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 Friday Egg, the dreaded Frida Egg Friday, Frida Egg Egg, Frida Egg, Bride Egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off of.
The course game.
Welcome to the Frida Egg Golf Podcast. I'm Garrett Morrison and today we're talking about Royal Melbourne with Michael Clayton. This is the slightly delayed fourth episode of our Great Courses series from this past December. These have basically been deep dives into some of the world's best and most influential golf courses. We started with Saint Andrews of course,
then went to National Golf, Finks and Sunningdale. And I can't think of a better way to wrap up this initial run of the Great Courses episodes than heading to the Australian sand belt and talking about what Alistair McKenzie accomplished there. The West Course at Royal Melbourne was really McKenzie's first outrageously great design. He had not yet built Cyprus Point or Augusta National. He had done some really
amazing stuff in Great Britain. I don't want to downplay that, but the courses that you really know McKenzie for now had not yet been produced when he got the Royal Melbourne job. So Royal Melbourne was a big step forward for McKenzie's career and it was also a big step forward for Australian golf. It's tough to overstate the impact that Royal Melbourne, both McKenzie's West Course and Alex Russell's
later East Course had on the game in Australia. And there's no better person to talk about all of this than Michael Clayton. Mike is a former tour pro, a current golf architect and one of the leading voices in the game, both in Australia and internationally. He's been on our podcast several times before, and I'm super excited to have him back to discuss a topic that is so very much in his wheelhouse. Before we get to that, though, let's talk a little bit about our sponsor for this episode,
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the deal that Club Champion is offering right now. You can use the code fried Egg to get fifty percent off the cost of your fitting with the purchase of a club. Go to club champion dot com and book your fitting today again, that's called Frida Egg all one word. All right, let's get to me and Mike Clayton talking about Royal Melbourne. Mike, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for being here.
Thank you. It will be fun down at Bamboogle, So it's kind of a treat to be down here for a couple of days.
This will be fun out in Tasmania, just having fun.
Yeah, just hanging out, playing golfing. And so I'm playing down with Sue. We're down here. So we started off the year. We played Royal Melbourne on Tuesday and then lost Farm the next day, then bam Boogle yesterday. So not the not the worst way to start the year off. Three pretty nice courses.
There are versions of your life that definitely could have gone worse.
Yep.
All right, so we're we're talking about Roll Melbourne today, just kind of going in depth on that golf course, which which you know so much about and have talked about quite a bit before, and so we're really going to dig into this specific course in its history. I'm curious, though, what was your first exposure to Royal Melbourne. When did you first see the course and play the course.
I first saw it, I think at the World Cup in nineteen seventy two, which is they had they hadn't they hadn't had a tournament for a long time. They didn't They played the Strain and Open on the East Course in nineteen sixty three. Job As he didn't see and then so and they didn't play another tournament until the World Cup. So we went and watched that and it was fearsomely for a Melbourne. It was famous hard
and fast in the scores. But they rained out the first day fifty four holes i think, and the scoring was really high. Tom Weiscoff I saw Tom Weiscoff years later and he told me that he's at sixth green. It was the only green I ever four patted and tried on every part, So it was it was, you know, it was brutally hard and faster. Scores were high at the time and these won. Shae Min Nan and mister Lou won, which was surprising because Asians always sort of
struggling at wrong movie because it was so foreign. The tope of golf there was so foreign to what they were used to. The greens were so much harder and faster. So and then I first played it in nineteen seventy four. The big kind of inter club golf is called Pennant Golf in Melbourne. Everyone grows up playing Pennit. They played there in nine and seventy four, the first time I played it.
And you know, when you were younger, aside from that that World Cup, were there any other tournaments that you saw there that were particularly memorable to you?
Well, I started playing a lot then after that they played that. There was a thing called the christ The Classic in nineteen seventy four, which Bob Sheer won by seven shots. He won by shot sixty five the first day. It was the past seventy one. Then they played the fourth West is a part four off that what's now the women's see well not the women's seed, but the front fourteen. He won by he shot sixty five the first day, shot one over for the weekend, won by seven.
So you can imagine what the greens were like. That That was back when the tour had no control over how the golf course was set up. So the famous toperintendent of the Claude Crawford, had never seen a green that was too hard or too fast. So Trevino played Torino shot sixty six in the third round and shot two one or two ninety three, and he said famously, take a picture of me going out the gate, because you'll never see me coming back into this place. They can.
It was. It was crazy hard and fast. So they and they had torments there for you know that. They played there the next three years in that event. Then they didn't play anything in seventy seven. Then they had the PGA for five years, trained PGA which was a great event at wrong Bombers seven he played every year and it was and then they that sort of and then they played a bunch of Australian opens there. We played a lot there over the years.
So you saw Sevi play Melbourne quite a bit.
I was I was going to caddy for him. I was, I had a university exam on the Wednesday, so I couldn't caddy, which was just I hated that, so I finished up watching him play. It was a friend of Michael Jimmy Carter was a really good He was a good amateur player in Melbourne and he was Ed Barner's agent in Australia and he'd organized want me to caddy for him, So that was that was annoying because I should have just skipped the examine. He finished third that week.
It was a perfect course for him because he had space to play, the faireres were wide, and he hit those beautiful high soft irons from the bad angles and kind of stopped the ball and his short game was genius, and so it was a perfect course for him.
Really, That's what I was thinking, that Roll Melbourne would really bring out some of the aspects of Seve's game that were unique.
Well, I was, Yeah, he was the only guy who ever won at s Andrews and Augusta and Roll Melbourne. And Jack would have won Roal Melbourne if he'd played there, and Tiger obviously would have wondered if he played there, but Sebbie was the only going who did. And you know Augusta was the same that he had space and room to play, and he had the stuff around the greens was genius, and it was that they were perfect courses for him.
Really, maybe next time Roal Melbourne holds a big stroke play tournament and I don't know if it plans to. Maybe Zach Johnson should should go play, try to try to get the trifector.
Yeah you should. Yeah, well yeah, it looks who knows what the deal the Australian Open, the Golf Australians deal with the Australian Open and New South Wales government finished this year, government being sort of the major sponsor of
golf in Australia. So people are assuming it's going to go back to Melbourne and it's really going to be a thirty six avenue because it's it's a mixed event with men and women, so they're only you can only play it Royal Melbourne and Peninsula really in Melbourne, so it'll be one of the other most likely, but who knows.
Really, well, let's hope that would be great. That tournament has been in the Sydney area for a while, I believe, and it would be cool to see it get back to the sand Belt. So let's go back into a little bit of deeper history. Before Alistair mackenzie arrived in Australia and did what he did, you know, roll Melbourne was the West Course was a big part of what
he did when he came and visited. But before that visit in nineteen twenty six, could you just give me a general picture of what Australian golf architecture was like.
Well, I assume it wasn't very good. It was all the famous clubs on the sand Belt, except for Woodlands, were somewhere else. They we're much closer to the city. There's not much good land for golf in Melbourne outside of the sand Belt. They're all much close to the city and I assume pretty rude mentary courses. So Rural Melbourne and Metropolitan were one club about two miles from Ore. I lived, like you know, right in the middle of not in the middle of the city, but not far out.
Half the half the membership went down to Sandringham, which was at the time I guess a long way away. Mostly I asuson didn't have cars and it was so all the sand belt clubs that moved moved, apart from Kingstainneath, moved to bits of land near train stations so people could get there. So half of them, half of the club went to Roal Melbourne. The other half stayed behind because it was too far to go and and then
a few years later went and started Metropolitan. So they went down to Sandringham and did a golf course in the teens probably you know, nineteen thirteen or something around then, just just before the First World War, and it was sort of known as the Sandringham Links and they so it was part of the land they currently used, and I think it went out further to the north and west,
which is where the sand Hum public courses now. So that was what they had and when mackenzie came down he completely reimagined the whole thing and basically built them a new golf course. And you know, all the clubs that make up what's down the sand belt sort of followed that lead and moved. You know, they figured out that well this is a great land for golf, so they all moved down there and built their courses. And Kenson Heath was already there, so McKenzie bunked that and
readed the fifteenth hole. But Dan Suda was was responsible for the routing there. But so Mick Morgam was the famous greenkeeper who built all the work, and Alec Russell was there Mackenzie's Australian partner, so he did the East Course, and so just over a period of you know, a decade and a half of the whole thing just came out of the ground and there were you know, six or eight great courses there.
Why was it that McKenzie went to Australia.
Well, one of their course reader designed and they wanted Harry Colt to do it. And Peter Thompson always said that Rural Melbourne would have been much different if cold had come out, because McKenzie built these big, flashy bunkers that Thompson was never found of. Really he liked Colt sort of smaller, perhaps more understated work. So Colt couldn't come and suggested they hi mackenzie. So he came out and Real Melbourne paid for it by hiring him out
to the other clubs. And so he was advising all the other clubs, and he went around the country, went to Royal Queens and he went to Adelaide. He went to Sydney, to Royal Sydney in Australia and advised them on their golf courses. And I think at Rural Sydney filled in one hundred bunkers. But the way he thought
about golf was what really formed golf. Yet he'd written a book six years earlier, probably nineteen twenty, so Russell and Morgan had obviously read the book, and people were reading his book, and so they understood he's basically philosophy about the golf should be played the way he thought it should be played. So they kind of grasped that and listened to what he was saying and went and built it. But he was only here for three months, so you know, it wasn't like he was on the
ground for a year building real Melbourne. He was. It'd come and gone in no time, really, right.
Yeah. He arrived in October or something like that and left around New Year's and so it was it was a very productive whatever it was ten ten weeks or so that he spent in Australia. The book you mentioned was Golf Architecture, the short book that he published in nineteen twenty, and then Spirit of Saint Andrews kind of takes Golf Architecture and expands upon it. But that was
the book that he was distributing at the time. And my understanding is that I heard this story from I think Neil Krafter that when he came to Australia, he hadn't built a lot of the courses that we now associate with him, right, because he hadn't really been to America that much yet. This was nineteen twenty six. He designed Cypress Point, built Cyprus Point later, built Augusta National later. So he had done most of his work in the UK.
But he had written this book, obviously, had a great pedigree, had a relationship with the RNA, and so he came to Australia and he was this authority on golf architecture. He had this book, they were publishing excerpts and newspapers and he was shaping the discussion around golf architecture. And that strikes me just as so gutsy on Mackenzie's part, that he really hadn't built his great courses yet. But here he came to an entirely new continent and he is the authority on golf architecture.
Well he was, But I was saying letters that back when paper used to writing dignant letters to newspapers about golf, I don't even wrote about golfing newspapers. I don't have paper rote letters about golf. But members at roll adlaid going crazy about this Scottish guy is destroying a golf course and and so they didn't really he had a plan for the last four holes that was never implemented. He had a bunch of stuff that they just didn't
do it. All that laid. But of course the hole he did, and one of the main holes he did was the third hold, which is the best home of the course. And you know, you know that's that they're incredibly proud of the third hole that well that Lakers you know, Ackenzie built it. But at the time they were, you know, the members were being typical members were going nuts because this Scottish guy was digging up the golf course.
But yeah, Royal Melbourne gave him a free hit and let him do what he wanted to do and he did an amazing job. But you know, at the time, I don't Yeah, it wasn't all roses from him, but Rob was smart enough to give him his head and let him do it. And you know, Tom Doug told me once he said there weren'tly decent courses before he got there, and there weren't too many built after he left there were any good either, And it was kind
of true. Russell did ya and Lake caring up and the depression game and then the war, so that sort of stopped everything, and then that generation of architect was gone. Really. Tom Simpson lived in the sixties, I think, but you know they all died. So Trent Jones and Dick Wilson took over American architecture. There was no one in australiaom Vern Mick Morecamb's son did a bunch of courses in
the country of Victoria. Eric Appley did work in Sydney, but you know, it was the fifties was a really fifties and sixties were really stagnant period for golf in Australia in terms of building golf courses, certainly any any that were any good.
Well, the timeline in Australia for the what you might call the Golden Age of golf architecture was really tight.
You know.
In Great Britain, you know, or at least in England, the timeline was sort of like nineteen hundred to the outbreak of World War One. In America the timeline was kind of like national golf links to the Depression, so about twenty years in Australia. McKenzie arrived in nineteen twenty six and basically there weren't that many years left until the depression.
Yeah, it seemed like everything got done in four or five years. It was just this right colonwealth Yariyara was early thirties. Metro Victoria Woodlands was nineteen thirteen. That was that early. Actually Woodlands is really underrated, really good. Real Melbourne Peninsula was that was much later. Hayndal was later.
I think that was in the forties or fifties, forties maybe, But yeah, there was that mad Russia sort of three or four or five years after McKenzie came to where everything got done with it.
Yeah, his influence is the immediacy and the power of his influence during this trip is really interesting to me. I think it's one of the one of the most interesting historical questions there is about golf architectures, how exactly this was done. But to get more specific about Royal Melbourne, we've talked about what generally he did right Ural Melbourne kind of like paid part of his fee and then paid the rest of his fee by hiring him out to these other clubs and in so doing like improved
an awful lot of golf in Australia. But of course his main purpose for visiting was to lay out that what we now know is the West Course at Royal Melbourne. One of the big things he did, and you've you've alluded to this a couple of times, was to assemble a team or at least to recruit a couple of like minded individuals who could carry out his vision. So who were the key people involved in actually carrying out McKenzie's design at Roll Melbourne and what were their roles?
Well, Mick Morcambe was the grainkeeper, so he built everything, I assume you know. Orsi he was in charge of the crew that was building the stuff for the horse and scoop that were digging out the bunkers and making
the contos around the grains and building the grains. And Alec Russell, who was the world the grazier, who was an Australian Open Champion, great player, Robin member and he he was Mackenzie's Australian partner really, so he he you know McKenzie seemed to do when he went around the Robert Hunter in California and different people who he partnered with.
So Russell was that guy in Australia. And after so after he left Russell did Yara Yarra and Lake carn Up and parap Ram in New Zealand, Riversdale here, so he was a he was he was a great designer in his own.
Right really and and the East Course at of.
Course and the East Course, yeah, so he was clearly a really talented architect. But then the Depression came and nothing happened. So architecture in Australia was a non existent profession pretty much for a long time after that, until really Peter Thompson took it up. Thompson teamed up with Mike Woolbridge in the early seventies probably, and he was that. He was the main guy here for a long time.
Now when it came to actually building Mackenzie's Course at Royal Melbourne, how much of it did he actually see get completed, given that he was off to New Zealand and then the rest of the world pretty quickly.
Probably not a lot, I think. I think he built the fifteenth hole at kicks and Heath while he was here. That was built when he was here. That was a fifteen at kicks and Heath. Was that the famous part three? There was a short part four over the hill that Dan Sudar had routed that he discribed as a blot on the golf course. So he built the fifth, the famous part three when he was there. But I mean, Neil Kraft has got, you know, the extensive timeline of what went on, But I mean, how much can you
do in three months? You can't do that much. So with most of his courses, he didn't see much of them when they were finished. When Augusta he died before Augusta was barely open. And he certainly didn't never live to see the Masters or and he and he went to America. I think he was he going to Cyprus Point or Crystal Down. It's probably Cyprus Point. After he left Australia.
Yeah, he had I believe had the Cyprus Point connection and at the very least the Meadow Club connection in California. But yeah, he was he was off to California.
Yeah. So, and he went through Auckland and laid out Titterrangi, which is a terrific course in Auckland. And he said, from the photos they sent me it looked like it turned out quite well. So clearly never he never saw it, but he rounded it and the routing was genius. This was not Melbourne sand this was clay in Auckland.
Yeah. I mean that's the thing that bears repeating, right, is that he never went back. Yeah, this was his only time, this was visiting there.
So it kind of sad in a way that he never saw the golf course or never understood the adulation that the esteem and the adulation that that people hold it in and you know, that's such an important part of golf in Australia. You never had any idea how
significant it was going to be. And I think he wrote that he just assumed that the profession would get better and better and you know, it would continue to evolve and people would build better and better courses, and as it turned out, that wasn't exactly what happened really well.
So when it comes to the question of credit, like who is the architect of the West Course at Royal Melbourne, there are some people who think that that Russell doesn't get enough credit, that that Morecambe doesn't get mentioned enough. And I feel that, you know, McKenzie was the designer, but but he didn't really build it. How do you
think through that question of credit yourself? Do you think it's is it proper to call it a McKenzie course or or do we need to call it a McKenzie and Russell course.
I don't know really. I mean, I think the concept was all his, and the concept of the way he you know, if he'd thought that golf should have been played, you know, it was played down narrow fairways, brought it by high grass, that's what it would have been. So, but it wasn't so because he hated that sort of golf. So the concept of the way, the way that golf would be there was I assume mostly his, so and
the routing was his or the rerouting. So if it's your concept and your routing, then you get a lot of the credit. But as Bilker always says, not just one guy who ever builds a golf course, and there are a team of people who are critical to what happens, And without being there, it's hard to know. But you were assumed that that that was obviously the case that Roy Melbourne. They must have sat down at night and
had dinner together and discussed what they were doing. And you know, clearly Morecambe, you know, he enjoyed the way he wrote glowingly about morcam to tell that as a shaper, so you know, he obviously was comfortable with him doing it and gave him a free hand. And it was you were assumed that, like I said, you assumed they sat down every night and spoke about what they were doing,
went for lunch breaks and had a sandwich. And when you think about the seventeenth greene, well, I think it should be high here and lower there, and you know, do this with the bunker and make the shots and the right more difficult. So the concept was his, I think.
And it seems like one argument in favor of making sure that Mackenzie gets a lot of credit for what he did in Australia is that it seems like pretty much everything he touched turned a gold right, that a lot of their great courses have one thing in common, and that is that Alistair Mackenzie had some role and creating them.
Yeah, and it was again it was the concept in the look. And I really know what happened to Victoria. But you look at that golf course in the bunker and it's literally right across the street. You can hit a wedge from the You hit a wedge from the second tea at Royal Melbourne over the road on the twelfth Grand in Victoria. It's so close they are, so it's and the Bunkers looked saying the greens of similar the concepts of saying that property is not quite as big,
but so it's not quite as wide. But you know, the golf is obviously very related. So it's you know, it's just that influence of the way he thought gold should be that was critical to golf in Australia. And yeah, it's unfair really but and I've never played enough in South Africa, but I suspect that if it wasn't for Mackenzie would have finished up with golf like South Africa perhaps, which is nothing in the world top ten and nothing
sort of super amazing. And that's what we would have had if he hadn't come here, I think, I mean, you know, Russell might have had more of an influence. He probably would have, but but you know, I'm sure, well I'm not sure. You can't even be sure about this stuff. But if you like Russell now he would I assume say that what Mackenzie was a huge influence on the way he thought about golf, And I guess
it went back to the book. He obviously read the book you know, golf architecture, and you know, you know from that he had gleaned what Mackenzie's ideas were about how goal should be played. You can't understate the influence of just the concept of golf. He brought what I think is that correct or you know, the concept of the best golf in the world. He bought it here and then he took it to Augusta and did the same thing, really and he got that from the Old
Course because he understood the Old course. That was where it all came from. He understood that, you know, shots from one part of the whole were completely different from shots from the other part of the whole, and that was an important part of golf. And if it was narrow you couldn't do that. You need it with to create that. And the great part about playing roll Melbourne is you get much different shots depending on which part of the hole you're on.
McKenzie had a way of activating people. It seems like, you know, he did this with Russell in Australia. An example I love is his relationship with Perry Maxwell, where Maxwell was a talented, yeah thoughtful golf architect. Before his relationship with Alistair McKenzie. But after he worked with mackenzie, Maxwell just reached an entirely different level and built courses
that were truly world class. And so there's something about Mackenzie's influence as way of interacting with people and recruiting people and helping to educate them is probably not the right word, but something like that. And then afterwards they're they're just completely different, and so it's a it's a remarkable thing.
Yeah. Well, you know, you don't know what. You don't know really until someone points it out. And I've plied Crystal downs. Well, I was gonna say this year last year, and that's an amazing course I did up in Michigan. It's a beautiful course. Yep.
Yeah, Perry Maxwell built that course, right or yeah, it was heavily involved in the construction.
Yeah, so yeah, you know, just and I think you could argue the same thing happened with Bill Core really, I mean Bill Core and Santels, was that it was the start of the this era, and of course, you know, we're living in it. So how do we really know how people are going to judge in one hundred years, But I think it'll be judged incredibly kindly I think, you know, I was. I played with Richard Sadley yesterday,
the owner of Bamboogo. We played the little pat three course that Bill designed, but of course it was COVID, so Bill never was here. I mean, he never came out. You know. He was doing it on zoom with Michael John Hawker who was building it. So there's a classic example of the Bill Corp designed Google Runner Van Bogle the fourty and whole part three courts. He never saw it, Bill, but well he did. He saw it this year, well last year finished, but he was never here when it
was being built. But you know, I think that Richard and I were talking about I think he'll go down as being arguably the best and most important act it ever when people look back at one hundred years of the course, Bill and Benham done cause are incredibly right at what they did m hm.
And and their tree is going to be really strong too, right that all the people they worked with influenced and activated, you know, in the way that Mackenzie activated people. Yeah, it is. It's a really good, good comparison, I think. All right, Well, let's get a little more specific about
about the West Course at Roll Melbourne, itself. I also want to talk about the East Course too, because it gets it gets ignored to a degree, but the West Course is obviously very spectacular when it comes to the land at Roll Melbourne. Now I've just I've have never been to Australia. I'll admit that I'm talking about all these courses of the series that I haven't been to, but which is why I want to find out more
about them. But I've only seen it on TV right seeing it in the President's Cup and gotten a general feel for It's seen photographs of it, obviously read a lot about it. But one thing that you have a really hard time getting a sense of when you haven't been to a course is what the land is like? Right? What is special about the piece of land? And so when it when it comes to Royal Melbourne's land, what is that special thing that you can only see when you're there.
It's all sand, which obviously helps, and it's the first hole is a flat, wide open Part four. Second holes quite flat wide open short Part five with a cool hollow and the gas out in front of the green to make the running shot into the green. Interstinct three goes up and over a little kind of rise, and then you get to the fourth t and there's a massive hill with a blind shot up over a big june. So it's the first bit of significant undulation you've come
to on the golf course. And it's a massive gym that you drive with bunkers in the hill and you drive over that and it kind of goes down across the other side. The whole turns around to the right, goes down the hill as a spectacular hole. And then that kind of shot that that blind drive up and over the hill, which you know is not the ideal shot. You've you've got to hit a great drive, but it's
an unusual shot opens up the amazing second shot. And what that broke the back of the routing was that got into the fifth and the sixth was the fifth is a beautiful path three across the valley. Then you go to a high tea and play way down into the right on the sixth hoop, which is a famous
part four that was in the well. I was the golf best eighteen holes in the world, So you know that's the that's the big significant undulation on the whole golf course, and he used it amazingly and I opened it up by building this blind t shirt up over a big dune and then they abandoned the whole. He built the path three the seventh in the forties, I think, and Iver Whitney was another Australian Open champion, built the What's down the seventh hole, which is cool uphill part three.
Then there are two holes that aren't on the compass, of course they eight and nine sort of. Nine's a beautiful hole, you know, it's kind of a plunging drive down at the bottom of a valley, then back up to the green with a short iron. And then ten's the great short part four again you play across a deep, deep valley up under it, you know the june on the opposite side of the valley, and then pitch onto the green. Eleven goes down and up and around again
great part four. So now there's every hole has got significant undulation on it. Twelve twelves a green. It's not as you know, it's a blind drive up and over hill again but not a big hill. And it's to a green that I think Crockford moved from Mackenzie's Green.
Mackenzie's Green was further right and they moved it probably forty yards to the left and created this long second shot over a really cool heathland to the green, and then you go over the road you play thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, which aren't on the composite course, and that pretty much
flat again. There's a really cool little short path. Three that's difficult because it's this roofed across the middle of the green, and the greens are so hard there if you land on that sort of this ridge in the middle of if you land on the downside, because the ball is always going to almost always goes over the back of the grain. It's just a really innocuous looking sort of one hundred and forty yard hold. It's actually
really difficult. Fourteens are flat, sort of dog the right, good puff or fifteen's fifteen's got that cross hazard across the fairway at about four hundred and twenty yards off the tee. It was on the original course, and he said, Apocryphallly said, I'm going to leave this ridge across These ridges across the fairway is an example of how bad golf architecture used to be. So there's this thing just in a dead straight line right across the middle of
the fairway. It's covered in kind of heathy raft. It looks actually pretty cool. But so the story is that you know he left it there as an example of, as I said, how bad architecture used to be.
Right, it's sort of the Victorian style or whatever. But you think, but you think he probably didn't say that, right, you're saying, I think you probably, You think you probably did. Okay, probably did. He actually left a feature on the golf course that he didn't like as a Oh that kind of sounds like him. Actually, it's like that's Mackenzie in a nutshell right there.
And then sixteen is the best long path. There aren't many long path threas in Australia. You know, most of the great ones, almost all the great ones are between one hundred and forty and one hundred and eighty yards because they're great because you know, they built these kind of famous sand belt bunkers and greens and they made them tight so you couldn't really make them turn and
twenty yards because they're going to be so difficult. It's different from the London heathlands and all the great path threes on the heathlands playing across amazingly interesting dramatic bits of land. But in Australia though were apart from parts of rom Melbourne and parts of Victoria's that's lastly flat. So they had to build these really, they built these great holes on land that gave them nothing, really, and then you go so it's it's got a tiny gret.
It's a really hard, difficult, hardhole, small green, really brilliantly by. It'll be a great short Part four the way the Boker works it, if they could ever put I keep saying you need to chop these trees down behind the tee and put a tea back up against the Sandringham Public Golf Course boundary fence and play it at two hundred and forty or fifty yards. It'll still be a Part three, but it'd be a great two shot hold
for most people. And then then you go back across the road and set the seventeens, arguably the best hole on the course, so it's a flattish drive. And then you go down down the hill and across the valley with a second shot back to a green on the opposite side of the valley. So there are lots of shots that go across these valleys. You know, you put the green on the opposite side of the valley and
you play across them. And then eighteen is another blind driver up and over a hill into a big bunker that's not really in play but sort of embedded into the face of the hill. So you go up and over that and then it kind of sweeps down onto the left and you with a green on the far right corner of the hole. So we use the undulations brilliantly, but you know, it's big, bold, dramatic sort of golf.
And the bunkers. Everyone's seeing the pictures of the bunkers always looked great and big greens and so you know. So it was a perfect piece of land for golf. And there was apart from the tee shirt up to fourth there was not what he would describe as hill climbing, you know. But he used the gerns and the natural undulations incredibly well. And you assume that they didn't move much dirt. It wasn't that they dramatically changed the land
in any way. We're doing the course at seven Mile Beach now in Hobart, and when we took the trees off, the land was on a lot of holes was completely unplayable for golf. It's only that we've got the bulldozer and you can actually bulldozed into some sort of form where golf is playable. And the trick is to make
it look like you haven't done that. But you assume that the land of rual Molde was completely playable once the vegetation had come off, and it was it was the property was owned by a guy who trained horses on it. It was a big color, so it was I don't think it was heavily treued. You there wasn't much clearing it went on. It was just covered in the you know, the natural heath land of the area.
So it was you know, that was a matter of mowing that down and planting the grass, but it was so it was a perfect piece of land for golf.
And of course it didn't it was it was sand, so it didn't need extensive drainage, and they brilliantly used the service Draine to get the water off the greens and not having it, you know, ripping down into the bunkers and wrecking the bunkers and it's all that stuff they got right, and you know, so it was it was a dream side for golf much much probably probably much easier than Augusta, which was clay and much much much.
Here and very yeah, extremely hilly, yeah yeah, intractable in some parts, but the routing kind of makes it makes it work.
Yeah.
Another thing, and something that strikes me about your description there of how the course unfolds over the land is that the pacing is just right with the flatter parts of the property as opposed to the more dramatic parts of the property. Right, you start on some subtler land and then in the middle of the back nine you get some subtler land, but there are these of course all around that. You have these holes going around big land forms, and so there's there's a pacing to it.
It's not like one nine has all the cool landforms and the other nine doesn't.
Which is sort of what happens right across the straight of Victoria. The first sort of seven holes of Victoria are relatively flat, well, the first eight really, and nine's got some great undulation, and then the back nines all the great angelaces on the back nine, so you know, it's not like the front nine of Victorias. It's not in any way bad nine. You know, that's really good, but the back nines better because because it's got all the great undulation on it. Yeah, that's kind of cool.
You get five or six or ten miles up the road at Metropolitan where I played, and Honeydale next door, and it's just dead flat and said, there's almost no Metro has got the six holes the only hole that has got any undulation on it at all. So it's not like the Sad belt Lands all great or all undulating, or you know, if you played Royal Melbourne and didn't play any of the sand Belt golf course, you would you wouldn't get an accurate representation of what it's all like.
People think kens and he's flat and that kind of is. But they used what undulation there was there really well. But Royal Melburn had the pick of it and Peninsula really Peninsula's further down the road, but you know it's probably it's a twenty a half hour drive from Wrong Melbourne, but there's some great undulation on that property as well.
Peninsula moved from the course that was close by they built their courses in the sixties and you know, but that was a great piece of syd belt land as well. I mean probably next to roll Melbourne. The next best piece of land on the sand belt.
Really yeah, I mean it's it's not all super dramatic, but but sandy is is kind of the common thread, I suppose. So what do you think is the best green on the West course?
It's a well, the most famous green is the sixth hole because that was where all of us used to go and congregate to watch pros up nightmare trying to put down the hill. So six is a great green, but there were so many amazing greens. The two is a beautiful green that the sort of a redwan is sort of sweeping from high on the right down to
the left. So there was when it was a I mean when it was a I mean, now it's a driving a sevenine for pros, but when it was a it was a drive and a swooping kind of three water along line, it was a beautiful green. Three is a that's the only green that goes on the west coast. The fifth green on the East course does the same thing. It's high in the front and runs away to the back. And it's which is really difficult at Royal Melbourn because
the greens are so hard. If the greens were just normal greens, you could stop the ball that any problem at all. But the greens are so hard that you've got to hit a really good shot to otherwise everything just runs to the back. So three is a great green, but then you can't really run it up because there's a really cool dagon or color hollow at the front. So you never see anyone run the ball up one of that green because it just bounces all over the place.
I mean, five is are beautiful green. Six is obviously great. There's nothing remotely close to a bad green there. You know. Seveneens are beautiful green eighteen So it's a great set of greens. But the best green, and the first green is a beautiful green for an opening hole on a flat piece of ground. It's amazing how many times when you played a tournament you'd always you would somehow always, no matter what you did, finish up with a four
foot or for a par. Now, it was just it was just because it was really hard to get the ball closed and you bought it. You'd be thirty foot away and you'd put it down and it would go three ft three or four feet past. I've had three good shots. I've got this smelly four foot across the aill for apart, but that almost always happened. So the six is the you know, the famous green, and it's brutaled apart in it, and it's it's dangerous to hit two and the pins on the left. If you go
in the front barker, it's a horrendously difficult shot. And if you go on the back bunker, you can't really aim at the holes that goes back off the front of the green, so you got hit the sideways. And so it's when Tom Doe flattened a little shell part of you know, the back right corner. He touched it a little bit to make it a little more playable. But you know it's there aren't many places to put a pin on that sixth green.
The greens are fast, I mean there's no doubt, especially when the tournament comes to Royal Melbourne, the greens are.
The greens are humming, they're super fast. And you know we've all seen that. You know that list of green speeds in America and nine in seventy seven when the fastest green was an oak, mind was nine point eight. I promise you Cropford had greens running at fourteen and nine seventy two. Yeah, I mean they were unbelievably fast.
It was funny. We like caddied for Lucas, Michelle and the in the in the Asian Amateur the Royal Melment of a few months ago, and there was a woman from the RNA who was starting us in the practice rounds and she said, make sure to fix your pitchmarks. And Lucas was like that, he said, there are no pitchmarks on this golf course. And you almost literally never fix a pitchmark. There are no pitchmarks in the greens, just there's that's how how they are. So you know
the pitchmark repairs. There aren't too many real members who ran a pitchmark repairer.
So, uh, the East Course I want to touch on at least briefly here it gets it gets overlooked a lot, but everyone I've talked to who has played it was delighted by it, just thought it was wonderful. Yeah, what can you tell me about how the how the East course is similar to the West and how it's different.
Well, it's the holes on the East Course that are on the composite course and better than the holes that they replace.
So yeah, and The composite course that you're referring to, just in case people don't know, is the tournament course at Roll Melbourne. If you've seen a big tournament at Roll Melbourne, they play a composite of the East and West courses, where most of the holes around the west. I think there are a few different versions of of this course. There are a million versions of it, maybe, but most of the holes are usually on the west and along with a few or several from the east.
Yeah, there are twelve on the west and sixth on the east. You play the first and second East. Well, you play one, two three four. Well they sorry, this comps of course is completed. The original compers of course. You play one, two three four seventeen eighteen and they've replaced the fourth hole with the sixteenth hole, the two part three's which I kind of a mistake, you know, I'd love. I think the fourth holes it's one of the great upfield path threes in the world. It doesn't
look as drama sixteen, but it's an amazing hole. So you play one, two three four on the east on the and then you go over the road and you play five and six, and then you go over the road again and you play seven to fourteen and those holes out the back are quite flat, but really good. You know, it's really good flat golf for some angelets. Never none of the dramatic stuff, much closer to the clubhouse,
but still fantastic golf. And you could easily make the argument that the second best course in Australia is of
course at Roal Melbourne. Perhaps not after Barmberger and Kate Wakam were built, but you know, twenty years ago, before the golf got built in Tasmania, you could easily make the argument that the best two courses in Australia with the West Coast and the East Course down and then probably Kankston Heath and the East courses for what they're worth, it's in the magazine rankings, it's around five, six or seven.
It's still a top hundred course in the world. And if it was the only course at Royal Melbourn, it would it would it would get a lot more credit than it does. But because the East, because of the West Coast, and that's the course that people want to play. But the East Course is brilliant and it makes the
composite course a better course than the West course. So you could make the argument Roal Melbourne should the rankings should be they should rank the East Course, the West Coast and probably the Composite course and the composite that you can make it pretty good argument. It's the best golf course in the world, perhaps not Pine Valley, but Pine Valley is not certainly not the ideal course. Mackenzie would say, well, yeah, it's great, but who can play it?
And you know, the bulk with a membership a Royal Melbourne can handle the golf course, but Pine Valley is so difficult they couldn't play that. So it might be the best course in the world, but maybe it's the most ideal course in the world.
So you're among those who thinks that the composite courses is a better course than the West Course flat out.
Oh yeah, yeah, it's clearly better. But because because Russell's holds on the on the East Course that they play it better than the holes that you know they're better than did they replace eight nine and thirteen to sixteen on the West Course, which are all which are really good holes, but you know Russell's holes are brilliant holes. Yeah,
they're great. So eighteen which eighteen East which comes around the other side of the In fact, it shares the faire with the first West course up by the green. It's a dead flat dog leg left with a clump of tee tree on the corner and a hundred yard wide fairway that goes all the way to the clubhouse and amazing green. It's one of the great holes at all Noboyne. It's a brilliant hole, you know, and it's dead flat. It's just back on the land around the clubhouse.
But it's an amazing dogleg left par four where so many kind of that crazy finished to the Asian amateur when Penn in the front right. No one had burded it all day, and then the two kids in the playoff both burded in the first time of the playoff, which was completely mad. Yeah, but yeah, it's a great hole.
So the East course obviously a Russell course.
Yeah, you know.
Can you can you see Russell making an effort to emulate the West course in this design and can you also see some places where he's trying to distinguish the East course from the West course, Because I mean, there are different schools of thought about how you go about designing the second eighteen of a thirty six hole facility. You can go the direction of saying we want something really different and really distinct and that has its own very clear identity, or you can say we want we
want some kind of uh, you know, similarities. We want we want a continuity is the word I'm looking for between the courses. What approach do you think Russell took here on the East course?
Continuity? Yeah, you know it was the bonkers looked the sign the grains that perhaps there are some different grains out there, but that so you know, you don't walk on the eleventh grain of the east courses. This was clearly not a Mackenzie grain because it you know, the concepts with the sign and it was a really cool grain.
But there's nothing on the West course. But it fits in beautifully and it's so you know, the bunkering style is the same that you know he because the land is not as expansive, but you know, it's not quite as wide, and he had to you know, there's not as much room between the holes on the far paddock on the East course, but you know they're very similar courses.
So the thirteenth on the East and the thirteenth on the west are both sort of short one hundred and thirty or forty yard past three that you can swap them over and you wouldn't neither would look out of place on the other golf course. And it kind of, you know in a way. I mean, the composite course wasn't built, wasn't arranged until the World Cup in it was a Canada Cup then in nineteen fifty nine. That
was why they put it together. But you play the holes around the clubhouse on the East course or on the on the clubhouse paddic on the East course, and there you would never know you run a different golf course. You come off the the old composite course. She came off the fourth West and went to the third East, and you know, an anyone who played that composite course, you'd never been there before, wouldn't have any idea that
was playing a different golf course. You know that it just looked exactly the same.
Yeah, it's amazing that it flows so well, and you know, and then furthermore, a similar point is that, as you mentioned earlier, there are a couple of holes on the West course, and I'm sure on the East course as well that aren't original that were changed later greens were moved or you know, seventh on the West Course I know fits this description, and yet I don't know. I mean, I've I've looked at all the holes at Roll Melbourne through pictures and on TV a number of times. I
think I know them fairly well. If you had asked me to pick out the hole that wasn't an original Mackenzie hole, I wouldn't be able to do it.
All.
It all fits in pretty well. The course is so well presented and so well stewarded that just it's all. You know, it's a complete thing.
Yeah, yeah, you know Crockford moved that twelfth green and I assume, well, I think I went to a great hole, so I think he probably made it a better hole than it was. And you don't know, I mean, I assume Russell was around at the time, so obviously they assume they spoke about it, and you know, they probably had a committee meeting and said, I guess he said I want to move the twelfth green. That was what's a good idea, Okay, we'll do that, and so that happened.
But you know that green's you don't you know, it's indistinguishable from you know, it's not like that green stands out as something different or something you know. Gil the first time Gil Hans came down to Australia. Funny story, he won the Olympic job. He ran me up and said, you know, I've got this job to build the Olympic course in Rea and and I've sold it to the whoever he was selling it to on the basis of Kenston Heath. He said, I suppose I should come down
and see it. Because he'd never been to the sand belt. So we were talking about that, the twelfth Green of Victoria, which was he'd never never been to Australia. We started walking Victorious. We walked, We started on the tenth pole. It was late, it was six o'clock at night in the summer. We walked ten, walked eleven. So he's never been in Australia, never seen a sand belt course. He's seen two greens and he got one hundred yards from the twelfth green and said that green is not original green?
Is it like? You can see that. I knew it wasn't original, but I thought it was amazing. He said. The hardest thing to do is built one green on a golf course and have it fit with the other seventeen. Which was the genius of the twelfth green in Royal Melbourne is no one would know that that's not an
original green. So you know clearly once Mackenzie had gone, you know that there were people who were talented enough to change some of his work and have it fit in perfectly well, which is what the seventh pole does. The part three. It's a great path three and no one who went there would ever know that, you know, this wasn't Mackenzie never even saw this hole. So the changes have been small but really well done there.
Yeah, and not many greenkeepers over the years either, right, the lineage of greenkeepers at Royal Melbourne. There were some really long tenured people who took care of the course and maybe that's part of it. Maybe that's part of the reason that it's been preserved so well, and that it that it still feels so complete. It's not like a hodgepodge. There weren't a bunch of different voices at different times coming in and making changes. There was again that word continuity.
Morgan was there for until I think the thirties. I think Crockford for Crockford started there in the mid thirties, I think, and he was there, but I know it was around when I was around. You know, he was setting up torments and I was. I think he did a couple of Australiums and Pj's I played in, but yeah, in fact he did. So he was there until the mid eighties, and you know they've had a fuse since then and Richard Forsyth's Richard's been there fifteen years now,
twelve fifteen years. But they've all been great at preserving, you know, the golf course. I mean, Peter Williams changed over the grass to Pencross in the late eighties, and Jim Porter came along after that and he said, as we were putting in the last Pencross green, we were trying to figure out what we were going to replace it with. So Richard eventually took her back to a grass that's much closer to the original grass. So that was probably a mistake changing the grass over on the greens,
but they don't make too many changes mistakes. And Crockford was such a respected kind of greenkeeper that the committee, you assume, largely stayed out of his road. You know, they understood the course was great, and he looked after it well and it was why would you want to make interfere or change anything? And that was the way it rolled for a long time there and it still does really, I mean, don't still the consulting architects and you know he's you know, largely it's leave it alone
because Martin Hartley made some change. He got the job there as the architect there and you know, maybe twenty years ago, and there were some boundary issues on the East course that he that he changes kind of solved in a way, you know, it dug up Russell's sixth hole on the East Course and changed it and don'k redid it and it's still kind of it's not as good as the old hole, but they solved the boundary
problem at seven and seventeen. It's you know, the holes with roads on the right, which is one thing Russell did. It was funny Russell. Every course he did in Australia, the boundaries are all on the right. Whether it's a coincidence or whether he was a hooker who you know, I don't know or whatever, but all the boundary, all the boundary problems there are on Russell's courses and every course in this range has got boundary problems because they're
all in the suburbs. Every boundary problem. Of course, the rest of it is it's always on the right. It's just kind of weird. Yeah, So Hartory challenged a few things around and that Doug Doug came back and kind of, for one of a better word, fixed what Hartrey had done and it'll you know, it all fits together pretty well ready.
So I'm curious since you've seen so much golf at roll Melbourne. I mean you've played a lot of golf there out there as well, but but you've seen a lot of tournaments there, including fairly recently. Does a particular round come to mind as the best you've ever seen someone play at Roal Melbourne, somebody who just like unlocked the course and really for for eighteen holes, really had mastery of it.
I played the day early shot sixty, So I guess that was pretty good.
He was, he was pretty good at golf.
Yeah, I mean watching Sevy, I've watched Sev play pretty much every hollow of the seventy eight page eight and that was beautiful to watch because that was McKenzie built that course for Mackenzie loved the way Hagen played golf, and that was the sort of you know, we wanted players to have room and space, didn't like the tight, constricted golf. And he then he loved Hagen, loved the way he played. So he was designing for Hagen in a way. And Sevie was Hagen. You know, he came,
you know, forty fifty years later, he comes there. Here's a guy who needs some space to show how created if he isn't. But that was Sevie at his best. So watching Sevie player was amazing. And so I would say the best golf I've seen that was Sevi and Lydia Coe. Lydia co won the Women's Open there by I don't know seven shots, and it was just genius stuff. I mean, she took that place apart. It was amazing how well she played. She'd figured out the angles and
people say angles don't matter, you know, Roal Melbourne. They't matter because the shot from one side of the fairway can be way easier than the shot on the other side. And she just it was genius. She played beautifully and just picked it apart. The third on the East Course, which is I don't know what number. It was because it was there been seventy ridiculous routings of the composite course people just lose track of. So so the third on thee she first day she had left off the
tea a little bit was into the wind. I think it was unusually for that whole. She had quite a long second shot down the hill to her back right pen and she cut this hybrid thing into about six or eight feet And the next day she hold her nine nine on the same hole. It was like it was she just and she won by seven shots. It was just she made And Stacy Lewis was a famous not famous growth but she said, you know, ryal Welbom doesn't reward good shots, and she was right, it rewards
great shots. And you know, whilst the rest of hil were complaining about how difficult the course was, Lydia was just putting a clinic on. So, you know, in terms of two not specific rounds, but two tournaments played, that
was amazing. And I saw Halo and played the last six holes in nineteen seventy eight when he shot sixty four, and I think the first round and I you know, I watched him play from the top of the hill on the fourth west, which was the fourteenth top, and he just sit you know, he had a string of amazing shots from there to the finish, just like flushed it. It was. That was the first time I saw someone
play golf. That was like, my god, that's that's I didn't know anyone could play golf that well, you know, ha, halo. It was. He just flushed it from the top of the hill. It was a two on and he had a beautifully a great shot into the whole the whole weather you hold the nine on that was the next hole. He had a beautiful seven one in there. Then the path three up the hill, the fourth he had a beautiful shot in there and just think he shot sixty four.
It was obviously and he won the tournament. But yeah, that was that was kind of memorable.
Yeah, the long clubs off the fairway, hail Irwin. Yeah, I mean, unbelievable. Yeah, he was too iron and a fairway would Yeah.
He was. You could see him hit that well. I was four years earlier. We hit that two under the last hole at Wingfoot when he was open. You know, it was like you know, when when you see it in person, it's like, well, that guy can really hit it. And the other great The other great round, of course was I watched Tiger play Abraham Answer and the singles in the President's Cup and that was that was he was clearly the best player there that week. It was
you know, twenty nineteen. It was just it was, you know, that's why you want That's why pro golf was better when it signed proper golf courses, because it brings out the genius and the best players. And that was you know, that was a again, it was it was Mackenzie designing for Tiger. It was a perfect golf course for Tiger. Was it was to think about where you were going to hit it, and you know, and you had to hit it there and you had to control the Elvis.
You know, I cave Elvis Smiley in the New Zealand Open the start last year and we're out with Steve Williams the last day and Elvis ad Steve, you know what was your favorite Torment decade? He said, Augusta, Because you know, most courses you've got four or five yards to play with Augusta, you've got one yard. And that might have been an exaggeration, but not by much. And
Roal Melbourne. You've got you know, some holes, you've got one or two yards to play with and you've got you know, and which goes back to the Stacey Lewis point was you know it doesn't reward good shots. No, you've got a yard to play with it. And if you missed that yard or two yards by three yards instead of being eight feet away, you can be forty feet away and you think you've hit a good shot and you're forty feet away, but no, you missed it
by two yards. Not good enough, you know. Which is why, which is why it's such a genius golf course and why it still holds up in torments, and why there aren't so many crazy rounds because it's so difficult to get the ball near the whole, especially when it's windy, because the little undulations in the greens and you get the wrong you have the wrong shape and get the wrong bounds and get on the wrong side of the slope and a shot that on most courses in the
world that would be fifteen or twenty feet away, So it's fifty feet away, and now you're going to three part or you're going to struggle the two part. So that's its genius really. So when you see someone like Tiger or sev or Lydia co play that Orhalo and play that course, well, it's brilliant to watch and it's memorable. I can still see those shots everyone hit and Sevy hit, and you can still see them why they were so. Lydia played the eighteenth on the West course with Charlie Hult.
The Pember's in the front right corner dog legg right and she hit it down the tree line, over the bunker into the right half of the fairway, the right corner of the fairway, and Charlie hit a three wood into the middle of the fairway. But now she's back with a five one into the green off the right to left slope to a right pin with the wind off the right, and she hit it in a decent shot,
but it was forty foot left of the hole. But Lydia was thirty yards closer down with a better angle and she hit it in under the hole with an eight I and sort of twelve fifteen feet away. Charlie putted it down six foot short because it was a really fast part Lydia miss, Charlie missed. Charlie made five, and I'm sure she walked off the green thinking but he did a bad shot there, and I made five. Well, you didn did a bad shop, but you didn't really ever have it in the same position DA had it in.
And Lydia made a really easy four, and Charlie was middle of the fellow middle of the green, but walked off of the five kind of presumably like I didn't do much wrong there. But there aren't many holes in the world where she'd have made a bogie off the two shots she hit, but she did because neither of them were she didn't take on what Lydia took on.
Was Lydia a teenager at the time.
It was pre Leadbetter's a swing, which was why it was a why do you want to kick this? Why do you want to change this game? You're already the best man in the world.
So the most beautiful player to watch. Yeah, when when she was a teenager, I mean it was just perfect. Yeah, and yeah, I mean you know, the size of the margin that you're talking about, the size of a margin between being screwed and being in a good position is often what people key in on when they talk about unfairness. Right, Yeah, if the margin is if the margin is too small between being okay and being screwed, then then people will say that's unfair. You can't possibly expect me to be
that accurate. No one can be that accurate. But then you get players like Lydia Coo as a teenager, or Tiger Woods at the twenty nineteen President's Cup, or or Hailer when hitting a long iron. I mean that is the elite of the elite, and they can play with those margins.
Yeah, which is what you know Tom Dunk told me about. He said, I don't want to distinguish your train a two handicapper and a scratch or a five handicapp and a scratch play. I want to distinguish to train a scratch plan the best player in the club and the best part on the world. And that's what mackenzie did. Start bringing Roal Melbolle. So Andrews does that, and he understood. And Andrews, you know, to hit a great shot into
the road hole. You don't see many guys stepping it on the road hole, but you know if someone I remember David Graham had a great shot into the seventeenth oldt tonanres in a Dunhill Cup. He drew this five one around the back of the bunk it or about I don't know what three, I can't remember. Close, really close. It was an amazing shot. So you had to hit you know, you didn't you have nothing to play with
and you had to hit the perfect shot. It wasn't like, you know, it wasn't a severe as fifteen AUGUSTA when you come back in the water if you're two yards down, but you can be fifty feet away off what you think is a good shot, Well, you know it was. It wasn't a bad job anyways, but it was wasn't perfect. But then you watch these people play it who play it perfectly, and you go, well, you can play it.
It's playable, And one hundred years later it's still you know, it's genius still comes out because Tiger Woodsmen played the thing that Mackenzie built and still show off his jenius and still show off why he was the best player that week at the President's Cup when he wasn't if you played a regular tour event. Tiger was past his best by twenty nineteen. I mean one of the masters, but he was. He was ten years past his best. Golf probably, but you put him on Roll Melbourne. He's
the best player here. And if Mackenzie had been there and seen that, he was a see I told you, you know that's what That's what the course I did was really good because I found out who the best player was undred years it was.
Who the best mind was. Yeah, his Tiger's mind was that it's at its peak because his body may not have been at its peak, but you know, yeah, that is that is a true testament of a great course there. All right, Well, Mike, I've taken enough of your time. You need to go play some golf at Barn Google. That's far more important than talking to me. But thank you so much for spending some time with me. Yeah, it was, it was great.
I was always fun to talk about Roll Melbourne and it's always when I played there on news day and it's like for me, it's as much fun playing there now as it was fifty years ago. How many courses like that?
All right, thank you, Mike.
Thanks mate.
This episode of the Friday Golf Podcast was produced by Matt ruschis Thank you, Matt. One thing that I would recommend that you do if you enjoyed this episode, If you like these deep dives into golf architecture. I think you would love what we're doing in Club TFE. Club TFE is our membership. It costs one hundred and twenty dollars a year and there are a number of things that come with it, aside from golf architecture content, so you get an ongoing discount in the pro shop, you
get early access to Friday golf events. We have all sorts of stuff going on, but one of the big things is weekly content on golf architecture. There's a design notebook series where we talk about what's going on right now in the world of golf architecture. And there are our weekly course profiles. We've got ones coming up on the Beverly Country Club in Chicago, Go as well as one that I will start writing as soon as I
get off the mic here about bandoned trails. And these are in depth analyzes of golf courses with beautiful imagery photos that we've gotten at these courses, as well as illustrations by Cameron Hurtis and Matt Ruschis. We're really proud of what we're doing here and what we're providing our numbers, So if you're interested in that if you like this episode, you like golf architecture, this is a great experience for you. So that's Club TFE. Go to the Frida egg dot
com slash membership to see what it's all about. Thank you for listening. We'll be back again soon