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 fried egg, Frida egg, the dreaded Frida egg, Frida eg, fridagg bride egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the hum. Welcome back to another edition of the Frida Egg Podcast. Today's episode is with James Duncan. James Duncan is a longtime associate for Coren Crenshaw. He has also worked with Tom Doak. He is a great golf mind and I
really enjoyed speaking with him. He's been a fundamental driving force behind the new Corn Crenshaw golf course in north of Napa called Brambles, which is being grassed right now, so it's getting close to having golf holes open and ready to play. I think they're targeting next year for a full opening. But it was great to talk to James. He's a wealth of knowledge and just very thoughtful person. So, without further ado, here is our episode with James Duncan.
With it, can you explain that internship that you signed up for so you're in college? Like just the backstory, a little bit on that.
Yeah, So you know, I'm in Copenhagen as a civil engineering student and there's no such thing as a golf program, so you had to kind of fake it. You had to make it sound like engineering, like.
A program to be a golf architect.
Yeah, there was none of that, so you had to go to golfing to do it. I think that my sister someone had given me Tom Doak's book The Anatomy of a Golf Course. It had just come out, and he describes his journey, and of course I knew about Robert Trent Jones and the Cornell thing and all that, but this was a way to again use my whatever credits I had to take in Copenhagen as a way to get my toe in the water on the golf side. I knew I had to go to Scotland to do it.
My sister lived there, had just moved a couple of years earlier. All my father's family was from there. We always used to visit as kids. We would go up to the Highlands a little bit more than so of s Andrews. We'd go to Edinburgh, we'd go to North Berwick and we'd go up to the Highlands. But it was always a place. It was a place I was familiar with, and I just felt like, you know, here's this is this is where you should go if you're trying to get into this golf golf thing.
So so you then applied for this internship that you went to the dean of dean of the school or was something to get the internship, and they you.
Know what I did, and I went to visit my sister, which is always an excuse to play a lot of golf. And then I set up a meeting with the Scottish Golf Union and it was through that group that they recommended some companies. I then set up meetings to go and visit these companies talk to the people involved. The one I was originally was going to do didn't work out. It was up in Sterling, didn't work out, and I had all but sort of given up on it and i'd actually gone back to Copenhagen. Then I got a
phone call. I think this is sort of pre email. I got a phone call or somehow this other company, the one that I wound up going to, reached out and said, look, we've heard about what you're doing. Sorry it's taken us so long. To respond to your correspondence. And then this guy Morris, his name was Maurice Gray. Marris said, I'm going to be in Copenhagen next week by coincidence. Can we meet up and just talk about
what you want to do? And and I met and it was just one of those where seems legitimate, let's let's do it, let's go and then off I went often to Aberdeen, which we were just talking about previously.
So you get this internship. Your job is to travel around Scotland and talk to superintendents all over the country. Yep, I mean I imagine that probably couldn't be a better learning experience for somebody trying to learn the intricacies of a golf course.
It was a total manna from the heavens. I mean, this is just so lucky that that's what they wanted me to do. We talked about in generality is what they did and what they were trying to do. But for them to give me that brief, here's the car, go and see as much golf as you can, meet as many people as you can talk to them, it was just fantastic. I'll do two or three a day.
Is there a situation like a course and a superintendent that stand out that you still think about like today from that trip.
Hands down, George Brown at Turnbury, George who since passed away, was just a you can just tell this guy is a lovely human being. And he was just so generous with his time. He'd hosted open championships. He was like a big deal, here comes this pimple faith faced, you know, engineering student from Denmark. The fact that he even met with me, but he took time and he said, let's go. He had a little cottage on the golf course. My wife has prepared lunch for us, Let's go and sit down,
have lunch. And he basically took half a day to tour him around and talk about golf. And I mean, just a wonderful, wonderful man. I would say he stands out as someone I just remember so vividly to this day.
That would be crazy. I mean, so, how many courses did you see over how deed, over how long of a time.
I think it was about one hundred, one hundred and twenty somewhere in that range, all the way from the turn Breeze and the Old Courses and the Breastwick's two places you've never heard of, but it's interesting the ones you've never heard of. People I now meet will say and we'll say, have you been to this place? And
sure enough a Boat of Garden is another one. Boat of Garden I remember going to and just being just it's just a fascinating place because it's you probably wouldn't pick it as a place to play golf except it was in this town. It's very sporting property up over this hill, down this hollow and over and cross and
heather hills and just very very interesting golf course. But now I think now that people are more conscious about Scottish golf, the diversity of Scottish golf, the interesting ways in which well why can't that be a golf course as opposed to just sort of what stereotypically it is
thought of as a golf course. That's now, now that there's more awareness about golf and golf course design and golf history, those places are increasingly sort of cropping back up as oh, yeah, I remember when we're going to Boat of Goden.
That's like, I mean, that's the best way to see you know at that age too is when you confusibly do it is before you have family, before you have anything holding you back from you can just go see as many golf courses as you possibly can. Because you're a college student. This is what you want to do, right.
You have to remember at that time any ideas I might have had about golf course design and strategy or whatever very very early. So I was just taking in just the diversity of the courses. You got to place like Ollapool way up northwest where it could have been.
It's just a wonderful place to play golf. So I think I filed that away too, that let's not get too Yes there's strategy, Yes there's design and organizing things in a certain way, but a big part of it is also just sort of capturing where you are while you're playing and just having that be an essential part of the of the golf experience. And I think that's
what the Scots. They was probably too cheap to do too much, so they would just kind of play the courses as they were, which resulted in you just playing the natural ground and the natural conditions, do as little to it as you can. Those things have stayed with me to this day. When I think about design, I really try and think about how do you how do you capture the essence of where you are while you're playing.
I mean one of the things that recently was like the US Open at the country Club that I think people were I think it captivated people both on the television people there. But what you just hit on, I think one of the things that I think that the country Club did so well was it exuded like that sense of place that you're talking about, Like you knew when you were watching on TV that this tournament was in Boston because of the landscape and the colors and
the textures that were presented at that golf course. And I think that's one of the things that often goes a little bit overlooked with golf, like great golf courses or they usually give you like you know where you are when you're there. It's not you know. And obviously there are certain courses that pull this off, but it's not a course trying to be something that it doesn't. The landscape doesn't want it to be. Right.
Yeah, I think it starts off with you as a club or as a developer or as an operator that you want to do you value that. It has to stop that if you start off saying I want to be like take a pick of a famous course and you just work towards that. You're never going to have what we're talking about. But if you value the natural characteristics of your property and the setting and the context, then it takes you in a different direction. That is exactly what you're describing with Brookline.
I feel like that is like I say, and I don't use this from lightly, but that's like a disease that runs through America. Is the idea in American golf is like, we need to be like this, And for years it was Augusta for you know, and then or you know, for local clubs, it's we need to be this prominent club down the street, versus like the idea of just being yourself right eighteen holes.
I mean why now, recently, in the last ten fifteen years, twelve holes, thirteen six. It's something that has gained awareness and people are doing in great fashion. But until that, it was all, well, you've got to have eighteen you've got to have past seventy two, you've got to have you know, four fives and four three's, and it's got to be a certain distance. I'm old enough to remember the when in the nineties when all the development was happening, you had to have had to be hard, It had
to be difficult. Fun was not really in the equation because it's all about the rankings, and you only got ranked if you were difficult, and this was more difficult than that. It was an insane way of thinking about golf, at least from my point of view, when the essence of the game is to have fun.
So what was your first, like construction job that you were on a crew?
So the company that I went to the internship with they were also doing a nine hole renovation at Kilmarnarch, which is up by Glasgow on the West coast. I can't say I was involved in any meaningful degree other than I was on a construction site. There's all this stuff happening. This is really cool and I want to keep moving towards this, but I didn't. I didn't have time. It was there was an academic component. Had to do the coursework and prepare for that. Then I went back
to Copenhagen and finished finished my studies. But then at the end of it had to write a thesis and that's what took me to the States. Same process, write send off letters. This time to the USGA and ask them for recommendations on where to go to further pursue what I was interested in, and they very kindly. Jim Snow and Kimberly Rusher wrote me a letter back and said, these are the universities we would recommend, with the usual suspects, including Cornell. And that's how I wound up at Cornell.
And as some of your listeners may know, they met all the usual suspects, met Tom Doak and Gil Hanson, Jim Bina, and that was my real entry to what was going on at that time in the US. These guys with these young mavericks just doing all this interesting fun stuff, and I somehow got a tone the door and here we are.
That had to be an interesting experience going from I imagine, you know, you're in Copenhagen where nobody's doing any of this, and then you move, you know, across to the United States and you meet these other young guys that are all doing like It had to be kind of like a real I don't know what the right word is, but like when you're you know, young, and you you know, like had to be just a neat experience to like get and be with other people where you can discuss this stuff, right.
And I think as one of those, you don't appreciate how lucky you were I was at that time until now. I mean I look back on now, it's say, what an incredible stroke of luck those guys at that time ninety three ninety four, somewhere there where we're building three hundred golf courses a year in the country. There's just nothing but opportunities, interesting thoughts, things happening. So yeah, it was a perfect time in a perfect place.
What did you notice different from what they were doing from what everybody else was doing.
Well, again, I didn't know enough to really know the difference at the time. I just knew that these guys were doing some interesting stuff. We went down the Stonewall had just been built. This is right when Gil had left Tom and they were all sort of pursuing very interesting things. But I can't really say I had a frame of reference other than I went to Gusta, saw the tournament and just you'd never seen I mean, you guess have been. I mean, it's just unbelievable when you
actually see it. Went to Marion, went to National, I means just had a chance to see all these special places and was blown away by all of it, and mercifully, I mean, worked with guys who knew what they were doing and had a chance to learn from them. But back then I was a glorified ditch digger. I mean it was just out there. Just tell me what to do and I'll try and do it.
Maybe man good?
Yeah, when you on?
Did you link up with Bill and Ben? How did that happen?
I had met obviously knew them by reputation. I had met Ben. I'd met over at National. He was practicing for the ninety five years Open at Shinnacock went that's right before Forward there you go. He was practicing over there, and of course I was just awestrock and he said National, I mean, come on, he loves the place and he's over like radiant beaming. He's playing. Well, you know, he just won the Masters. I mean, it's been crunch. He just won the Masters and he's at National. So I mean,
I'm just you know, completely all strock. And then Bill I met I think at one of Tom's events he had the Renaissance Cup. I think just met him briefly, But I do remember at that time thinking if I ever have a chance to work with those guys, I'd love to pursue it. And Tom very generously at that time. Wasn't this is before Bandon Dunes and we had a few things going on, but it wasn't like he was had way too much work to handle. So he very generously I think he called Bill and said, look, I
have this guy. He's doing some things with us, but he has expressed an interest in working with you. And I have to tell this story because it just again just illustrates the sort of person that Bill is. And Ben also that I had to go back to Denmark. There was some family my father was very ill at the time. I had to go back to Denmark, and I had left Bill a voicemail before leaving, and I
obviously didn't expect anything at all. Bill calls me back in Denmark on the landline in my parents' house, apologizing profusely for not having called me back four days after. So, I mean, someone who does that for you, and and so I just immediately felt like, man, this this, this is this is special. And I knew they were going to do a project out in east Hampton Eastampton Golf Club, and I said, Bill I'll do anything you want me to.
I'll it could be for a week, it could be for a month, it could be for the whole project. I'll I'll drive a water truck, I'll rake bunkers. I'll do whatever you want me to. And you can tell you like you say, you're serious. So yeah, let me when I when I come back, let me just I was in Ithaca at the time. Let me just come out and meet with you. If that's okay, We'll just we'll just meet up.
Sounds it sounds similar to when he met Pete Dye.
Probably, which of course I didn't know at the time. Yeah. So I drove out there in my Volve, my Ithaca Volvo station wagon, right, horn, rimmed glasses, tall, lanky, Danish guy or theory, no experience. Who is this guy? Right? And I'm out there with the guys who've actually built the stuff, the Dave axelent that those guys Jim Craig, and they took one look at me, like, really, this
guy is going to work out. So I think, almost like as a joke, it was almost like, all right, let's see if he actually will drive a water truck. And I did, and we had a great summer. We had like five or six of us working together, Jeff Bradley, with all the usual suspects, and we had a great summer.
And then I think my stroke of fortune was that this thing in California was going to go dos Puebos in Santa Barbara was coming online and it fit my skills to a t reams of plans, permit conditions, grading, erosion control, kind of a proper engineering project. And they looked around the room, like, who can we send out there? There's our guy. So Bill asked me would like to go to California and be part of the dos Perblos thing? And I went out and it didn't happen, which was
a whole nother story. But then while I was out there for a while, Ben and some of his friends had bought this property in Austin and they were going to build the Austin Golf Club. And they said, well, if those Piblos isn't gonna happen, why don't you come to Austin and help us build Austin Golf Club.
That's that does playblis project that sounded like a spectacular place could have been.
I just drove by it just the other day. The PBC post are still out there marking the t's and the turning points in the greens.
That was a chevron was was it chevron.
Or acco arco site? It was a you know, they would come in with the tankers off coast and then they would pipe it from the tankers up onto the property in these big holding tanks, and then they would do the refinery or refinement or whatever it's called, the processing of the crude on that property and then truck
it to wherever it was needed. So it had been decommissioned as a oil refinery side and they were going to convert it into a public golf course forty dollar golf, public access with pedestrian trails and questrian trails and you know, bike trails and proper access to the beach. And my sense was in the local community there was nothing but support for it, but sort of in the special interests groups they afforded tooth and nail. Water. I think water
was an issue, a big issue. Having enough water out there and be able to justify using it for golf was a big issue, and probably legitimately so some of the other things were a little bit more marginal, like seals. You know, the errant golf balls were going to impact the mating rituals of the seals down on the beach. Come on, I mean, you just people just trying to block this project so it never happened, and it still sets there.
That had to be kind of like, you know, you're young. It's like you got this job, you're you're super excited working with these guys, and having that happen with one of you, like the first projects had to be tough, like having it not happen.
It was tough, but it was so exciting just to be there. But I do remember that, and we still sort of we don't think we joke about it, but we certainly still make reference to it. I remember one particular meeting, and I don't think Bill would mind my saying this. I remember one meeting, a Coastal Commission meeting which we had to attend, and people go up then make the case for either being in favor of or
against the project. And this one particular attorney goes up and claims that the golf course architects the developers had made no effort to incorporate the various interests of the community, which was patently untrue. I mean they had moved the greens, moved this and change this over here. And Bill approached him during an intimission. He said, you know, you know just as well as I do that we have made all these changes, We've done all these things. And the
attorney goes, Bill, please don't take it personally. I'm just I'm just doing my job. I'm just representing my client. And Bill just turned around and walk down the room like this is not a there's not a process, this is not a conversation. This is just a waste of everybody's time, which was a shame. So, yeah, that was the end of Dusk webinos.
Yeah, that's still stakes in the ground, that's what So Austin Golf Club, that's that's a one of the things that is unique about that. Of course, I think from what people have characterized me, I've played it, but is that it's more Crenshaw than you know, Core and Crenshaw. Right, absolutely, that's a that's really like a Ben Crenshaw golf course by design.
I mean Bill was very again again speaks to who he is and who they both are that Bill felt like this should be this is Ben's home club. This is something that he will be part of for the rest of his life. He should be the driver on this, and he was hilarious. It's hilarious to watch these two guys right because it's there's always a humor component. But I think Bill did most of the routing, you know, laid it out with Ben's advice. But yeah, no, you're right.
All the greens, all the details, the bunkering, everything is essentially Ben's handiwork.
Why is it a like what's different when Ben does everything from when you know the usual process of them building golf courses together.
That's a good question. I think Tom Kite described Austin Golf Club as the hardest golf course from ten yards in that there's so many little nuances in the greens, and if you're a really good player, you can work away around those. If you're not so good, it's it's tough. So I think that's a different Ben would probably not do a croquetial together, may not do greens quite like that for a less a compli a place where you're trying to accommodate a greater spectrum of players, it's a
good players club. I think that's probably one difference some of the maybe some of the visuals like Ben. I don't think Ben was particularly interested in anything looking particularly flashy or it's all pretty subdued and golf centric and about placement and about angles and about contours. Ben's a big big on contours, mounds and things like that. So I think that's probably one difference over something they might
have done together. And again, just the simple, unpretentious snow frills, just go out and have a good time playing golf.
Would you characterize the way I've kind of always thought about it in my head, and I usually to rate and relate things like everybody does back to like in a way, Bill's almost like the writer and Ben's an editor where he comes in he looks at the projects and it's like, oh, what do you think about this? What do you think of you know? Like? Are you
sure this? You know? Like? And that's the way the kind of process works, where you know, Bill will put together the article or the book, and then Ben goes through it and Addison gives his thoughts on different things.
I think that's true, and I think, well, I will say this about ben uncanny ability to just step off a plane or out of a rental count and go out walk around and then it's such a high golf iq and has played the game so well for so long to say, how about if that shot presented itself a little bit differently? How about if we raise this upload and he's got this incredible, interesting idiosyncratic the vocabulary,
Oh that's a little aggy. What does that mean? It's a little aggy over there, you know, how about this little guy right over here or that hot dog or whatever. It's just the language is just fascinating. You can write a dictionary of just sort of terms that they use.
For like the young guys that are working their first job with them. It's like, here's the translation of these things.
That's a little that's a little puffy right there. Yeah, so no, but you're right, but I did discover So my role with them really for most of them, my time working with them was sort of organizer, project organizer. You know, you've got to organize the all the various project parts and give the guys what they need on the shaping side and sort of work with the client, you know, that sort of thing. So I would also organize Bill and Ben's time and when do you need
Ben to come back. Well, if you just blew up the fairway because you're putting in irrigation range, he doesn't really what am I looking at. There's just the piles of stuff out there. So you had to get him at the right time. And there were sort of two times when it was really ideal to get him. One was once she was setting the stage. You're trying to the concepts for the holes short for path three or a longer hole over here, the way they all fit together,
the changes in the direction. Great time to get him out there, get the two of them together, lay the foundation, and then he could go away. He was still playing at that time, go away play. And then you'd had to get him in once you you were a certain point of detail with the shaping where he could see it. I can see how this looks, and I can see yeah again a little too eggy or a little too puffy or whatever it was. So to get him at the right time was the key. And then they were
just incredible together. And the way you could tell that Bill relied on and greatly valued Ben's input because from his point of view, you know, you've got so much going on with organizing jobs. Where are we going to go next, Have I routed this course for this perspective client, Did I go and look at these four other properties that Ben could come in with fresh eyes and say, yeah, well that's fine all that stuff, but that's maybe a little bit too eggy on the corn of that green. Well.
I mean, I think that's like with I think anybody can relate to that. It's like when you get so deep in the weeds and your thing and I in a in a golf project, a golf course that you're talking some of these things from end to end four years, you get and you know, I think one of the things that's unique about Bill, Bill and Ben and Coren Crenshaw is like they don't take a ton of jobs, right, so you know the jobs that they do or they are deeply, deeply invested in and very in the weeds.
So when you get into those weeds, you know, you lose sight of little things and you get almost too close to Really it's that whole saying you're so you can't see the forest through the trees, right, And that's where the it's nice to have some of that just comes in and has you know, has also like at the time you're describing is going around the country playing golf at different places and seeing new stuff all the time.
You know, granted the tours playing the same place as for the most part, but I think he was going and seeing new courses as I've read a lot about, like you know, famously going up to play Crystal Downs before he won the won the Detroit event or the Warwick Kills event. But but yeah, that's a fascinating thing about like scheduling their time. I have to ask, you know, you know, with that, like, how is it how is it scheduling all this stuff in planning with somebody that doesn't have email.
That's a good point and somehow it works. And you're right to this day, Ben doesn't have email. Builders email they you ask the wives, they might have a slightly more nuanced view on this. How do they actually communicate without email? Because there is some some that goes channel through there and they have Scotty in the office, Scotty Sayers in the office, But yeah, they I think. I mean, it's I admire that I admire the keeping things simple.
I mean, this is you were talking about stories. I mean, these are just coming to my mind as we speak about it. But I think there was one interview they did during the there was the Pinehost renovation where they're being interviewed about the project and about how that's all going. And the interviewer goes, yeah, there's something on your website about whatever it was, and they looked at each other, and you can tell us just one hundred percent genuine
they look at it like we have a website. They had no idea they had a website, neither one of them. And I absolutely can see that. So now I think it's a point of great pride, right. It's but that again, it just speaks that now he's let's not clutter of things up unnecessarily. Let's just keep it simple. Let's pick up the phone and call me, Let's talk to each other. It's it's that's who they are.
It's uh, yeah, I love when you get you get text messages from Bill and he uses emojis, but he doesn't use the you know, have the email. It's like he's using em my dad has no clue what an emoji is. But he could use the email. But that Bill does have an email, like you know, I you know, if I had my brothers, i'd probably get rid of my my email. What you know, we talked about a few projects. You have a particular core and Crunchhaw. Of course that's been finished. We're going to talk about Brambles
and in a second, but that's done. That stands out in your mind as like, you know, that one's my the place I would spend the most time at.
You know, Austin Golf Dolls was so much Ben's project. We were just trying to figure out what Ben I wanted. After that, I was very lucky to go to Atlantic City and work on a place called Hidden Creek, and Hidden Creek was it was just such a wonderful experience. Roger and Duena Hansen were the owners and the developers. They had other golf Bluehound Pines, they had a couple
of golf courses that they had developed previously. But they had known Bill and Ben for years and this was their chance to work with them, and they were just so excited about it. And I remember Bill saying and again it's just just how what a what a what a wonderful thought. And for him to have the the
willingness to say this. He said to me, I want you to work on this project in a manner where you feel like you could take someone back here someday and say this is what I believe in, this is this is the kind of golf that I like to play and would like to see and be part of. Use that mind set as you participate in this project. I mean you talk about a motivator for a thirty two year old, you know, really you want me to go here and just basically feel like this is I'm
part of the design process. So that one, especially right down to the concept. You know, we sort of came up with the sort of heathland style. The property suited that perfectly. It was going to be a club that you know, members would play over and over and over again, so again you could come to learn to play the course. It could have a little bit of quirk to it, and so that one, I would say Hidden Creek was a special two years of being down there and working
with an owner who trusted the process. It was different. It was not necessarily what you sort of normally would see on the Jersey Shore. There was some you know, some Willie Park influences and things like that locally, but for that era, it was it was very different. Bill and Ben embraced it and all the guys. It was. It was a very special time.
I am back from Scotland, so it was a great trip. Just about two weeks over there, and thank you, big thank you to Zero Restriction for getting us over there. They were our sponsor for the two weeks and we'll have a ton of content that's coming out in the next couple weeks center around the trip. So they have a promo code going on right now if you are interested in getting some good outerwear SGS. That's SGS Summer twenty five. That's the promo code at zero restriction dot com.
Big thank you to them for sponsoring this Scotland trip. We have some writing up on the website. We've posted some social videos also. I'm going to be writing kind of like a journal from the trip that I have. I've got notes written down. I'm just kind of formulating it. I think we're going to run those in the Friday newsletter. So if you're interested in just kind of stories and thoughts on courses along the way, sign up for the Fridagg newsletter at the Fridagg dot com. It'll be right
there to pop up. You know, there's a and sign up for that and you'll get it get my thoughts kind of through the newsletter and then they'll be eventually
posted to the website as well. I think you hit on something with the description of, you know, a golf course, like suiting the design to the concept of the course, and it sounds simple, but it doesn't always work right, you know where Okay, you know, we could build quirk into this because it's an everyday golf course versus you know, building a resort course, which is something that somebody might go to once in their life, you know, And you know is that something I guess, like you know, do
you sometimes see golf courses that are miscast and maybe would work better if they were in a different setting. Just speaking in generalities, you and I we've.
Talked about this privately, and I want to necessarily get too much into specifics, but yeah, for sure, I mean absolutely, And I think that's if you want to go down and look at the body of work that Core crunch Shaw has done. And I only mentioned them because I know that their work the best. I think that's one of the things they really do well. They really think
through what is the purpose of this golf course? Capelua, I mean Cappalua could not be more different from Austin Golf Club, and Austin Golf Club could not be more different from hidden Greek sand hills. I mean, take a pick, but that very deliberate thinking through what is the purpose of this course? I think they do that as well
as anyone I've ever seen. Again, now you're back to setting aside their own agenda, setting asiund their own interests, thinking about the client, thinking about what's best for the client, really something they do exceptionally well.
So pigging backing off that, I think, like, you know, the majority of people that will encounter a core crunch shot course, play a resort course, you know that's just the name's or a public course like Warren and Notre Dame. How are those courses different than say a hidden creeker the private ones? Where are the different where the design differences are? East Hampton would be another, you know, private club.
You know, how where where are things maybe ramped up, toned down at resorts versus at the private club experience? How do how do they kind of morph between the two?
I think especially in the greens again I mentioned before with an Austin Golf Club. I mean those greens for your average resort guest would just be very, very challenging. So yeah, just a little more room to play, a little more room to get in the hole as opposed to have to hit exactly a precise shot. Do I think? I think that's the the width aspects. You know, they like to have wide fairways and different angles and use
the property. I think that's pretty universally. You would do that, whether it's a resort course or for a private club. So the bunkering, you might say, well, the bunkering is a little more forgiving or less exacting on a resort course, but overall I would say not really. I mean I wouldn't say that. Say that Austin Golf or sand Hills or some of the courses that you would say are some of the more exacting of their designs. You wouldn't
say the bunkering is particularly punishing. It certainly challenged you in terms of where you want to go and how you want to set up your angles and get around the golf course.
They're all avoidable, yeah exactly, but you know, sometimes you find yourself in them. Sometimes they become unavoidable because of your own self, and that's when they exact the penalty, you know, thinking about like stream Thung right, the you know, that's the you know thing you start to think about
is like eighteen at sand Hills. It's like you get one of those bunkers that can just derail your day and then you know, but the same can be said about the resort of the fifteenth at stream song Red. You know, like that left bunker there just death.
But then you always wondered, why did I go over them? On you, I shouldn't be over there? What am I doing over there?
Well, you know, you got you gotta get it closer there to make those holes a little bit shorter, you know. I think that's one of the most interesting things about you know, one of the golf analytics and people have created these strategies and oh, architecture doesn't matter because of
these strategies at the end of the day. The architecture, like I am a big believer in Like, if you play enough golf, you figure these things out, like and whether or not, you know, the better players are always going to be more conservative, like and you figure these things out, and you know these there are a lot of systems and people out there that can help you
play figure things out. Faster. But at the end of the day, the architecture, really great architecture entices people to do things they don't want to do, you know, and that's sometimes what happens with those holes, Like that's why you find yourself in some bunkers that you shouldn't be in, you know.
I think that's a great way to sort of catch all if you can get people to do things they shouldn't be doing. There's interest, there's challenge, there's attack and defense. There's all sorts of stuff building to that that I think is good golf as opposed it's being other just mindlessly hitting or it's so difficult that it's so obvious what you're trying to not do.
It's stimulating, right like that I think about that all the time. Is like I really love when I get into a situation, you know, you find it on par fives a lot where I don't want to go for the green, but I definitely don't want to lay up, and I'm in this situation where neither of the options to me are very you know, appetizing, and I usually end up going for it, you know, at that point, And I think when when one becomes clear, like you know that's the people always say, you know, I love
short part fours. I love short part fives. Like really, what you love is you love the decision, right, And it doesn't have to be a short part four that creates that. A long part three can create that, you know, but it's just that the expectations change, right, I don't know. It's a it's a fascinating thing with golf.
Well, can I ask you about PA? I mean here we maybe we get to it later, but.
You're gonna ask me a question.
I think that is such a and we there's a group of us who are toying with the idea that pause wherely just it just gets gets in the way. What if we play with no PA.
So there's a study that was done years ago. I think I did a podcast with the guys that did the study like three years ago, and they found on the PGA tour, so they used Pebble Beach was one of them, and I want to say Oakmont was one where they had they looked at scoring averages of I think nine at Oakmont went from a five to four, right, and then two at Pebble Beach went from a five to four. So they took those and they looked at the US Opens there when they were each fives and fours,
and they you know, they did the study. They normalized the data so that it matched. And what they found was when those holes were played as par fours, players played a quarter of a shot better on the par four than the par five because of loss of version. So the fear of losing a stroke to bogey created a player. It made the players play more aggressively and
then they played better. So you know, when it was a par five, players cared less about gaining the shot than when it was a par four about losing the shot. Is really like I I, you know, I think about this stuff all the time with like professional golf, right, like par in a way holds back the world's best players. Like if you if the tour, if the tour was more concerned with the total score, no, the total score
rather than the under par score. So you know, you could change the par whatever, Like you know, the tour likes win twenty four underwins because it's exciting, okay, but if you change that par from say seventy two to sixty eight, the total score would likely be like so the what seventy times was to seventy. Let's just say, let's just say two seventy wins a tournament. It's a par seventy two, it's eight under. If you change the par to to seventy and it was two seventy, I
bet to sixty eight wins exactly. So like the scores would go down, players would shoot lower scores with lower.
Par And then you have to decide, as a community of golfers, do we want to have lower UNDERPA or higher school Because you could also go the other way and say we'll call all the holes pot fives and everybody shoots seventy five because they're so happy that they had no pressure. Yeah, you know what I mean.
Well, this is the thing in a way, like what pars turned into is over under pars more important than the actual score, right right, Like people feel better when they shoot seventy eight on a par seventy two than when they shoot seventy eight on a par seventy, which is silly. It's still the same score, you know. And I also think about this all the time, right, like, like why doesn't par change with the conditions you play in?
Like if you're playing in a thirty five miles or a wind at a place that hasn't rained for three weeks that's like firm and has tough pins, and I'm playing and it's seventy five sunny, no wind, and because it rained the night before, that's not the same score, right right? Partire changed like every day.
Almost You know what we're getting into here, and we may need you know, three podcasts, is you know what drives the game? Why? Why do we follow certain things? Why do we insist on certain things? Why do we And this goes through the game with design of golf courses or the equipment, the way things are maintained, what things cost to maintain because of certain expectations. I mean, you really go down a rabbit hole that starts a challenge.
If we're talking about pond, what does it mean? Where do we stop if we really don't want to start thinking about what? What is the game? Where did the game come from? And I'm not trying to stay in this direction for our conversation, but it's just something that fascinates me.
Well, I think the game means something differently to every golfer, and I think that's one of the most beautiful things about golf, is like, you know, I'm super interested in into architecture, right, But I understand and I think this
is where some people struggle. It's like I understand that, like some people are like super into equipment or some I was at a face that, you know when I played a lot of amateur golf, like I was there's a phase in my life where I was really really into improvement and like getting better shooting lower scores like that is a you know, there is a a portion, a large I think the largest subsection of the game
is obsessed with shooting lower scores. The idea of a conquest, and that's where par is so valuable is it's the idea of conquest. And that's where the handicap system is addictive, Like I want to get down to zero. I want to get you know, it's that I think it's almost
like a gamification of the sport. I mean, you think about all the courses that were built and how much you know, like all of a sudden, then part, what what does par matter if you're playing matches, If you're going to your club and the dominant tournament form is always matches and season long, like you know, you think about these clubs like you go to a club on a Saturday morning, it's like, hey, you in the big game for this it's all stroke play. It's all that week.
You know what if your big game every week was like like the NFL, where you you square it off against another guy at the club and it was a match.
Pine Valley, the Granddaddy of the mole here in the States, if that course had been built as a stroke play course the way it was originally and you had opening day, how the people would say this is insane, like how do I finish this golf course? But as a match play as a place to just play against someone else where you just pick up after a while, fantastic fun. So it's clearly changed.
That's the thing I think that's so funny is like so many people, oh, it's a great match flight course. But it's like, I mean that seems like that be a great course. That's just a court that you're describing a fun golf course.
Yeah, but again, if it was stroke play, I think you would just you feel some serious punishment if.
You're that's well, that's why I hear with like the Crump Cup, you know, and knowing a few people that play it, like if you don't drive the ball great, You're dead, you know, you just you know, if you want to play well in that tournament, the Crump Cup at Pine Valley, like, the number one thing you have to do is drive the ball great. And typically the best drivers of golf ball play the best there.
You know, I'll tell you what I do. Andy, as soon as I start going down the rabbit or the trail or the train of thought of golf should be more fun. You know, find a ball, hit it again, just use contours, make it where everybody has a chance. As soon as I go down that path, there's another path that starts up, like wait on a minute, wait a minute. We also really like to get beat up, you know, serious challenges where you again, back to sant Hills,
you're fifty feet down in a hallway. You've got this one and ten chance on a recovery shot. If you made it so quote unquote fair and reasonable for everybody that you didn't have that chance to get in trouble, you also never had that chance to have that spectacular recovery.
Well, I think that's you just hit on it like and I think this is I think some of the direction of golf architecture in the last ten years has pushed it more into this the fair you know, the idea fun wide every you can always get your ball around, but I think when you get too far down and it's just it's a pendulum, right, when you get too far one way, what you lose is I think one of the essences of the game is when you're standing over a shot, in the back of your head, you're
aware of consequence and that's what you know. That's the feeling you get and everybody that's listening to this, I assume everybody's played golf, but that's the feeling you get on the first t is that there's doubt and there's a worry of well, if this doesn't go well, what does that mean for the rest of the round? What it is like, what the first T is is getting you used to the like. You get more and more
comfortable with consequence as you get into your round. That's why you're the most nervous at the front of your round. And then that's why you're the most nervous on the eighteenth hole putting in because at eighteen on the green, you feel the consequence of if I make this, I shoot x if I miss this, I shoot X. And no matter how many people tell you, don't keep scoring in the round, most people know around where they're at
while they're putting on eighteen. So I think that like when you think about golf, I've never really tried to put this into terms. It's like consequence is essentially the key theme throughout the round, whether you're you know, keeping score or if you're studying great golf architecture, it's a hit it here or else, you know kind of proposition.
And I think you know, as someone you know all of us in golf. If I have to make a choice, if I can either have the inscrutable fare, the bunkers are one foot deep, so you can never get criticized. If I can either have that or the one where and it's all stroke play and we keep down to the decimal point, we keep who did what and what
hole and what's your total score? If I can have that, or I can have the adventure golf where occasionally I'm going to be absolutely out of position, I have nothing, but then once in a while I have a spectacular recovery and I can go in my pocket when I've had enough. I'm taking the pocket game every single time.
Well, that's the great thing with match play because when you had enough, you put it in your pocket, you say it to your competitor, let's go to the next hall.
So I think one of the challenges we face right now is how do we reconcile. Okay, we have the pro game over here, that's fine, they can do the thing for the rest of us who played golf to enjoy ourselves, be challenged, have some fun. How do you reconcile those two? How do you have a how do we tweak we need to tweak the format, and how do we then tweak the format where you get the best of the match play spirit experience without losing this all my handicap. I'm thinking about my school, which for
some people is very enjoyable as well. Is there a way to get the two together.
I don't know. I think that it just needs to be more madify. Maybe golf needs it needs to just let go of the I think there's an insecurity issue with the game of golf. Right. It's not comfortable. It's constantly tried to be put in a box, when golf is the game that's least in a box. Right, we play on a different course all the time. We play with different people all the time, the weather's different all
the time. I think the coolest thing about golf, if I was going to tell somebody why you should play golf, is that golf is probably much like life, the only game, sport, whatever you want to call it, where you'll never ever be in the exact same You'll never hit the exact same shot twice in your life ever, right Like you never have the exact same putt. You've had a putt. Oh, I've had a putt close to this, and you're remembering back, Oh,
I've had a shot close to this. But the wind will never be the same, the yard, it will never be the same, the li will never be the same. Like all those factors that go into hitting a great golf shot will never be the same. Right and then, but golf has this thing where they want to say this is what golf is.
Maybe that's the good way to wrap it up, this little segment where golf is like life.
You're just the host.
Now, we're not going to figure it out. We're not going to figure it out.
You've come near the host studios of this podcast. Maybe maybe maybe you should host it a Friday podcast. So let's talk about this golf course that we're sitting.
At Nice when no more questions from Ben.
Now you can ask questions whenever you want. Believe me, when it's way better discussion, when it becomes two way than when it's one way. You know, this is your project. Really. You know Bill and Bet are the architects. But you know I talked to Bill about it and he'll say, I think he said to me, Oh, you just need to talk to James. That's really James's project. You know
the owners of Brambles, Well, it's James's project. Tell us about you know, when you found the site and just your journey of building Brambles.
Well, I mean some this is may have heard about it or know about it, but it really is a sort of manifestation of this conversation we just had for the last half hour about you know, what is golf? How can we create a place that we think from our little lunch box is a fun place to go and play this game that we love. So I think that's where it really started. You know, I've worked on a number of different projects with different clients, different properties,
different ideas. If you had one chance before it's all over to build something that you feel this represents what I believe in and what a group of people that I can put together and we could share some interest, share some value, should buy into what we're doing together. What would it be? And that's really what it is. We walking for us is a big part of that.
We don't have to drive around in a golf cart, so the property is fairly subdued, I suppose overall, and in terms of you just being able to walk around it. You know, I love places like we talked about s Andrews North Berwick, but here more locally or maybe like you know all the old courses where they picked the property so you could walk around and enjoy playing off. That was a big part of it. There's a bit
of a breeze you ask you know, Ben Crenshaw. You know the breeze and the way you have to shape the shot. You have to hold up in the wind or play the wind or read the wind. They figure out the direction. So we have a pretty good breeze out here. It's open, it's not two treelined. There are some groupings of trees. We're just sitting here looking at them. We were talking about them earlier. And I love that. I love that you get up into the trees and you get out of the trees, and you come back
and you go up in it again. But it's not all tree lined, it's not all open. There's some variety in the scenery and the topography. And it was a place where we felt like if you built something like a chest high mound or contour, it would be meaningful because again, you're sort of it's sort of a horizontal type of property as opposed to if you build that on a more hilly property, it just doesn't make any sense. But then we have a hole like five, which is a proper up and over a hill type of hole.
The old white rock on the face of the hill. Just aim for that.
And I'm kind of disappointed that you guys pulled the fairway down. You know that you should have just left it completely blind.
Yeah, well, we'll see, we'll see. But that's that's in essence what it is. And then just trying to cobble together a group of people who buy into this idea, who can see the project as something we're doing together, as opposed to where's my locker? How many tea times? Do I get you know, forget that. Just if you want to be part of building something that we're building together, that we enjoy together. Great, but let's not fall into
some of that. We do so many unnecessary things in most of golf things, we convince ourselves we need stacked balls on the range. I mean you you can start right there and just say who really needs that? And yet effort goes into it. One person does it, then the next person thinks they have to do it, and all of a sudden you get this huge, big bill for playing around the golf and well how that happened. Well, we convinced our sales we needed all this stuff. We're
trying to go back to eighteen seventy. It's just a bunch of people out there crashing around in the field playing golf together.
I was, you know, one of the courses that gets you know, admired the most in golf is Chicago Golf. You know, and a lot of people never get to see it. But like you know, people always like to talk about how great the golf course is. But like one of the things that every time I go there that I walk away with is like how utilitarian the place is run and how you know how simple like the operational side of it is, like it's it's brilliantly simple.
And one of the things that the conversation that I'll always I was talking to the head pro during COVID and he was he was like, I was like, what's going on with caddies that He's like, I don't think we're going to be able to have caddies like when they're reopening back up. And I was like, Oh, that's that's too bad. He's like, I'm really worried about golf carts and I go, what do you mean, Like what
you know? He's like, well, like the people that can't carry their bag, like we don't have enough golf carts. And I just like it made me like burst out laughing. It's like, here's this like club and I think most people's like outward image of it is like this, this is a ritzy place that you know, but they didn't have enough golf carts to suffice for their tiny little membership when you know when they might have a influx
of riders. And it's like that simplicity of operation is really beautiful that you know they have like just enough golf carts to get by.
Now. That's Chicago Golf is a really good example of somewhere that we have actually sort of tried to draw the essence out of. We're not one of the five founding members of the USGA, we haven't been around forever, but we can still go there and look at what they do and try and take away what they do well. And we've been very lucky to do that. And at the time, Scott Border was still the superintendent when we went and visited a few years ago, and he would say, look,
we just nothing's precious. We just we got a new guy on the crew. Go out Mother Greens. What's the worst case? You scouted down a little bit and it'll be fine in the week. I mean it'd be fine, just go mo. So that attitude of just small crew, everybody can do a little bit of everything. You just kind of work together onced.
You first visit this site, When did you first find this site? And what drew you? Like? I think people you know that listen to this probably drive down the road and think about properties as golf sites and I'm curious, like you know, there's a lot of land, yeah, and here we're in northern California. What about this property drew you to it?
Yeah. I mentioned the dosk Weblos project earlier on, and that certainly reminded me that you have to be careful. It's not a foregone conclusion that you can get permission to build something just because you think, oh, look at that, it's beautiful some dunes out in the ocean. Let's go build a golf course over there. So I step number one was it might spend a third of time in California.
Step number one was nothing in the California Coastal Commission jurisdiction, because we'll just never get it done the Wine Country and I was living down in the South Bay, down in Sam's area at the time, but it was literally Golden gate Bridge draw circle around it sort of two hours. Where could you go from San Francisco or the sort of the Central Bay area and get to somewhere where you could get this thing built and it would make
sense to do it. Looked out towards Tahoe at the time, was really been a lot of stuff built over there. It felt a little overbuilt, and there was really nothing between. So he went to Sacramento. There's no reason to go out there anyway. You could go down the peninsula, you could go down Tomorrow Ray, but then you would never get out from under the shadows of Cyprus and Pebble
and all those places. Plenty of good stuff down there, it wouldn't really mean anything down there, But the Wine Country was the one where there really wasn't much good golf. There's ma Akama, which is a wonderful club just over the hill, a couple of little local golf courses. There's an older club, Sonoma Golf Club, which does well and has a nice membership, and they do fine, but there
really wasn't much. If you were up here for other reasons and you wanted to play golf, there really wasn't much. I think that's really when the lot of light went off, that if we could find a place within striking distance of the Wine Country in general, a place that millions of people come to from all over the world. Not only do you then have people who come and use the facility, which we want to maintain a healthy county program and all that stuff, you also get built in
geographic diversity. You get people from New Zealand, people from Chile, to get people from Denmark, all over the place coming here, which he might say, I mean, that's a little esoteric, but I do think when it comes to the culture of the club and the people who come through here to have that, I think it's going to have a significant impact on what we become as a club and
as a place to play. Imagine you're sitting on the porch out here and there's, oh, yeah, we just flew in from Argentina two days ago, we have family down in Saint Lena or whatever. I think that could be a neat piece of who we become.
I mean, yeah. One of the strangest human beings I ever played golf with was that Monterey Peninsula. This guy I played, I was playing with Zach Blair and we were on this trip, but he he invited a guy that he met at the coffee shop that morning to be our fourth. He's this guy. Hes a guy from Germany. He was a golf bro from Germany.
And it was like one of the most fascinating things because here's this like guy who's at the coffee shop and he got invited to go play Monterey Peninsula Club that morning, and you just happen to be a German golf bro and He's like, yeah, I'll go play.
Sure, And here he is. We're playing. And it was just like a fascinating thing because I learned a lot about like German golf, Like I would never have learned that, And I think that's one of the neat things Also about a golf course is like it's a meeting place. It's a place where you can learn stuff, you can talk and converse with people, and you know, you get,
like you said, a wide range of backgrounds. The more more different people you know from different backgrounds, it just it adds a whole place, right.
And I'll tell you what. And it's just like the Power or no Pa or match plays strup Per. You can bake it into the pie. You can consciously say we want this type of property, but we also want to try and build a certain type of club and really pull these levers and say rather than nothing to me would be more boring than if we became a version of say so generally the Hampton's Right, where the same people you saw all week long in the city, now you're hanging out with them at the beach club
in the Hampton's Right. I mean that's nice, but it's just much more interesting if you just get some fresh influences and some people who have a different point of view than yours, Like you know, I've never thought about it like that. The guy from Germany who says, well, we don't stack our range balls and pyramids, we do them in snake or whatever. I mean, just something different and interesting that you never had thought about.
Yeah, yeah, that's how are you going to go about getting that? Is it just the influence of having a place like do you think it'll just naturally happen from having wine country right there? We're very lucky members too.
Yeah, we do. And we're very lucky that we now. I mean, we're just so lucky to be in the position we are now where it actually looks like this golf course is good. It's going to work, and the grasses are going to grow, and it's just a it's a great spot. And we've had a lot of support we have. We've been lucky that people really you can tell some people they can't see it, but they can hear you talk about it. Their friends get it, the
billcorep Ban crunch Shaw thing. You know, if they think this is something that is worth for them to be involved, and then it's probably going to be okay. So I think there was a part of that early on where guys were just mostly guys. We're very lucky to have quite a few women members as well, and we'd love to get some more. But I think there's the there is this sense of being part of something, and ironically we haven't really tapped into the because we're not open yet.
So this idea that people actually come and play while they're in the one country, we haven't really experienced that yet, but I'm pretty sure it'll happen. And then the key the luxury problem we have then, or challenge, is to make sure that we leave spots for interesting people who come along who want to be part of this as members. It's a great problem to.
Have, and there's a from what I understand, there's an aspect of accessibility that's always going to be a big part of.
It, right absolutely, I again, without naming names, I can remember several projects where you now, you go out and you put two years into building a golf course, and the guys are out there double cutting and raking all the bunkers. Nobody's playing, Nobody is playing. I mean, I can see how that's maybe exclusive, but it's also like there's nothing happening. You've got to have some play, especially if you want to have a candy program. You've got to have some volume.
And nobody goes to St. Andrews or those band and nobody goes to Bandon and maybe you know and complains about all those too many people here. It's all golf enthusiasts who are there to have fun. I don't think we're ever going to be packed up here unless we have an event or something. But let's have some play. Let's have people come out and play it.
Yeah. Yeah, it's it's neat, it's you know. Can you talk through some of the you know, challenges of building here in California and this operaty specifically.
Yeah. Actually one of our most recent members asked me that question the other day. He said, well, what's what was? What's what's? He asked me, what surprised you the most during the bill process? And knock on wood, I would almost say that it's been as smooth as it has been. I think COVID has been a factor that you know, Yes, it was hard to get materials, It hard to get
you know, a crew put together. But once we had a crew, and once we had our stuff here, we just got after it outside and working, and so I think we actually had a was it was a good time to build a golf course. And then of course the last year of prices of skyrocketed on everything. Good luck getting sprinkledheads or whatever you're trying to get and if you can get them there twice what they were a year ago. So no, we've been been very fortunate, good good time to build.
It's no question every everything's expensive. Everything in the world expensive right now, you know. Yeah, So obviously I think that one of the things that people take away from this course, like it's like visually when you think a lot of times when you think of Core Crunchhaw, it's like striking, and here, I think it's a little bit less. I think it's subtle, you know.
I think there's this golf course, like I think a lot of people like when I first saw photos of the property, I thought it was flat, and then you get out here and you're like, oh, there's a lot of good movement here. I mean, like a popular thing is to call Chicago golf flat, but there's a good movement on Chicago golf. Right, of course, we talked about here has good movement, but it's a little bit more subtle.
It's not it doesn't have the big ups and downs you talked about how you could add bumps like is there are other things that you think get drawn out a little bit more when you have a piece of ground that's not maybe as into your face as some of the dramatic sites.
Yeah, I might just tweak that a little bit and just take you back to the conversations we had with Bill and Ben when they came out here that you know we we said to them, look, you know, don't hold back. You don't have to worry about it being too severe, you don't have to worry about the contours. Well, just we'll have green speeds can be whatever these contours will support. Don't worry about it. We'll figure that out. We also had a conversation about how, yeah, we don't
really we don't. Nobody plays the old course or in North Beric and goes, wow, can you believe did you see that beautiful bunkering out there? Know that the bunkers shadows great placements, holes in the ground, ground the kind of draws you into the bunker. How about we have something like that, because if we try and do something that's more visual, we're always going to look like a horrible version of the beautiful work they've done at Centras
Golf Club, Cow Club or Rinder. I mean, take your pick of all the Bay Area clubs that have done a beautiful job with their bunkering, and it's very visual. We go the other way. We go the bunker is it's a hole in the ground with a shadow, and try to stay out of it. And I also think the whole types rather than bunker left, bunker right strategy play around. How about the first hole is the one with the ditch in front of the green. How about the fifth holes, the one we hit it over the hill.
How about the sixth holes, the one with the stone wall along the side where they have a lot of sort of inherent personality procrastinate as the lemma. I mean, you've got a hole there wheret some point you're gonna have to cross over the creek. Those are the ones that I again this is very selfish, but that kind of personality, there's sort of landscapes in and of themselves away I not try to believe the point, but to your question about can you if you have a more
subdued property, can you build more severe greens? Probably? I mean we have some out here. Two is a two and three right there. Two particularly two was really not much to look at. Yeah, it was just a simple little down towards the creek and back up again. And then you build the green that has all that movement in it and it sys that it fits. I mean again, shout out Ryan Farrow, Zach Varady, Benjamin Warren, Amon Sullivan.
I mean, the guys who were out here just did incredible job, and I think Ryan needs a special shot. He really led that whole charge on sort of taking Bill and Ben's guidance and saying here's here's what we're doing and then figuring out what that meant. And there's plenty of severe stuff, but it all, it all works beautifully. So yeah, I couldn't be more proud of those guys and happy with with what they've done.
I can't wait till we can play golf out here me too, you know. That's uh, that's what I mean. So, James, this is part one. Well we'll do part two, part three some other date, you know. But I appreciate you coming on.
Good. Thank you. Yeah, a good fun all right.
Thanks, thanks guys, thank you for listening to another edition of the Frida Egg podcast. Today's episode was edited by Meg Atkins. Thank you Meg. As I mentioned at the top, I will be writing a bunch of journal entries of our time in Scotland. If you are interested in getting those, I would sign up for the Fridagg newsletter. It is free. It comes out three days a week Monday Wednesday Friday. Will Knights writes a lot of it. Brendan writes in it,
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