back there.
What are your favorite aspects of the golf course.
It all starts with the firmness of the turf, and the holes are designed so that you can use the ground. Going into a lot of these greens, there are wonderful kind of feeding contours and rejecting contours, so you know, depending on the angle that you're approaching a green from those contours can either help or hurt you. And when your ball lands, it's not going to stay in the same place, it's going to run. You know. That's just
one thing that enhances strategy. There are individual holes out there that are just really memorable and stick out immediately. I think the variety of the course is outstanding. You play that course once and you're probably going to remember every hole because you're getting different looks, you know, different playing strategies with each hole. The holes really don't blend together, which I think is an achievement because the site wasn't
exactly ideal for golf to begin with. It was this kind of mining place, and you know, the mining operation had left some really interesting landforms, but it wasn't necessarily well suited to the game, and so they had to move a lot of dirt around in order to make golf work. And I think they did an excellent job of creating golf there, making it play well. But also, you know, to go on to another subject, the aesthetics
of the course. They retained some of the industrial look of the site in creating the golf course, and so I really like how the shapes of the golf course remind you in a way not only of kind of links golf, irish links golf, big spectacular dunes, but also it reminds you of industrial work in a way because the dunes are sort of so sharply shaped and and they look kind of jagged, and they make you think
of a big industrial mining operation. Even as it's a very playable golf course, so I think the look of the course is cool. There are some critiques to be made of the architecture out there. I think I should mention that it was Robert Trent Jones Junior's firm that built this course, and on site supervising the construction was Bruce Charlton RTJ two's lead associate, I believe, and j Blasi was also very involved in the design and build of this course, and so there's a really talented team
out there. J Blazi in particular has gone on to be a very impressive architect in his own right, and so they did some really really interesting things out there. But there are some other ways in which you can critique the course. I would specifically zero in on the routing of the front nine, which I think is a
little bit clunky in some places. There's a big walk between the third green and the fourth tee, and whenever I see that, I'm just like, you know, for a pretty manufactured course, right, for a course where they were able to kind of build what they wanted, maybe they should have figured out how not to have that big walk between the green and the tee on the front nine. Also, there's a couple of holes that kind of play straight up the hill, the main hill of the site, in
pretty similar ways. And I think that these were just sacrifices that they made in order to make other holes on the course work. They were looking to find the best and the toughest holes possible, and so the routing of the front nine in particular suffers a little bit because of that. But the back nine, I think really clicks together well, the routing works better. I think that is the more consistent nine overall.
So I think it opens a really interesting conversation because I think there's a backlash with Chambers Bay and then Aaron Hills, and you know they weren't back to back, but close together, brand new golf courses. It was really a new trend, a new initiative, a new thought process with the US Open.
Yeah, this was kind of Mike Davis driven, right, Yes, was Aaron Hills to twenty seventeen.
Right, so two years after so and you have these golf courses that were built, there were no history, and they were built with the idea of championship golf and US opened specifically in mind. Both of these courses, Aaron Hills and Chambers Bay, and I think there was this backlash because you know, in the sense of Chambers Bay
had the putting greens, which was the big issue. I think, like the the idea of greens and the sanctity of the championship was really like in question was this a good championship because it was you couldn't make a putt, it was bouncing all around. And then at Aaron Hills we had, you know, a par seventy two, which never happens in US Opens. The wind didn't blow, and of course that kind of plays remarkably harder when the wind blows.
So you have a par seventy two in sixteen underwins and people are like, this is too easy, this is too easy. And in both cases I think they got tough shakes because a everybody always wants to complain about the US Open and the course. That's like an annual tradition, and it seems like the USGA is doing all they can to stop that, and potentially, you know, in a way that makes it a little bit less provocative and
a little bit less interesting with their setup. But with these tournaments, they became kind of like the sacrificial Lamb in a way, you know, these golf courses just have been you know it ironically, the Aaron Hills is hosting the US mid Am this year, a similar thing like where this tournament, this course was really groomed, and you know, the USGA was very involved in the building of both
of these courses for championship golf. And here we are, you know, five six years later, seven years later, and these are hosting you know, not even you know, the US Women's Am is a is a high level USGA event, but the mid Am you know, kind of a mid tier event for Aaron Hills, where you know, it was expected kind of if you talked in twenty thirteen about each of these courses, both of them were kind of Chambers Bay was open at that time, but Aaron Hills
was It was open also, but undergoing modifications, like these courses were expected to host many US Opens and with the US Open and the US Women's Open schedule, like release, Aaron Hills has a US Women's Open coming in a couple of years, but there's very little Chambers Bay and Aaron Hills on the schedule otherwise. And these were you know, and I think, like you know, if you go back in time, and I think the knee jerk reaction center around this isn't where I want to win my US
Open or US Women's Open venues. Matter was the mess from players to the USGA, and that got them to
remove these courses for the most part without history. But the reality is it's like, when you think about these championships fifty years from now, the only way you get history at a venue is if you get to go to the venue, you know, And this combined with the USGA and the PGA really both major championshipanizations, both organizations gobbling up sites, booking out their championship for decades, it you know, there's no space for a new venue to
actually become one of our iconic championship sites. And to me, it's kind of short sighted because you know, if you go back in history and read what players were talking about, what they would say about certain courses when they were on the championship schedule in the early nineteen hundreds, for
the first time, there were a critique. There are players that were upset, there were revisions, there were there were modifications that happened to these golf courses, but like they didn't just get excommunicated from the opportunity to host, and especially given Chambers Bay in the location, it just seems to be if you're going to have a national championship, you have to have a national championship that's hosted in
the Pacific Northwest. You can't just ignore parts of the country and part of that, you know, with the way they've booked it out, it's not just the Pacific Northwest. It's the Great Plains, it's the Midwest, it's the it's this, you know, the South has has no you know, there's very little venues there.
Yeah. Well, just to give people an idea of how booked the US Open is for one next year, LACC Los Angeles Country Club North Course, Pinehurst Number two, twenty twenty four, twenty twenty nine, twenty thirty five, twenty forty one, twenty forty seven, Oakmont twenty twenty five, twenty thirty three, twenty forty two, twenty forty nine, Pebble Beach twenty twenty seven,
twenty thirty two, twenty thirty seven, twenty forty four. I mean, that just doesn't leave much space, and there are other courses booked for some of the other years, you know, Shinnecock has one coming up in its future. You've said this on the Shotgun Start previously. Pebble Beach and Pinehurst Number two in particular, those are great courses, Those are US Open courses. The US Open should go there, Should
it go there three times a decade? No, I mean that just doesn't leave space for as as you're indicating fresh blood to come in. First of all, it also doesn't leave space for courses like Shinnecock Hills and the country Club and other classic US Open venues that need to be visited on a regular basis but can't be because they've simply booked up the years so much at
this point. Now, at first, the idea of these anchor sites Pebble Beach, Oakmont and Pinehurst Number two, you know, kind of definitive US Open venues being identified as such, seemed like a good idea, and I think it is a good idea. I think that the USGA deserves some credit for leaning into classic courses like these are great, great venues for a championship. But maybe we've just gone a little bit overboard here by assigning so many future US Opens to these This same kind of handful of courses.
It just doesn't allow other courses to enter the ROTA, and it doesn't allow the ROTA to be consistently refreshed. I mean it almost makes you consider your mortality, Like how old are we going to be in twenty fifty four when some of these championships are booked for who knows what the world is going to be like then why do we need to go that far forward in time and dating what US open venues are going to be?
So you got two dates open in the next you know, ten years, and when you look across the next like thirty, there are very few dates in there. I mean, Chambers Bay probably deserves a second shot, and all indications they went and fixed the big problem, right. But the other thing that happens is like, hey, what if the greatest golf course of the world gets built next year and they want to host major championships. Why is it there just space?
There's no room?
Yeah, yeah, you know what if it was the greatest course that it's built and it's open to the public and they have like a great cause behind it, and everybody's like, well, we want we got to have a US Like what I think the anchor sites and I want to be clear, Like you said, this was a good idea, but to me, they almost they got a little over zealous with how much they went to these And like, do I want I want to see pineers number two in Pebble Beach once a decade, Yes, absolutely,
but you know when you're looking at once every five years, yeah, I mean five or six years, it's just to me, that's that's a bit over the top. I understand why both those courses really want to have it, and I think this needs to be pointed out. Like if I was operating a golf resort that charged six seven, eight hundred dollars for greens fees, you know what I would want to do. I want week long commercials where the best players in the world game and played my course.
I'm not trying to discredit, you know, these golf courses legitimacy for major championships. I think they should have them, and they should have them regularly, but I don't think these are the courses that should be going that. There shouldn't be any US Open courses, given how many good venues and how big the country is that get you opens every five to six years like that, that's too much.
And I think that, you know, the ideology between behind the anchor sites is like the ability to retain some set up, you know, consistency is it's we we know we're going back there, so we can do X, Y and Z, and we can ask for X, y and z from the club, from from the local government. Like there are things that make sense with this. But you know, when we look back in this, I mean, they announced the anchor sites, you know what two years.
Ago, Yeah, something like that. It was around twenty twenty.
And I don't think anybody expected at that point that they were going to be booked almost completely up through twenty fifty, you know that, right, I mean, and then you have you have just parts of the country that are ignored.
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professionals who understand the challenges faced by club pros. So if you set up and manage golf events and would like to save a lot of time and hassle, you have to check out golf Genius. All right, back to the episode, So, what's your interpretation of why the PGA of America and the USGA are going so far into the future. Is it just kind of like an arms race at this point where I think the USGA is afraid that the PGA of America is going to book
whatever course for you know, twenty fifty three. Well we better get them, get them for twenty fifty three before they do.
I think it's partly that, right. I think it's there are there are very clear lines in the sand, like this is a PGA course or a USGA course. I guess one of them that that splits kind of the bill is an Olympic club because they have PGA stuff and USGA stuff. But I think that's the main thing
is is there there's competition between those two organizations. And obviously the PGA, now because it's in May, cannot be hosted at a lot of places because of weather, right you know, the upper Midwest and which they had really gone to a lot, and the Northeast is a little
bit off limits. So it creates a little bit of a you know, And I think that's one of the things you could point to is a good thing for the Frisco you know course being you know, it gives Texas a major every once in a while, which is important, right, But I think that's the thing is like it's an arms race, and when you book out like this, I think what it also does it gives each of the organizations leverage over the club slash course that they are
trying to negotiate with. So if they are booked like they are now, they say, hey, we want you to host in twenty twenty eight or twenty thirty one and here's the deal. This is what we need from you. And if you don't take this, well we there's a bunch of other courses that we can go to. Right, Like, it creates scarcity if you think about it from a business sense, right it creates scarcity with your with your vendors. So then the vendors have to compete with each other
for your business. And a lot of these clubs, like some of these clubs business models are dependent on high level championship golf, like because that high level championship golf brings in money that week, but it also spurs a lot of organizations wanting to host big money Monday outings at their club that flip a lot of bills over the years, you know. So like a lot of these courses, like championship golf is fundamental just like a resort for
like the commercial and the local community. And I want to host my Monday outing here, not all of them, but some of.
Them, and the bookings so are so far out in advance. Creates a situation where if Club X wants to host a US Open and twenty thirty seven is the only open year between now and twenty sixty then the USGA is in a really or the PGA of America is in a really strong position to say, well, you've got to do these things in order to get that championship, and if you don't want to do it, then there's plenty of other courses that want that one year, and so it kind of strengthens them. But you know, what
they've had to give up is significant as well. Essentially they've had to give up a lot of open dates to Pinehurst and Pebble Beach, which maybe wasn't that good of a deal for them.
Well, I think it's the it's the commercialization. I think, like a lot of these I think in the last twenty years, there's been a big realization, especially with the TV, how how TV deals are going with with sports. Right these TV deals are getting so big that they realize
how much money is at stake with these things. And that's another part of it, is that they need more infrastructure, they need more grand stands, they need a bigger merch tent so that it goes to that leverage point where we can say we need this, this and this, and it's not just the course, it's I mean Mike one and Mike Davis have talked about, you know, working with the local government and states in order. You know, I
think there's something they did with Pennsylvania. I can't remember exactly off hand, but they have something with with Pennsylvania where you know, there's they they're working directly with the state to make things happen, which you know, as when you start to think about all the needs of a championship, I mean, like just think about parking, road closures, all these things, Like these championships are really big things to put on and they reach far further than just the
golf course, right, And that might be why there's never going to be another one in Olympia Fields. They you know, because of how difficult that was in two thousand and three.
Why was it difficult?
I just have you know, you you spend enough time in Chicago, you hear the stories of working with the with the with Cook County, and yeah.
And that may be part of what's working against Chambers Bay at this moment. The local government has a fraught relationship with Chambers Bay. And I'm not sure what the parking situation or the lodging situation was like in university place out there, And I'm sure there may have been some issues. So you know, obviously the Pinehurst area has been really easy for the for high level tournaments relatively, so that's that's part of the reasoning.
So okay, one question, you know, here's like I just I'm going to read off some stuff for you here with the women's now like, yes, similarly it's very booked out. But the women's open, you have twenty twenty three, twenty thirty five, twenty forty and twenty forty eight at Pebble Beach.
You have twenty twenty four at Lancaster in Pennsylvania, you have twenty twenty five at Iron Hill's, twenty six at Riviera, twenty seven at Inverness, twenty eight at Oakmont and thirty eight at Oakmont, twenty nine at Pinehurst.
Only twenty twenty nine at Pinehurst. Yeah, that's interesting, isn't it.
Twenty thirty at interlock In, twenty thirty one and twenty forty two at Oakland Hills, and twenty thirty four and twenty forty six at Marion. So one of the things that immediately jumps out one year at Pinehurst. The other thing that jumps out is, you know, you have four Pebble Beach years, but they're more paced. Appropriately, You've got twelve years between the first playing at Pebble Beach in
twenty twenty three and twenty thirty five. You obviously go twenty forty there, so five years, but then another eight. So here's like I just think this women's schedule to me is actually like kind of put together the way you would want to see it. There's there's still some openings. I mean there aren't many.
There's not one twenty twenty thirty two.
But at the same time, like the pacing of it is better.
You have more courses.
There's more courses. There's Pinehurst only has one in there, and all of a sudden, if a great golf course comes to be, you have open space. There's no reason, really none whatsoever for a tournament to be planned out to pass twenty thirty one. Right.
Well, when I was walking around Chambers Bay, the big thing I had on my mind was how great a US Women's Open would be there. You know, I'm not totally sure about a US Open at Chambers Bay. I think there's a lot of reasons that maybe that tournament wouldn't work quite as well there because of the crowd sizes, and because I think that the lengths that the players hit the ball now would really come to dominate that course. Now it can be a long course. It was plenty
hard for players in twenty fifteen. Maybe not for all the right reasons, but.
Well, the golf ball might not go as far.
Yeah, Well, if there's a rollback, then maybe it comes back into the mix. But just you know, the thing that makes Chambers Bay special is the play along the ground, and I think that that's a little bit more accentuated in the women's game. I think it would be a terrific us women's open site and I hope that they get booked up at one of these open dates in the twenty thirties, but there's not an open spot until twenty thirty two. And I don't know. It's fine because
they're going to a bunch of different courses. I love seeing Interlocking on there. I love seeing Inverness on there. Right Inverness is in that mix. Aaron Hill's a modern.
Court riviera women at Riviera that's fantastic, awesome, awesome, Like you want to talk about West Coast, and I think it's a course everybody's so intimate with because of the men's tournament every year, but getting a women's Open there,
I mean fantastic. I don't agree, and I really like what they've done, and I think it's very important to point out, like they have elevated the venue, the women's venues it to a whole different level than if you you know, think back, we covered a US Women's Open at Champions Golf Course in Houston, like you know, and this is not a shot at Champion. It's just you know, Champions Golf, Champions Golf Club. It's just it's not Pebble Beach or you know, Riviera.
You know that that has been a big factor in the US Women's Open. And also the Women's Open right has gone to some odd courses, and we've seen a shift there where more kind of really substantial feeling classic championship courses are being introduced to those to those rotas you know, US Women's Open has been held fairly recently at Trump National Bedminster, Court of Owl right or Court of All I'm not sure how it's pronounced. And so there have been some questionable US Women's Open venues, and
the future sites here are definitely promising. So that's that's great.
Say you were say you were John Bodenhamer tomorrow, what would be the first thing you change about about venue selection? And like, if you could, if you could make any tweaks to both venue you know, both women's and men's, what would you do? Or say you're Carrie Haig in charge of the PGA, what would you do?
Well, they can't change anything right now, but am I imagining that I could change the free ring any deals they've made? Well, first of all, just to drive home this point, I'm not sure that I'd book any more than ten years in advance. And maybe that wouldn't be in the best business interests of the USGA or the PGA of America, But I think that it really hamstrings you if you're booking twenty years in advance, because we don't know how the game is going to evolve in
twenty years. We don't know how these courses are going to change over twenty years, and we don't know what other courses are going to come online and become, you know, really legitimate championship hosts in twenty years. And so I think not booking more than ten years in advance would be great. I'd love to see Obviously Chambers Bay back in the rod to some more modern courses being experimented with. Kiawa was a fantastic host, and that's not really on
the radar for these major championships right now. So that's an example of a course that could be introduced. I'd love to see the country Club back. I'm not sure there's any plans right now to go back to the country Club for the US Open or the US Women's Open.
And I don't you know, I think I don't think that club really wants to host a ton.
So they're not as eager as some of these other clubs.
If you could get them in like fifteen years. But like then you look at the calendar and you're like, oh, well there's like one or two options there, and then we're even more booked out.
Yeah, and I think that just again, this is reiterating a point, but I don't think I'd go back to Pebble Beach more than once a decade. I don't think i'd go back to Oakmont more than once a decade, and I wouldn't go back to Pinehurst Number two more than once a decade. Even Shinnecock Hills at this point is getting a little bit of short shrift with these championships because it is booked for twenty twenty six. Maybe they just didn't want to negotiate about the twenty thirties
or twenty forties. But there's nothing else on the books for Shinnacock Hills, and that's every bit as iconic a US Open and as essential a US Open venue as Pinehurst Number two, Oakmont or Pebble Beach, and so that one should be a big part of the plans going forward, but it's not apparently one of these courses that gets the twenty fifties treatment at this point.
I mean, Wingfoot's not even on here, Yeah, exactly. I think that's the crazy And obviously, like there are certain areas of the country and like, if I was tasked with this, the first thing I'd immediately do is I would I would pull out a map and I would start to and I'm sure this has been done, but I would start to like put down pins on exactly where I think viable US Open hosts are and I would kind of work from there in building this out and making sure that I touch all these areas of
the country. And I mean, like, I hate the term growth the game. But like legitimately bringing the National Championship to all parts of the country, it should be a pretty important And I know, like you can't go to Arizona in June, like so the Southwest and is going to be mixed out, and I get that, but like getting to and making an effort to get to areas of the country. And I am always a proponent of best like venues matter, golf courses matter, but in this case,
like you do need to get to different areas. And when you look at this the list, it's it's so geographically, you know, constrained to just certain parts of the country. And I think that's like the number one thing that I think is falling short on because when you bring championship, when you bring the National Championship and you rotate it around, that's the whole the history of this thing. You should try and be making a conscious effort to bring it to all the big areas of the country.
And I think also that championship venue selection can play a role in encouraging the advancement of golf course architecture. Chambers Bay is a modern golf course. It is a different looking and playing type of modern championship venue, and I think that that kind of innovation should be encouraged. That's part of what drove golf architecture for good or for ill for many many decades in the twenties. Look
at the courses that we're hosting US opens now. Obviously, the US Open is on a completely different scale now and there are so many other considerations than what the USGA in the nineteen twenties had to deal with. But the nineteen twenties, that's when you saw Wingfoot introduced, That's when you saw Oakland Hills introduced. These were new golf courses at the time, and there were energetic architects trying to build courses to challenge the best players in the world.
I think when we book this far in advance with golf courses that were built many decades ago, that it kind of takes some of the impetus out of golf architecture and golf course development, at least this specific genre of it, you know. I like when golf architects are trying to build something that challenges the best players but
also suits average amateur players. I think Chambers Bay does that really well, and I'd love to see more architects try to do this, and you know, having all these years be booked up for the US Open and PGA Championship might take a little bit of the momentum out of that.
In both those cases, the developers of Chambers Bay and Aaron Hills sought out championship golf because it was available to them, and I think now the incentive is not there, so there's no you know, there's no reason to try and build a championship golf, which leads to as you know, you brought this up like a one dimensional kind of architecture scene where I think, I I think anybody that's listened to this podcast knows that we are all for playability.
But I think that when you swing the pendulum to it's all and only about playability and not about testing, I think you've lost the plot a little bit. And it's important for golf and shots to have consequence when you hit poor shots. And if we swing all the way to where it's just about designing for you know, too long golf architecture was about designing for pros, but it's important to keep them in mind, you know, because you want to the best courses stimulate all levels of player.
And I feel like when you when championship golf isn't even considered, what happens is that, you know, there are very good players that can play championship golf that go and you know, and I think that's just, uh, it's something to keep in mind. And championship golf is the you know, in being able to host the US Open is kind of the allure of a developer potentially going down the road of building one of these golf courses exactly.
Not only individual developers who are just pursuing a business opportunity, but Chambers Bay, that project would not have gotten off the ground if the possibility of a US Open weren't there. Investment is the key word here, Bethpage Black wouldn't have gotten that level of investment if the US Open or the PGA Championship had not been a possibility for that course.
And the same with Chambers Bay. I don't think Chambers Bay would have been built today because people who are making decisions about whether to move that project forward would have said, well, if we're gonna get a US Open, it's not gonna happen until twenty forty seven or whatever, so why should we put this much into this golf course and Chambers Bay. You know, I didn't even mention how wonderfully woven in it woven in it is in its community like that it has beautified that part of
that town. There are places for kids to play around it, they are walking paths through it. It's a whole thing. It's a big scene there and it's really improved that place. And that investment I don't think would have happened if the future landscape of championship golf look like it does now.
Tory Pines has that too, and I think, like my resounding point I think overarching is that you can't become a historic US Open venue without the opportunity to host US opens. And it feels like that has been removed from everybody, you know, in a way, there's no real path to it because there are you know, contracts in place with with you know, resorts and clubs alike that have gobbled up really the all the opportunity to host.
And that is a something that the organizations like the USGA and the PGA of America can keep in mind, is how are we incentivizing communities to invest in golf and championship venue selection is a big way to do that.
And right now, I think that the approach to championship venue selection has moved away from incentivizing communities to invest in golf and has moved towards what are some efficiencies for the USGA itself and how can we kind of lock in contracts competitively in order to best serve the organization.
And you know, maybe ultimately that's a good decision, and it will enable the USGA to do more things outside of championships in order to encourage the the advancement of the game and the and the cultivation of the game. But man, it just seems like if a Chambers Bay project were on the table today, if it if there were a possibility that something like this could be built in another city, it might not move forward. And I think that's that's sort of a bummer.
Yeah, I think you've hit on like one of the most difficult conundrums I would imagine that the USGA finds itself in is the delineation between being the governing body that's supposed to support all these things and advance the game, but also running in a very efficient and profitable business even though they're non profit. But like you know, the
US Open and the US Women's Open. Those are the big ticket things that really fund so much of the other stuff they do, So that's it's a really tricky situation. I do not want that to go unnoticed. Is like they're trying to make as much money as they possibly can from those so that they can do as much with the you know, for other programs as they possibly can. And I think that has a lot to do with it, Like that is a you know there, that's part of
why it's so booked out. But you know, you this is the thing that you lose when you do that.
Okay, Yeah, I think that's I think that's the big idea that we were working towards there. Andy, thanks for chatting with me about this today. And I hope that we'll see Chambers Bay on some rota or another soon. We didn't really go through PGA championship venues, but I don't know if that's a possibility or not. The USGA has kind of claimed Chambers Bay, but I'd love to see more golf there because it was really fun to be there. But in any case, let's wrap it up here.
Thanks a lot, any thanks. This episode of The Frida Egg podcast was edited by meg Atkins. If you're not currently subscribed to the Friday newsletter, I would highly recommend that you do. So, go to the Frida Egg dot com and click subscribe, and three times a week you will get a fresh newsletter delivered to your inbox for free, with writing from Will Knights, Andy Johnson, Brendan Porrath, meg Atkins,
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