Michael Keiser, Jr.

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get fifteen percent off your purchase. So go visit our friends over at zero restriction dot com. Today I am joined by Michael Kaiser Junior. This is an exciting conversation. Michael and I talk every once in a while on the phone, and we always end up having really long, interesting discussions about bevies of topics that you know, range the depths of architecture to just random things. And I always thought it would be just good to have a

conversation just like our phone conversation. So that's kind of how I modeled this this interview with Michael, and I hope you guys enjoy it. 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.

you know, a broad perspective. You know, there's six or eight people hopefully they're you know, representative of our guests. Uh, and we all share, you know, what we like about them, what we don't like about them, so that you know, that's that's the process. That's pretty simple.

incredible experience. But honestly, my favorite job was I was a carpenter for several years, you know, a Union card carrying frame in Chicago, and I loved, you know, building things. I love the people I worked with. I love the culture of the company I worked at. So that's what I did in in high school and college, golf and framing. When I graduated from Santa Clara, I honestly had no idea what I wanted to do. I was a major in econ and Latin. I was a golfer. I had

spent three or four weeks each winter throughout college. We were on the quarter system, so we had a big winter break going down to Barn Google and spending time with the settlers as they were developing their business. My dad and I would go down. My sister came on one of our trips, and then getting ah an extraordinary education in the Sand Belt, playing playing these great golf courses, and Michael Clayton, who you've had on your show, was

our our host through most of those. And there's nothing better better than either walking or playing Oral Melbourne and listening to Clay's talk about the architecture, and we were joined by Jeff Ogilvie, you know several times, so to hear them banter about you know that really really then the minutia of the course and the big themes, right, but all of it was, you know, I think that's maybe when I got you know, the the I'd been hooked on golf for a while, but that's when I

got the bug and the interest in golf course architecture. I had been privileged before them to play some great golf courses, but I didn't necessarily know why they were great, and that got me curious, so that, you know, when I went home, I started, you know, looking at golf courses more closely and asking different questions and trying to learn as much as I could. So I went down

there for three or four years. For a month, I got to know the settlers, and having no idea what I wanted to do, I called Richard Sattler and asked him for a job. He figured, I guess because I'd worked on golf courses and because of the relationship he had with my dad, that I had more experience than you know the other operations, you know, non manager employees, not much more experience. But so I went down there and had an incredible year, worked round the clock all

day every day. It started with me and Greg Ramsey in a single WAT trailer in the parking lot running the operations. The settlers were running the operations, but we were sort of down in the dirt, you know, taking care of our guests and you know, gorilla and burgers and brats and running the shop and selling right. So if there were slow times, or if you didn't need both of us, somebody would be in the back selling right, calling clubs in real Melbourne, just trying to get people

to bar and Google. And by the time hustle, we were hustling, learned how to hustle, you know, well I think had a sense of out a hustle. But yeah, we were hustling. It was fun. But what I what I realized was I didn't love operations. I wasn't great at operations. What I was drawn to was the development work that Richard and Sally and then their kids were doing. And I would spend as much time as I could learning from Richard everything he knew. He and his wife

Sally are brilliant entrepreneurs. He had developed several hotels in Hobart. He grew up on a farm. He left his farm to drive a truck, ended up buying the truck, then the fleet from his boss cashed out, went into the hotel business. He knew his guests, he knew what was important what was not important. So then when he risked, literally risked his farm. Actually I cut out a piece. So he wanted his kids to grow up on a farm.

He sold most of his hotel business, bought sixteen thousand acres of mostly undeveloped land that he developed into a farm. Almost lost it all when the world price of sheep crashed, had built it back up when Greg Ramsey came along and tried to convince him to build a golf course, which he ultimately did. I forget where I was going with that. But he really knew development, he knew his customers.

He had never played golf in his life. He didn't really know anything about He didn't know anything about golf course architecture and very little about golf. But my dad assured him that he would help with you know, work with the architect and that everything. Richard, we had stayed at his hotels. Everything that he was doing in Hobart would be directly applicable to Barnbougle, and they were the same guests. There are business travelers from Melbourne and Sydney,

and Richard totally gets it. So it was a perfect translation and he hit the ground running.

location and poorly at that location. So our relationship has from the start been based off of exactly what you just asked about, right, So so it's a little and he would test us, you know, we walk out of a restaurant, you know, what would you change? Well? What did they do really well? So that's that's just sort of intuitive, and you know, it's it might be a curse to the people around me, because it's like you can't shut that off. Right, Everything you see is something

to learn from, either good or bad. But but what makes working in the golf industry so fun is you're just always you know, learning, and it's a it's a good excuse to go see what the best do right. And every time if I'm lucky enough to go on a vacation, either you know, with my wife or on a buddy's trip, you know, I'm leaving you know, the trip with one hundred notes and here's what they did really,

really well. Here's something that you know, as a customer, I didn't like, and I wonder if we're doing something similar, you know, let's look into that and try to improve it. So it's it's yeah, it makes life really fun because every day, you know, we're learning, you know, different different things and taken awayfully best practices.

deserve to be on the team or not. You'll always be my Kaiser's son. So go out and figure out what you like developing and gain some confidence and success, and then over time, if there's a good opportunity for us to work together, then we'll do it. But but if not, you'll be you know, happy. He knew I loved building. I love creating and imagining.

really got lucky. I was lucky in the sense that I was introduced to Dan Lucas and Mike Dreu, who are the partners and founders of Structured Development. And I give myself credit in taking that job. It was the salary was the lowest offer I received, but it was so clear that these are guys I wanted to learn from.

They were so smart, and they worked so hard, and they're doing really cool projects right some other jobs that I just I saw a ceiling, not just salary, but in terms of what I could learn and it was clear that their culture, you know, there was no ceiling. You know, there's there's nothing below you and there's nothing above you. So you know, I would say outside of my dad, Richard Saler was my first mentor that I you know, I think about lessons from him, you know,

all the time. And and Dan Lucas and Mike Drew was really lucky. It took a while to get their attention, even though it was a small company. I had no idea what I was doing when they hired me, and wasn't worth the small salary they were paying me, right, I mean, But eventually got their attention and just had a blast, you know, working working for them.

You take a job and you know nothing, and your job essentially is like you learn it on the fly. Oh yeah, a lot in a lot of places, especially with what you're describing. It's almost more like a startup culture at that development shop, because there was it was very flat and you could see where you could go up.

So yeah, I've always admired people who, uh, I don't know if they get bored or just wanted a new challenge, but totally change careers and just start from scratch. And some people just do it every every fifteen or twenty years, even when they're you know, they've achieved great success. And my dad's one of those people. Right. He was a greeting card publisher and then and then the next day

he was a golf course developer. You know, that's crazy, and people, you know, might think that he didn't know anything about I mean, he wasn't a developer, but he was a curious person and he'd observed retail golfers and restaurants, and you know it gets a lot of credit for golf, but maybe not enough for the hospitality side, on the service side, which is you know, he really.

I aftually had a lot of support at that that company, and I wasn't figuring out you know, the big brilliant ideas that the partners were, but you know, starting with the smallest projects and tasks I was given, going all the way up to the top. It was just the confidence of you know, I was in my early twenties, mid twenties, late twenties managing a dynamic team right of engineers, lawyers,

you know, brokers, finance, you know people in finance. You know you have clients, most of mine, we're medical office spaces that you're working for. You know, it's a dynamic team and managing them toward an outcome in our case building or my case within the company, you know, delivering these medical office suites and then retail, and we did some I did some industrial and some school. So that was what I learned, was the confidence that you could

just figure it all out. You know, with your analogy with trucking, you know, I think you have the confidence that you might not know anything about trucking, but you could just figure it out, just ask a million questions and bug people with questions. You just keep asking the right questions and you'll get there. So the AHA moment was when I finally had the confidence to say, Okay, I think I could do this on a smaller scale

on my own. And then and then I left to do that, to do really small developments, but their mind and right, and it was it was the confidence to do that and then being successful doing that that gave confidence. So then when I ultimately went to work with my dad, starting out with band in Muni, I had some confidence that I didn't know everything about golf course development, but I think I could figure out. And I was surrounded

by so many brilliant people. If I could ask the right questions, I think I could lead them toward, you know, a vision that might be successful.

municipal golf course. There's twenty seven holes. You know, locals with tee off on one and resort guests with tee off at ten. Twenty seven holes, you could double the number of rounds on. The land was phenomenal. It was really dooony. You know, there are dunes at Bandon, but then there's you know, there's different there's different landforms throughout Bandon. You know the trails you go into the woods and out on you know sixteenth of Bandon, it's this really

hard packed sand. Uh. This was pure sand dunes, right, pure link sand dunes.

this high dune ridge after which it dropped off. It was pretty flat, but it was about a mile from the ocean. So beautiful, pure sand site, gorgeous dunes. You know. Gil Hans was hired to be the architect.

It was outstanding. It was one of the best routings on some of the best piece of ground I've ever seen. And unfortunately it was never built. There was an issue with the Bureau of Land Management that kept us from being able to trade for the land. So it wasn't built. And that happens a lot for in the industry and for us. You know, if the public sees one resort, of course that gets developed. There are many that don't that fizzle out, and it's just part of the heartbreak

of working in the business. You know, we're lucky to see all these great sites, but not every great site gets built down cool links. You know, there's the unfortunate news last week that that wasn't approved, and that's just that's part of it's part of the business, and it's it's heartbreaking, but you move on and you know that there will be other great sites and other great properties and on behold, we got a call from Craig Altam and then we moved on to Sand Valley.

with the locals. He spent eight years working on the development, you know, getting banded off the ground. He was there in person, people knew him. That was one of the big biggest lessons I took away from Bandon was what Howard McKee did. So when we started San Valley, I moved there right so that you know, it wasn't these developers from Chicago or they like Trump or you know, who are these guys if because these rumors spread in

these small towns. So if anybody said, oh, they're going to do such and shuts, somebody else would say, no, they're not. Go ask Michael. He's over there in Aisle six buying Brad. Go talk to him, right, you're there and accessible. That's what Howard did. I think that's why Bannon was successful. I tried to emulate that at San Valley by embedding myself in the community. I was at

the farmer's market every Friday. You know, knew knew everybody in the community, so that you know, you fill the void that rumors would otherwise fill.

is all example of it. And I don't know why this popped in, but local Farmers Market got to know this great music co op right there are. I remember the day there's two two women harmonizing what was on the base the other ukulele. It was just awesome bluegrass, right. So we got to know them, learned about their co op and said we want you to be a part

of sand Valley. From the start, we've lived music at Sand Valley five days a week and it's it's their co op and they have a rotating group of musicians passing through the Midwest. We have, you know, fiddlers from all over the world and bluegrass artists and so again we wouldn't have probably met them have we not been there, been.

with the architects. So so walking with my dad and with Jim Wagner and Gil Hands and getting a better sense of what that relationship is and how that waltz works, I guess was the takeaway so that, you know, then when we started Sanballey, it had some experience working with an architect even though we weren't we weren't building, and it wasn't a tremendous amount of time, but it was enough to start to start to you know, understand that

I'm struggling with the timing. But I guess also did that at Cabot, joined my dad on his trips to Cabot when you when he and Ben Collen were developing links and then cliffs. So that was probably the most important uh takeaway. And then I mean I had a blast. I spent a lot of time getting to know the land, so I guess I learned that I really enjoy that. I knew that was important not just for the architect, but I think for the developer to know the ground intimately.

So that was maybe another takeaway that when we started Siam Valley, I spent at least six months just walking the ground so I knew it so we could make decisions on you know, where should the architect start, what ground did I like the most, or what pieces of ground might compliment you know one another as two courses and then three, so just just seeing just seeing how it takes time. There's no other way to get to

know a piece of ground but time. Just walk it, you know, know all the deer trails, you know, just just know everything about it.

what are we going to build? What's the what's the concept, what's the big idea? And maybe that's where our contribution is is most important. Sometimes we generate that idea, sometimes the architect does, and sometimes it comes out of a conversation. I think in the case of Daks course, it was his idea but it came out of a conversation Christopher and I are, you know, have a confidence that we could push the bound continue to push the boundaries in

terms of unconventional routings. We found our golfers love playing eighteen holes and then a par three, right. You know, we were talking recently about one of the most inspiring golf courses to you. For me, it's Banned Preserve because it totally blasted through the mold of what golfers will travel to play. And I'm saying, they go to band and play the Preserve, but they go to Bandon and they play it, and they pay one hundred dollars to

play it. I mean, that's that's that's big Cabot Cliffs, six par threes, six par four, six par fives, that's you know, pretty mold breaking. And then Pacific Dudes. The back nine four part three's three par five is only two par fours, the sixteenth, it's one of the best holes on the resort. That's a short part four, and then the thirteenth, which is one of the most epicals on the property. That's an unusual squarecard for the best.

he's just committed to the best golf holls. So, you know, Christopher and I want to, you know, continue to explore the boundaries of what our guests will like this, I guess, going backwards in time, the Sandbox started as what I wanted to be a putting course. What I saw at the preserve was a lot of people talked about the last hole, which the caddies encouraged them to play with a putter. And I just see how much fun people have playing a full length Part three with only a putter.

It's a downhill hole and you could just bun it down, you know, if you had a decent shot at somewhere on the green, and people love that. So I asked Jimmy Craig to consider routing. I called it a Part two course at the time, but in reality, you know, how many of us can get down in two from eighty yards. But of course that you would only play with your putter. So he started doing that. But then he said, you know, he'd say, Mike, come over here, look look at this tea. You know, don't you want

to hit this shot too? And I'd say, yeah, I do. I really want to hit that shot, you know, but that's more of a wedge and there's a bit of a force carry. So he started with that concept, but he took the conversation uh much further right and broaden it and made it more interesting. Frankly, it made it a lot more interesting, but we still have, you know,

the t's that you could play with a putter. It started there and the conversation evolved into what it is today, which is a mashy course right holes between sixty and one hundred and forty yards, which is different than you know, you're not hitting you know, five irons into those greens. So, with seeing how much fun people have at the preserve and are having at the sandbox, Chris and I started thinking, what if the next course we build at Sam Valley

wasn't an eighteen hole full lengths course. What if it was a precision course. Tom Doak had done, of course, next to the preserve, a routing which I hope we build one day of drivable par fours and par three's. I thought, you know, could we do that for the next course here? Could that be? Like? Would people take that seriously and play it? Would you wake up in the morning and go out and play a precision course,

you know, just part three short part fours. So I called Tom and said, you know, this isn't a job offer, but I'm curious if that were your one crack at Sam Valley, if your commission was to build that type of course, would you do it? And he said, absolutely, that's fun, that's different. I love it. And another reason why we got there was this piece of ground that

Sedge Valley sits on. Has been near and dear to my heart since since the start, and we haven't developed it yet, but it's just my opinion, perfect golf ground. But because the first two courses it's a little tight in places, and a couple other brilliant architects have done more traditional routings on it and it just didn't quite work right. It didn't fit. There are a lot of great holes, but some holes it got a little awkward.

What don't you love about it? So, you know, and then trusting our own gut and you know reading you know the architects, asking the architects what they think about their own routing, what they don't like. But so the other routings were they had so many high points because the ground was so good and they're great architects, but it was it was too much golf and too small a space. So I thought this precision course could work

really well on it. So Tom said, absolutely, I'd love to look at it, but would you consider another model that I've wanted to do for a long time? Right, And then he talked about what you wrote about, which is the current model what we're building of course, like West Sussex or Rye or Swimy Forest that is, you know, more more traditional, but you know, not not committed to any length or par So he said, you mind if I just spend some time out there and see if

that fits and propose that and it sounded really cool. Well, you know, I played those courses. I haven't played Ride, but I've played West Sussex and Swindley Forest some of the others he mentioned, and I never once thought of them as anything but great, fun, wonderful courses. If you ask anybody plays Windy Forest what the par or length is, they'll it doesn't stand out as being six thousand yards of part sixty eight. It's just a great golf course.

That's the takeaway. And I hope that's the message with Tom's golf course. So I was surprised to hear that those those two courses in particular were not sixty eight hundred yards par seventy two, because I just walked off saying, man,

that was fun. Right, that was really fun. But so he explained that and it sounded really cool, and I talked to Chris about it, and he went out and as he does you know often, you know, he could all these architects, including Tom, spend a lot of time on the ground, but you know, he's really good with topo's and sort of I don't want to say he mailed in a routing because he spent time walking out there. But it was awesome from start. You know, it's not going to require a ton of input from me here

because or you know, our family. It's a really strong routing as is, so we're sold. So that was the conversation. It started as something that Chris and I thought would be cool. He took it. I don't say the next level because I would like to build that concept at some point. But he found something that was a better fit for this piece of ground. That is so cool. So that's a very long winded way of saying where the conversation starts. Then we walked there routing with them

in person. Right, we talk about what we like, what we don't like. There's nothing but things to like so far in his golf courses. In the first five holes we've cleared are just spectacular. But we did we start talking about themes. You know, he sees a lot of exposed sand on the first two and he says, you know, what do you think about it's in this beautiful? Said Savannah? Could we just let that be? And you know, the conversation is, yeah, it's beautiful. What can we do to

help that? Now? You know, we could burn it, seed into it, you know, really lift up that surrounding prairie. And Savannah we talk about greens that we like. I mean, there's an email where it was sort of like, here are the things that aren't really important to me, right because it's important to get on the same page at the same point, on the same page early on. And then he did the same, here's what's really important to me.

And then we compromised on certain things. You know, I talked about just wanting really big greens, which I like and I've learned from my dad. And he pointed out, you know that certain holes, the fourth hole in particular, a big green doesn't make sense because of its length, but also because of this perfectly natural green that's sitting there. It's phenomenal, Like, why change it? Make it bigger.

perfect as is. We were talking about bunkers. You know, I've been and other people in the industry but think a lot about bunkering. There's been a lot of flashy bunkers out there. I've always been drawn to like a lot of Scottish and Irish courses that have sort of economy of bunkering. They do so much with so little. There's fewer bunkers, and the bunkers are smaller, but they're impactful and.

and not great at it. But I love being creative and trying because it shots.

we know we're speaking speaking the same language. And one of the ones that they presented was you know, Walton Heath, which has I think more bunkers than we would have, but so many of those either sit down below the surface or they would just go and carve out a hole and then put the earth behind the bunker to flash up a little lip, you know, and it's sort of clear that it's man made. It's a little mound, but it's very elegant. And you see those, you know,

when they started. You see those all over London and in places in some of the older courses in the US as well. So now we're talking themes, right we had. We know that it's going to have five par threes, a number of short to meet you know, drivable to short par four's. We know what the out of play area looks like. We've talked bunkering. Playability is a big conversation, you know, and Tom and Brian have always said, look,

we like playability too. We don't want our guests. But that's something I keep repeating and they know it is, you know, but this part of my job is to defend the retail golfer, right, just make sure that you know everybody's you know, having a lot of fun out there. I'm not telling them anything they don't know. They're committed to, Oh, they're committed to playability as well. And then green sites.

You know, the most recent conversation, Brian Tom and I were out a few weeks ago walking and I was really curious to hear what they were thinking for each of their green sites, and fingers crossed. You know, I'm hoping the answer is very little, because sometimes, you know, they'll use what's there and sometimes they'll riff off of

that and build things up. But these first holes that were cleared, I mean, it's like to see them right now, and that was you know, they'll they'll polish them probably with the sampro and might do a little dose are work. But it was really great to hear that they're going to do very little to the greens. The first five are like five of the most natural and best green sites on the property. They're They're amazing, and I'm just praying that as we clear trees we find that that's

the case. Across the routing. They're spectacular green sites and they're all so different. So again, in a short conversation, you know, what they're planning on doing is something that I'm really excited about a big I don't want to say contentious, but where we had a conflict of opinion in our conversations as a number of teen grounds. You know, we have six sets of tees and we want, you know, everybody to be able to, you know, in some sense

play the hole in the same way. And Tom feels that with fewer teas with great design, that people who with different swing speeds and abilities can have fun playing all from the same tee. And I agree with him one hundred percent. Right, if you have a four hundred and eighty yard hole and you have an eighty mile an hour seventy five mile hour swing speed, if the architecture is interesting, you have a lot of fun playing it.

But I also know so I agree with that. I also know that our average guest if they have to take if they're forced to play three shots to a part four, they don't. They don't love that. Right.

gonna have one tea. And so the next conversations will be is a piece of ground ready for irrigation? Those are generally, you know, not long conversations. And then the ultimate conversation that we're involved in, right, I mean Tom will have many, many, many conversations with his team, and we don't pretend to be architects, right, that's not our job. But we will have conversations on if a green is ready for seating and in the and a fairways are

ready for seating. So fairways are they wide enough? Right? We go for really wide fairways. I think it's such value. You'll have narrower fairways than the first two courses, but you'll still have maintained rough.

the industry with you know, are more. I use the term wild, and I think an architect would you you know, use a different term, would be interesting or but I think rather the same page. They also know they know what we like. I mean they they they I think, try to please their own creativity and sensibilities. But they also you know, want a client to be happy, right,

so there. You know, if a client says I want you to build a championship golf course, I'm not going to say no. He's going to say, okay, how can I build a championship golf course that tests the greatest players in the world, but it's also fun for you know, the daily golfer, and you've talked to Tom about the course he's building in Texas doing that. Likewise, if if a client, if a client, if we say we want a course to be really playable for people of all handicaps,

he's not gonna They're not gonna fight that. They're gonna say, Okay, that's that's the vision. We're gonna do that, but we're gonna figure out how to make a challenging for andy as well. Right. So, I think as long as everybody knows their role, I think what could be a problem is if an owner sort of thinks that they're an architect.

And one thing you learn really quickly when working with these geniuses is that it might be an armchair architect, but you know, these guys are smarter, more knowledgeable, they think harder about it, They've been thinking harder about it for longer, and they've been perfecting their craft for decades, and they surround themselves with team members who are all

qualified architects in their own right. So I think it's important for an owner to know his place and know what he contributes, you know, to defend the retail golfer and to set sort of you know, either in partnership or on their own, the sort of vision for what the course is going to be like. But then to let architects be architects. I've never once heard my dad, you know, talk about you know, bunker placement ever or

dissect the strategy of a golf hall. Right. He trusts you know, a band and you know David and Gym and Bill and Ben Tom to do that, right.

they're they're a different things to mind. Something you said earlier about you.

done before in the UK. Right, So these arrows in the quiver that we pull from have been done before and we've played them and they're wildly fun. So when we push the brown boundaries, it's really going back into the game's history and pulling forward some of the ideas that may have been lost or at least lost on the American golfers. So what I mean specifically by that more part three courses. I mean I think the ratio

for us at a resort is three to two. I think for every three golf courses we have, we should have two part three golf courses. You know, sandbox is way over subscribed for two golf courses. You can't get on the sandbox where you need to build another one, especially with Tom Doaks course, uh coming. I think a precision precision course right, and by that I mean short part fours and part three's. I think most golfers prefer

playing part threes and find and find the best. Part three is to be the most fun holes and and that might just be because they only have one opportunity to screw it up right, so they get to hit greens and then everybody. But but they're also you know, beautiful, they're easier to frame.

a break in the conversation. So if you're out with your buddies or your family, you know, it's at sandbox we see you know, families mom, dad, you know their kids playing golf or you know a lot of groups playing eight sum's heckling the betting. You know, it never stops. It's just pure fun the whole time. And that's it's sort of the most fun part of golf, right being being with people. It's a social game and it's as wild as I am off the tee. Sometimes it's not

so social. It's a very isolated game big two hundred yards for the fairway.

golf course. But if I don't have to hit a four or three iron into a green all day, I'm okay with that, right, And you probably need to be challenged with every club in your bag. I don't. I'll carry a three or four iron, you know, I'm three wood, five iron, seven eight pitching up and I don't really want to want to hit that shot, you know, we're You and I were talking recently. You mentioned how much you love the sixth hole Dunes, which is a short

Part four. If there was a golf course filled with holes like that, to me, that and part three's some

fun Part fives, I'd be happy forever. Right, So I think that's maybe unconventional, you know, urging an architect not to have a hole longer than there will be holes longer than three fifty, but to wait it with holes like number six at Prairie Dunes, seventeen at stream Song Red, sixteen at Pacific Dunes, two at Pacific Dunes, And you know, I could play those holes all day long, play them differently every single time I play them, you know, driver

and then a five iron off the tee. And so I think that's different courses that are designed for women. I mean, we're great with teaen lengths for people of all swing speeds, but people with lower swim speeds, which sometimes correlates with you know, women have a different apex and roll and just spur, and you know throughout Great Britain you have golf courses built for people with lower

swings beets. I got hooked on the game. I got the bug playing thirty six at Dornick with my dad and then going off and until it was dark, which might be eleven o'clock at night, playing the street course over and over and over and over, play over one hundred holes a day because that I could get there in two right, it was tighter, and we don't have those in this country. So no wonder it's such a

male dominated sport. I think eventually we need to think about building not just teas, which is something I think innovative that my dad's done. But golf courses for women and younger players.

the ten best course in the world. But a lot of times the courses that stick with me the most stick with me for varieties of reasons. Yeah, and it could be the way. You know, one that I always think about is Diamond Springs, which is a Debrees course with Chris Schumacher and Hamilton Michigan. And what I like, just love about it is it's a thirty five dollars local course in a rural town and it knows what it is. It's a great golf course, but it's maintained

to be a thirty five dollars course. It's got single row irrigation, you know, single cut grass. If you go on and read like Golf Advisor comments, it's funny because everybody complains about the fairways being you know, a half inch long, and it's like, well, that's why it cost you thirty five bucks because they aren't trying to be something and it's you know, they just go out there, they gang mow it. And then the native is absolutely perfect and it's got this great set of greens, but

nobody would say it's a perfect golf course. But that's one that left like a lasting impact on me is like, here's a perfect example of how you can make affordable golf. And with what you're talking about is like, you know, pushing ideas everywhere. Doesn't have to be the world's greatest golf course, but you can have a golf course that's not one of the best courses in the world, but is one of the most memorable courses in the world.

to build the greatest championship course possible. If we're going to build a local municipal golf course that you know, you could charge twenty bucks and maintain for three hundred thousand dollars a year, that's its own category. We want to do the best possible. So it's about doing the best work you can given you know, the specific product that you're trying to achieve.

one hole you know, of the resort. So yeah, I mean basically the bottom line is we want to measure success through happiness and enjoyment, right.

been some. I mean, you mentioned, you know, you mentioned one, and wild Horse is one of my favorite, well my favorite municipal course you know, in the country in Nebraska. So I think they will.

It's of course you'd be happy playing every Saturday, right, It's just it's awesome. So, you know, Wolf Point, which is maybe maybe was the most exclusive club right a club for one. You know, this guy and his best friend would play every morning. I actually think the architecture and the way it was built is the perfect model for municipal golf course. You know, outside of the greens, everything is cut with a gang more at one length. It's pretty high length. So for me, I love it.

I could spray it all over. But you know people have called it, you know, like Saint Andrew's in Texas. The angles are so important, so I'm just happy that I'm in the fairway whereas you're, you know, really trying to be in the right position to come at these greens from the right angle so you could get close so one height except for greens they had. I know it's sold like last week in auction. I don't know

what's going to happen to it. But they had three part time people in the maintenance crew maintained the whole golf course. Now they were maintaining it for one person, so that would be different if there were at thirty thousand rounds. But the way it was designed made it a lot easier to maintain for less cost. And I think municipal courses should should build, should hire Mike newso to build golf courses like wolf Point or other talented architects.

golfing community or at least among you know. I think your listeners are the leaders in the golfing community and those ideas flow out from them. But you need to change that priority and has to start with the retail golfer where they want to pay, whether it's ten bucks or fifty bucks or one hundred bucks, they want their money to go into great architecture and not necessarily into flawless fairways. Askernition Scotland is I don't know what they

spend maintaining that golf course, but it's very little. I don't remember too many bunkers. But it's a perfect golf course. It's not a perfect golfiger. It's a course you would just be delayed did playing every day of the week. You know. It's so so they're get I think there's many more of those courses, you know, in the UK than in the US, but they figured out how to do it, and a lot of that is not caring

what their fairways look like. Fisher's Island, which is, you know, a very elite golf club, a fabulous golf course architecturally, I'm the most stunning, you know, respectacular views anywhere. I just have so much respect for They've never put in even single rote irrigation. They don't have fairwell irrigation. They don't. They don't care, you know, they're proud of the architecture

of their golf club. And I think they you know, if only everybody had, you know, if they hosted the Masters, maybe everybody would have tried to, you know, be like be like them. But you know that that's that should be the example. You know that we follow just great architecture, stunning architecture, but you know, everybody has an equal chance of getting a good or bad liam in the fairway.

It all evens out. Play it where it lies, and don't worry so much about perfectly consistent, immaculate you know fairways.

you know, as you're scaling it are so different. Do you do you prefer one part of it more than the other.

of people today, you know, passing through. So in terms of what I do, I guess I'm always a year to two to five years out ahead, right, developing and planning what's going to come now, getting the first hall out of the ground, there's maybe some skills that are different than when you're onto the third course. But my job it changes a ton hour to hour and day to day. Right, There's so many different things going on at a resort, but year to year there's there's general

there's general consistency. What I would say is this sounds odd, but the greatest letdown is the day the course opens or the day after, you know, the day it opens. Chris and I are the first t ats and Valley. You know, my dad's on the first t abandoned, you know, and you're just seeing excited, funk golfers and that energy

is amazing. There's nothing better, although the Texans. I remember when Sand Valley opened, it was like a freak cold, windy day and we were teasing mister Well, we were all just joking about how it was a miserable day, but it was a delightful day. The process is so enjoyable and rewarding. I mean it's hard. I mean it's brutally hard right to get it, as you know, to get any business off the ground, but it's also extremely fun and rewarding. And the day it's over, it's like

we got to go on to the next thing. Right. It's an addiction, and I'm my personality doesn't let me just enjoy it. And you know, we're there, Let's soak it up a little bit, let's relax, let's enjoy it. It's it's already on to we got to do this again, right, So I guess what changes is once it opens. There is a focus and we have you know, some involvement you know in the operations sort of big picture. But but it's a letdown when we open, we have to

go do it again. And we're never going to stop because we wouldn't we wouldn't be able to just hold court, you know.

You know, eventually will we begin you know, and that would be a great problem if we're lucky enough to start saturating the market, But then we would do you know, regional golf resorts. You know. I would love to spend time in my life building great, affordable, municipal golf courses. You know. That's that's something that I hope years from now we could be talking about some of those that we're doing, like the courses that we're just talking about.

But well, I'll never stop. And not knowing my brother and my dad. They're never going to stop either, so we're keep going.

might be off the table at some point. But fabulous goal. I mean if you drive I did a drive this summer from Valentine, Nebraska to Denver, Colorado, and the entire drive you're looking left and right and you're seeing nothing but great golf courses right and that's on one road. You know, that's just one region in our country and one country on the planet. There's a huge percentage of our planet is sand, and we're not going to run out of sand sites.

It's a very collaborative process. So, but those those first moments on a site, you're just starting. You know, it's like being on a first date. Right. I remember when I met my wife, and you know, those those first dates are so exciting. Anything is possible, and I want to get to know this person. It's been every you know.

creative process, it's very similar. Like where I'll be doing something, whether it's writing or working on something, and I'll realize it's like it's like eight pm. I haven't been out of my basement in eight hours. I haven't eaten anything, I haven't drank anything. And I imagine that's getting lost in a project.

the ground, and those are the most fun. But the early days are really really exciting.

mind goes in a lot of directions. And one of the things I'm proud of is staying completely focused on the project, whatever the sub project is, the golf course, in the hotel, the restaurant, until we're there, right, and you're never there, you always refining it. But okay, now let's go to the next step, you know, so to force myself to be linear. And here's step one, there's step two, then step three. Now we could get into

this area. But it took five years. And even though we wanted to do it in year zero through five, you know, we waited because we're And that's that's discipline, right, And it takes discipline when you have a mind that does tend to go in a lot of.

with respect. So and that's deserved. You know, I think I didn't well, I knew David a little bit when he was young and maybe more brash, but I've known him now, I guess more in his forties and I won't. I don't, I won't. I don't know his age now, but he might be maybe he's fifty now.

He's so they're are just as a starting point. These are really wonderful, you know, human beings, and that's the most important part, and to me, that's a prerequisite. You know, you need to be smart, right, you need to be really hard working, they all are, but you also have to be a good person, right, because we only get one crack at this life and we want to enjoy it. To answer your question, I think I think you know, there's the fast brain, slow brain, right. I think Bill

and Ben are extraordinarily deliberate. They do you know, they'll have, you know, the reputation which is earned to maybe sit you know in a single place for hours on end and stand or you know, Dick Young Scaps tells the story about you know, seeing Bill cor down on his belly just looking at the horizon for like game back. Hours later. He's still there. But he thinks really hard and long. He's very deliberate, and and he worked, you know, he works, and his whole team and Ben they work.

You know, they work past dark. You know, Jimmy Craig would would just bring his car out to a green and put the floodlights on and keep going. You know, night wouldn't stop them. So that whole team is really deliberate. Nothing is russ. Let's really think this through. David has a very fast, fast brain, right, I mean he's he's very intuitive, you know, and he has these flashes of brilliance where it comes to him in a flash. And

that's not neither method is better. But David is a very fast running brain and he gets inspired and boom, that's it. Let's go and he'll come up with an entire great concept and you know, in a moment he doesn't. You know, he does grond all these architects after grind, he grinds through it. But I've seen he has more flashes. Their methods are different. I think Bill and Ben phil more. I think Jason Way wrote an article for you on that,

and David tends to cut. And you know Tom's personality and these are big stereotypes because they all have such dynamic personality. It seems to be very analytical. You know, he's seen, you know, maybe along with Darius Oliver, you know, more golf courses than anybody else on the planet, and

thought really hard about every single one of them. And he has just this repertoire of images and ideas and has head that he has spent a lot of time thinking about, thinking hard about logically, about talking with people about He's so thoughtful and analytical. But I'm still I'm still getting in to know him and what his personality is. I find his whole you know, he wrote, Look, he wrote Confidential Guide, and I know that shocked some people.

I find I find Tom so refreshing because you know, it's it's not emotional.

somebody that is you know. He does not like to build the same type of golf course like and he will. I feel like that's the thing that he least wants to do. Yeah, is if somebody said, hey, I want you to build another Pacific Dunes, he'd be like, I'm not the guy for your job, you know.

which of his holes would he template? And maybe sometimes they should. If it's a great theme, you know, maybe they should, they should go back and play play off of it.

a different artist interprets a different standard. Again, I'd love hearing and a lot of jazz standards, but Caravan is played by so many different people and it's like they're different songs.

because here's what I was I'm curious about that. There are times when you know, these architects have to manufacture tea's or greens compared to the guys who move, you know, millions of acres. It's nothing right, but it's not to say that they're never moving any any dirt at all. And you know, the architects we're lucky enough to work with, you'd never you never know. Uh, they're so good that

I've started to wonder. This is going to sound blasphemous, but you know, if Bill Core wasn't constrained, you know, by God's starting point, what might he come up with? Right if, like Leedo, it was a blank palette, pure sand and just just what, you know what, what's so you're not riffing off of it. I'm just really curious what he might come up with, and I suspect it might. It might maybe, I don't know. Maybe it's even better.

We're so lucky in that we have access to such great sites that I think it's it's a fun thing to think about, but it will probably always remain sort of an intellectual conversation because if you have this perfectly flat piece of sand versus a great site, how could you It's almost like our responsibility. There's always gonna be the perfectly flat site. So I think it will always be pushed off into the future and therefore never done

because why wouldn't you, Why wouldn't you develop? But with the exception of I would say the Leado at some point, I mean, that was such a spectacular golf course. To restore that at some point in time would be It's something I know that something my dads want to do for a long time, and I've caught the bug. It's something I want to do. Uh So and I know

it's something that Chris is excited about too. So at the right moment in time, with the right site, I think we do the lido, and gosh, I would love to see I don't think we'll do it, but I'd love to see what any of these architects would do

with a carte blonde, just carte blanche site. And so, you know, another thing that's been talked about, and Bill and Ben have talked about for a long time is you know, she gets somebody who knows nothing about architecture to go and just rough it up and then come back thirty years later. And in some sense, that's what happened at stream Song, right, and it resulted in a

really great landscape for golf. So if you don't know how to find a great piece of land, or you know, if it seems out of reach, then just go just go mess it up and if it's sand, and then let God take over for thirty years and come back. And if you don't have thirty years, come back twenty years or ten years.

buy it less than that. So let's say five hundred dollars an acre thousand dollars one point five million dollars. Just so we're not embarrassed.

would be three thousand dollars a year. You know, So you had, principle, not a huge caring cost, right for given the potential upside of a great so I don't think you have to leave it for thirty I think at seven, I saw a piece of ground and I won't name the architect, but it was a perfectly flat site when he found it, and he did this, you know, millions of acres of sand. He moved around and created

these great macro movements. Then the crash came in two thousand and eight and the project got killed right and I was with Will Smith from the Outpost Club, and I don't know, I forget what we were doing on the trip, but just I think like we were looking at map quests. I used to see this big blob of sand, so it was like, let's go, let's go

do that, you know. So we're trespassing, jumping over gates to get to this big thing sand, and we just see these massive sixty foot sand dunes and this is in a place of the country there's no contour, perfectly flat. We're like, oh my god, this is amazing. And we're walking around and then we ended up figuring out that it, you know, had originally been intended to be a golf course.

But this was seven years after the crash, So this was twenty fifteen, and these pines had grown fifteen feet tall, grasses had moved in, you know, nature took over, and then when you have organic matter, then the sand catches that when it blows around. So seven years later, the site was little small. It was probably on one hundred and fifty acres. But if you had three hundred acres

of that, I call it a perfect sand site. So if you could buy three hundred acres, buy it for five hundred acre, those carrying costs are if you're successful, small drop in the bucket, right, So you know, now if you're buying a ten thousand acre and if you buy a thousand acres, those are different numbers. But I get yeah, it could work, It could work. Yeah, yeah, that's ah.

We have this land that has you know, these these great you know, micro contours and then these big dunes that don't really come into play right, and in a sense, I mean Sand Valley and Mammoth are that way. There's just great moving land that they've routed over those huge dunes which are eye candy. They're not they're not really in play, but it's nice. There's they're stunning to look at, and they're inspiring and they make you know.

examples of public golf courses that don't have that. I mean, Saint Andrews is wildly successful and doesn't doesn't have that, but it but it is so extraordinarily good and it has a six hundred year history and and a spirit to it. So there's a lot of other reasons why it's successful.

So you have to build golf courses that on first site are like live up to the hype versus like there are golf courses that like, the more and more you play, it becomes more and more endlessly fascinating and the sub that's one of the trick I imagine the tricky things with what you do is that, like the subtle brilliance is lost sometimes on your guests because they might only get a play at once.

As soon as they walk off the eighteenth te they want to go back to the first tee, but at the same time, make sure that if they spend the next thirty years coming back, they're going to learn something new every time they play it. See something different and continuously learned something about the golf course and about themselves. And I think the best architects and we're lucky to be able to work with these genius architects achieve that. So could they could impress you the first time around,

but continue to impress you on your hundredth round. And I think you see that. I mean, stan Valley's younger, but you know, Bandon, we have groups who come back every single year for twenty straight straight years.

for five hours or two or one. If you have a great site like Sand Valley, there's a site that's within several million people, but then very easy to fly to so it's great because it's close to several million, and it's great because you could fly there. But so it's something I have thought about it. It's not going to affect our our decision to move forward or not. You know, we're all in and can we get off the ground. We'll find out most projects we look at don't.

But thought about it, and I think you need to go in assuming that every site's can be hard to get to. There's only three million people in the city. God, how we're going to get them here? That's better be really good. Right as soon as we start taking our our guests for granted, you know, then we're going to fail. So we have to assume that it's going to be brutal. Five hour drive, that's a long drive. Most of our guests come from less than five hours. Let's say three

hour drive. That's a long drive. God, we've got to really make this great. We just have to. We have to assume that so that their expectations are exceeded when they get there. And then if it turns out that they're saying, oh, it's easy, then great. But let's assume that they're going to say what they say when they go to Bandon. It's hard to get here, but it's worth every minute, right because because of the golf and the people of the service, and you know, the spirit of the place.