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 arid egg Friday Egg There, Frida Egg Friday, fridag Bride Egg Lie.
I'm about ready to run off of the course.
Welcome back to another edition of the Friday Egg Golf Podcast. I am your host Andy Johnson. Today's episode, I am joined by Mike Manthy. Mike is the head superintendent at Midland Hills Country Club. It is in the Minneapolis St. Paul area. It is a Seth Rayner design that recently went underwent a restorer from Jim Urbina. Mike has a really super interesting story with you know, kind of how their restoration plans changed from finding a Seth Rayner plan
late in the process. So we get into his career a little bit into music and and just you know, restoring a Seth Rayner and underlooked, underregarded Seth Rayner that I think, you know, should get more coverage in the in the Midwest as one of the really good golf courses in the Midwest. So we we dive into all that. This episode is brought to you by Toro Up and Down, Ham and Egg to the list of great golf pairings,
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the same power and durability. That's another great golf pairing, A win win. Visit Toro dot com, slash golf and reach out to a local Toro distributor for more information. Now to Mike Manhood. Hey, Mike, I got to ask you. I, you know, when I visited Midland Hills this summer, you were, you know, in between a couple shows. I think you were leaving that night to go see the National And I got to ask, what what's been your favorite show, concert or other show I guess that you've seen in
the last year. Uh.
I'm a huge Walkman fan. So the Walkman got back to the other after a decade off kind of a sucker for the old old uh get get get the band back together scenario. So saw them in UH in Manhattan, which was a blast. So that's that's probably a that's that's the top of my list. The Nationals good. The Nationals great band, but they're not I'll probably get some slack fits for like a great live band band.
Having seen the national live, I kind of agree like there's just there's maybe not enough energy and maybe there a combination of energy with older crowd leads to like it's kind of just a weird scene.
Yeah, it's like an empty parking lot.
You said it the uh let me with the reunion show, you know, getting a band back together. I imagine you had some like nostalgia from your twenties huge.
Yeah, yep.
I had this thing with the Chili Peppers. I had seen him live when I was in college, and then when I saw him again live and they played at the United Center, which was you know, that's always a rough scene in Chicago, but I like walked away like, man, they don't have the same stuff they had then Yeah, did you have any of that feeling or was it better than you expected?
I think the anticipation was so great that I think they I think it delivered. It delivered.
Yeah, do you have is there? What's your favorite place in Minneapolis to see a show?
I mean, obviously the Old School First Avenue is a famous venue, which you know everybody from Prince to Chili Peppers have played before they were big. The Palace Theaters has got great acoustics. I mean anything outside now, Like I love how a lot of bands are trying to play outside. Our local brewery Surly has got it awesome outdoor venue which is which is a blast. So I'll see any anybody anywhere.
To be honest, I mean outdoor summer music. The best just doesn't doesn't really get better. It's it's like it's I just think that this brings a lot of great memories of my younger years when I think about that. So let's talk a little bit about your profession. I'm sure you wish it was something in music sometimes, but but I would love to hear. I think one of the most fascinating golf course stories in the last five to ten years was you guys finding this rainer plan
out of nowhere. Ye could you just walk tell us the story of finding this plan, how it happened, where you were in your rest duration plan.
Yeah, yeah, it's obviously. It was a blast to kind of make a splash in the golf market for the the true architecture enthusiasts, you know, little Midland Hills. Mad Mad made some headlines which was so which was a blast. It was a blast for our membership. It was also a blast for the process because at the time we had already approved a master plan with Jim Orbina, who we'd been working with for several years, and he had seen enough Rainer to know and looking at our aerials
that we were a rainer. But we just, like a lot of clubs, we don't have proof, right, We never had a drawing of any kind. Our first area was nineteen thirty seven. We knew from our club minutes. We actually have club minutes all the way back to nineteen nineteen, which is awesome. They're all cataloged in books, hand typewrited' they're sweet. So we knew the background, but we didn't have the proof. So I would say it was like twenty sixteen. We engaged with Jim and started working on
the master plan. Took a nice slow route to kind of set objectives and budgets. And during that process, probably this time of year in twenty eighteen, I was super bored in my office and I have a closet and I have the ceiling tile that was in there crooked, and for like a decade I looked at this.
You just ignored the crooked ceiling tile. Yeah, so just like the creaky door at your house.
Super creaky. Yeah, you just so anyway, you know, winters are long here, they can be and uh, I was like, I'm gonna just fix this. We're not finally gonna fix it. So I take my chair and I put it in my closet. And before I put the tile back, ceiling tail back, I'm like, I wonder what's up here? So I start snoop around up above the ceiling and sure enough I find this rolled up piece of paper. And my assistant at the my as system had to was at his desk and I said, Mark, you gotta come
look at this. And I rolled it out on the carpet, and I mean it was like it was like finding buried treasure. Right the first thing I looked at was the stamp on it, which was nineteen twenty one, and it's not a Rainer. Well we don't know if Rayner drew it, but it's a Craning hardway. Craning Hardway was an irrigation well company from Saint Paul. We think what it is is it's drawn over up some type of
drawing a blueprint from Rainer. So after that came out, kind of talked to leadership at the club and say, hey, this doesn't change things, but this this changes things. It changes everything. And a lot of a lot of assumptions that Jim had made, that I had made, that a lot of our long tenured members had made about certain holes and what was lost were kind of there on paper all of a sudden.
Was that the first thing you found when you went up there, that was the only thing, that was the only thing that was up there, the only thing that was unbelievable. Yeah, and that that one of my follow
up question is exactly what you just hit on. I feel like there are so many clubs that don't have a plan, and what we you know, end up having is architects that have a deep understanding of architects of old architects like like Jim has of Seth Rayner, you know, like Tom Dokaz of an architect like Gil Hans has done in so many places end up putting back what they think was there. Yes, how did your plan that was all assumption based? Like, what are a couple examples
of it changing once the plan was there? Were there any general themes that you that were really different?
Well, I think the main one that that solidified the assumption was is that Rainer didn't use a lot of ferry bunkers here because he used the topography as the hazard you had to. There was tons of blind shots out here because the corridors were so huge.
I think for people that I'm going to assume that the vast majority of people listening to this have never visited your property, but I would say that it was one of the revelations of my year last year was how stunning, I mean how stunning of a property. Midland Hills sits on the back nine is extraordinary land for golf, like perfectly scaled contours like that, choppy rolling, irregular hills which leads to amazing fairway contours, amazing fairway natural hazards
and then tremendous green sites. And the front nine's got a little bit more severe. It's a little bit different shaped, but that's also it's a very dramatic front nine. But the back nine, I would say, is just it's out of this world for golf. It's one of the least talked about really good golf courses in America.
Yeah, I think, well, I appreciate that. In you know, as a superintendent, you always from an architectural standpoint, you think about the potential of the property you take care of. And when I start here in twenty ten, it was covered in trees, and two thousand trees later that have been taken out. We now have that gift to regift to the membership and reinforce what this golf course was
all about and was the land. So some other things that maybe the plan solidified from assumption wise is, for example, the road hole. We knew there was ferry bunkers on the outside of the dog leg, and one of our shapers, Zach Vardy, was Jim Is like, I'm pretty sure this bunker was here, but there was no landform to find anything, And sure enough Zach started excavating and found the original
bunker's hand. So that happened many times throughout the project, where Jim said, I think there was a bunker here. I think it the bunker extended to this point. And you know, the soils don't lie. If you dig down, you'll find history. You know, you'll find the history if you dig. And so those things happened several times throughout the project, and they were a blast. I mean, we had to take moments to just call everybody over to see what we found because it was it was it's
just so fun. Irrigation cisterns that were buried next to greens that we had found. You know, those are over one hundred years old and they were basically intact. Yeah, a lot of that, a lot of that stuff that happened just kind of built to the story. That was kind of our story. You know, like you said, most of your listeners have never probably even heard of Middle Hills,
but Jim had saw the potential in the place. And when we got finished, you know, we were to give it back to membership and then to see the the reaction is it's been a last You.
Guys did a full shutdown for the renovation. How did you guys go about selling the membership over that You talked about it being a long term kind of sell. How was that process conveyed and what were the big moments that got you over the hump to get the work done.
Yeah. I think the first and foremost thing that Jim preached to the membership was we want to make this golf course as fun as possible, and that's for everybody. Wasn't to make it harder. It wasn't to make it easier. It was to make it as fun as possible to play. With that being said, I think the campaigning that took place was to you know, if you have three hundred members, it's hard to get them all together in one room. It's they all have different objectives, they all have different
personal wants. They all want to hold on to something that currently they have in the golf course that they think is going to change. You know, golf is an emotional sport, especially when you're very intimate with a property you've been at for a long time. You have a certain level of ownership, and change is hard. So we
had to talk through all those things. I think one of the successful things we did is we broke out into kind of assigning members to talk to certain demographic parts of our membership to explain to them, you know, look, we're not going to we're not stretching out every hole. This isn't to chase the scorecard. So we did a really good job of trying to group everybody into abilities, age, skill level, you know, enjoyment, and really talk about how we're gonna make it, make it a funner golf course.
It wasn't just about architecture that came with restoring that architecture came with making it fun for everybody. Angles with the ability just to put the ball from sixty yards out, all those things we couldn't do before. It was a it was a slow process, but I for us, we weren't in a rush. We were fortunate not to be in a rush that we didn't have to do it out of necessity. But it it it felt like the
process stalled at some point. It never did stall, it just was there was There was moments where you got frustrated with not feeling like you were making momentum. But the but the culture of this club was one that we hired in our in architect, who we had a ton of trust in. He built that relationship over time, and he wanted to make sure that after the project was over, he wasn't just packing up his circus and
leaving town. He wanted to continue the relationship for the long term and to continue to evaluate the work that we did and going forward with tweaks. So it was a I think every every restoration renovation has its cultural fit. Ours was to embrace the architecture which was Seth Reiner, which would obviously make our our property more attractable in a competitive market, but it was to really have our our end users just have a better experience. And that's kind of how it's turned out so far.
How would you say with Rainer, he's obviously become a bit of a cult hero and golf architecture over the last ten to fifteen years. How have you seen it at the local level? Probably, you know, I don't want to mischaracterize Midland Hills, but you know, I imagine ten years ago nobody talked about Midland Hills being this Rainer golf course. How have you noticed at the course level the perception and the the stature of your golf course change because
of just the association with Seth Rayner. Yeah, that was and did that help with the with the selling of the restoration.
It didn't I would say it didn't help with the cell. It was kind of an unspoken thing that a couple of us at the club knew or hope that was going to happen. Because of again, our our membership isn't isn't really concerned about accolades or recognition. It's a pretty quiet, sleepy place, but it it we all there was, there was a small group of us that knew what the potential was and probably looking at at other examples of clubs that have gone through this, what would happen on
the other side on a local level. I think it's opened a lot of people's eyes to a few things. We did our project kind of an untraditional sense from we didn't spend a massive amount of money doing it. We implemented our own staff into the into the construction phase, which saved us a ton of money and it and
it increased our quality control. Uh. But it also we have we have now we have people that are that are at other clubs in town that we want to come see us to experience it that had zero interest in before. So yeah, it was kind of reaffirmation from telling kind of the naysayers that hey, if we do this, it's going to improve your enjoyment of the golf course, but it's also going to shed a spotlight of how cool this place really is.
I feel like a lot of times I a small percentage of people can see what a course can be, and being one of those and working there all the time, it has to be somewhat frustrating sometimes to hear people's negativity towards a place and know that it they just don't see what it could be. And then it's got to be extraordinarily rewarding afterward when that whole kind of discourse flips.
Yeah. Yeah, it's like a curran on a classic painting. You know, you just have to get vince people to take the cran off. And that's really where kind of our project started. Andy was eight ten years ago. We started to remove things from the property, which was just the extracurricular things that typical country clubs had, right your retaining walls and your flower beds and your stairs and chilt and stones and all of those things that were part of a trend. We started to remove those things.
And you know, I think are being a said it really well and he said, we know we've arrived when there's nothing left to remove, and that really resonated with me about really playing golf course on a property, in promoting it in any way you can, and that's kind of what we did. It's just golf out there.
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matter the venue. Its polar white body makes customization of breeze too, so the Vista can pull double duty as a rolling billboard while getting folks from point A to point B on point. Visit Toro dot com, slash golf and reach out to your local Toro distributor for more and from now back to Mike. Is there a favorite hole or section of holes in terms of the transformation that every time you go out and you just kind of smile about.
I mean, the back nine is obviously special. The back nine is is a fantastic walk, and it's got some like you said, it's got that classic rumpled land and huge scale. The front nine, for me, I think has taken the biggest transformation. And everybody's always you know, members always want to play the back nine.
But I love how it's funny. As a quick aside, I was playing the front nine and I'm like, ah, this is really good. And the person I was playing with was a former member and he's like, just wait till you get to the back Just wait till and I'm playing the front I'm like, oh, he keeps saying this, like.
You know, so I think like the our Eden, which is the seventh hole to part three, and then you know, you play around the lake. The cool part about the Eden has got a water behind the green, you know, which is as close as you're going to get to the St. Andrew's Estuary is in Minnesota, right, I mean, Rainer saw that and he was like, there was no other option to put the eat in there. And then you play around the lake, you play the nole hole, and then you play the case. Yeah, epic no hole.
The scale of it, it's it's really hard to capture on even in a picture. And I put it up there with piping rock. It's really really solid, and it's a it's a hole that you can make a three and you can make a six. You know you've got a good hole when any day of the week, you know you might lose your score card on that hole. But that those that that three hill stretch is really great from the front, you know, and then you get to the back. Obviously, the re dan is a very
unique dan, and I'm glad we didn't change it. We could. We could talk about that how most rare dans look like carbon copies. Ours is anything but and uh, you know, to stand on that green and see the skyline of downtown Minneapolis is pretty cool.
When did you first realize that you could get the skyline out of the property, Like, was there did you take down? Was there one tree that came down?
Yeah, the whole back then, and it was I mean there's probably fifteen hundred trees in the back nine that came out to really promote that it was. I mean it's been a rewarding part. The tree removal has been a rewarding part, but it's been literally the hardest part of this whole process because we did ninety percent of it in house, and it's NonStop, you know, it ends it It starts in November and it ends in June
when you get the stumps kind of grown in. So that's been the you know, the kind of the heavy heavy lifting was the tree work.
This is a good topic in house tree removal versus contracting out. What what are the advantages of doing it in house and what are the toughest things about doing it? Like why do people contract it out?
Well, I think the first thing is the risk, right, I mean risk of mitigation anytime you're running chainsaws and wood chippers. I mean that's that's no joke. So a certain amount of training needs to take place, and you have to have the right capital to be able to pull that off. You have to have the patience for it too. Our process was kind of slow and steady. Every year. It was x amount of trees over x amount of years. To be able to do it all
at once. You know, it's it's a significant investment all at once. It wasn't in the carts for us. But it also wasn't the right thing for us to do. I think large scale mass removals at once can be a very scary thing that comes with some serious kickback. But if you slowly melt away the layers and layers of trees, it can kind of happen naturally over time. That was kind of what our plan was from the start.
It's I think it's a good it's a valid point, right. It removes some of that initial shock and backlash when it happens over a long period of time, versus when it's just we went away for winter having been to the club and I come back and it's a completely different place.
Yeah, yep. And and that just wasn't that that wasn't going to fit our culture. I think it was part of that process too. Was for me, it was educational, you know. Was it was educating membership as we went along, and the flat bellies that said, you know, we got to have a tree at two hundred and seventy five yards out on both sides, and you know, I couldn't grow any rough underneath those trees. Once we started to remove them, and they realized, like, hey, are you going
to ever mow the rough again? You know, those those those educational moments took a long time for for everybody to kind of be touched by it and really recognize what was happening, and it wasn't all bad. And I also think it's important too any to say that, you know, our scale of tree removal isn't for every club either, you know, and I don't think every club needs to be wide open and scaled like Midland is. No, it's it's not for everybody.
I think that's one of the you know, this is society at large. This is not a golf architecture problem. But what happens is, you know, there's this this kind of group follow the leader think and it's like, well, this is this is the way we have to do it, versus looking at each property design history and figuring out what the right solution is for them. You know that
that's like the number one thing. And what I appreciate about the work that you guys did with Jim Orbina was that it was not like, hey, we need to do what Oakmont did, or we need to do like I think everybody goes to, we need to do what cal Club did. That's like the new line, and it's like, well, like instead of trying to copy Cal Club, which you're never going to do. You're never going to reach them
if you're trying to copy them. What you need to do is like we need to do whatever we do, you you know, like that we have to figure out what our plan is and try and set a standard where people treat you like Cal Club, where we want to do what ex Club did.
Yeah, and that goes I think that goes back to the culture of your of your club and being the best Midland Hills that we can be was our goal from the start. Yeah, we use some examples of restoration from Rainer architecture, but beyond that, it was always the goal of just being the best Midland Hills we can be and not not worry about what the Joneses are doing, because what makes Cal Club unique is that it's Cal Club.
Yeah. I hear it everywhere like we're trying to be like Calclub. We're we're going to do this and we're going to be like Cal Club, and it's like.
There's only one Cal Club, Man, Why did you try and be yourself? Yeah?
Yeah, Have you seen any cultural shifts at the club since you've down the work?
Yeah, that's a great question. Definitely, I think a few things we've had a huge influx of, and now our timing was unique, so we started our restoration in twenty twenty, so before we even started with the onset of COVID, we didn't even know if we could pull the project
off legally from a state standpoint. So obviously COVID brought a lot of people into the game, and we've had an influx of membership, but we've almost overwhelmingly had new members, younger members that have come and are interested to join a Seth Raynor golf club. Right, everybody's got a phone, everybody's got the Friday dot Com. They all can see what's happening and get that exposure that really wasn't easy to get from before or from from seeing what that
are that classic architecture is. So there's definitely been a shift and people that have have joined recently that come on day one asking about the golf course, asking about the restoration, asking about Seth Reiner.
Yeah, it's uh, that's neat, it's uh, it's the I think that's the big opportunity that that renovations present. Beyond just a better course for the members, is the long term kind of cultural changes that they can present. You know, a lot of times I think you see more walking, you see a little bit more appreciation for the golf course, which leads to better member care for for the course. You know, maybe less ball marks. I don't know if you see maybe.
I mean are so big that our ball marks gets spread out.
So that's gotta be a nice change.
That is a good change. Uh, that's a good That's a good consolation.
How did you get into turf? What was the calculus behind becoming a superintendent?
Probably, like like most, the game of golf itself had me hanging around a golf course where I grew up, but I wasn't interested in golf. My grandfather used to bring me to the golf course in the in the summer, and I wasn't interested in the actual game, but I was interested in the tractors. And next thing I know, he had me picking rocks out of bunkers as a kid, and uh, you know they were paying me out of
the till with his gambling money, I'm pretty sure. And I went to school for business and almost had my business degree and decided I didn't want to live in a cube for the rest of my professional life. And my grandfather was actually the one that said, you know what, why don't you go back and get in a ground me degree, So that's kind of that's how it happened.
That's awesome. I know it's been a super weird winter in the in the Midwest. You know, I get lots of texts from my family in Chicago telling me how it's warmer than uh than than in the Bay Area, you know, and it shouldn't have left, you know, the mild winter's abound. What what you challenges? Does the does a mild winter present you as a superintendent when you're probably you know it's February, you're probably used to being shut down, nobody asking if they come play.
Yeah.
Uh.
I think typically if you ask somebody in the Upper Midwest of of their stress level, I think there's stress level in the winter can be just as high in the winter as it is in the summer. And obviously, mother nature you can't control what happens, but there are some widespread things that happen. Typically in Minneapolis, we'll get about fifty inches of snow. I think we've had six inches maybe. Wow. Yeah, it's been extremely warm, very dry, exposed turf is exposed turf with with no snow covers.
Typically when you start worrying about desiccation everything drying out, that can be pretty devastating. We've had some timely snows and some rainfalls. Luckily the ground hasn't been frozen, so that water has gone in the ground. But yesterday it was sixty five and tonight slow is five degrees. So that type of temperature fluctuation is not not for the faint of heart. It causes potentially some some issues. So again there's nothing we can do about it. We just
try to educate leadership of what's happening out there. But when you have weather like we've been having, everybody thinks that they're going to play golf early, and maybe maybe they will this year, but we always seem to have like that end of March, massive snow all we might not get it into this year, but every winter is different. This winter is definitely out of the norm, and anything you get anytime you get out of the norm, you
get a little nervous. But I try not to lose any sleepover because there's nothing we can really do about it. We just have to pivot whatever it gives us and and try to execute a plan.
Is there anything you do when you have that big temperature swing? Is there do you try and get water down? From what I understand, the turf struggles because of the quick drying out or the lack of moisture. Like I remember a few years ago I had Josh maher on from wild Horse and he was talking about how he's been experimenting with how to make snow. Yeah, and that's something that in the sand Hills of Nebraska. You know,
moisture is averything every winter for them. Otherwise you have an event like they had two years ago where clubs with resources and with huge resources like sand Hills saw a ton of dead turf and then mom pas golf courses devastated by this. What do you do at a place where you know you have a lot MOI you get a lot more more moisture, But during those events, what are your kind of strategies?
Well, anytime that you like on a typical winter, I would say, Andy, you get a bunch of snow in January. We've had this trend where it would warm up or would get a rain event where you'd get ice accumulation. And ice accumulation is an event that you can actually see and then you can hit the stopwatch and say, okay, this is day one of potential issues. There are things you can do physically to remove that snow and to expose the ice and to try to melt it with
something like you know, being dry, exceptionally dry in desiccation. Yeah, you could go out in water, but then you run the risk of you know, crown hydration, which is when the turf takes the the water up and then it freezes and it inviscerates. It's like putting a can of pop in the freezer, right and explodes. That's that's what happens. The same thing doesn't sound No, it's terrible, right, especially if its your car so and and it's terrible and
and it happens. It happens a lot, and it forces a lot of clubs to regrass to modern vent grasses. But you try to condition your turf to be as sustainable as possible, and that conditioning, I think where we grow grass. A lot of our summer conditioning is to survive winter. And when you get into a situation where we're going to have this massive sixty degree temperature fluctuation from yesterday to tonight. You do feel helpless because there's
really nothing you can do. There are clubs that cover greens here. It's kind of a fading trend. But you know, sometimes the covers can make it worse because they generate heat underneath the cover, and you've got an artificial growing environment. So it's kind of damned if you do damn if you don't.
Situation, But it don't sound fun. I see what you're saying about the stress level. Yeah.
Yeah, there's just so many scenarios and there's so many variabilities that that it's hard to pinpoint a lot of times where we where you'll have turf loss.
You know, in a way, the science is more figured out of of when it's ninety five and humid, Yes, what you need to do? Then when it's you know, cold and cry.
Correct And in a lot of you know this, a lot of the the data collection that's been happening in and advances in technology and turf management, those are mostly dictated towards the summer growing months. The winter months are a whole different animal.
What uh what? Speaking of technology, what advances in technology are you most excited for, say, in the next ten years.
I think the integration of technology, to have a dashboard where you can go to find you know, your moisture, your chlorophyll analysis. All of those things that that can consolidate the data and put it, you know, put it on a on a dashboard are are extremely helpful from a developing technology standpoint. I mean, obviously everybody's waiting and we've been waiting for a while for for autonomous mowers. We've kind of taken too up forward a step back.
Now it looks like we're going forward again. I mean, obviously everybody's got labor challenges that will be fun. We've had We've done a bunch of testing for that here and it looks promising.
What were your big takeaways from the testing for autonomous maurs. I think it's I mean, obviously it's a i think a hot topic in the industry, but also when you consider labor, it makes the most sense in terms of like where you could mitigate a lot of labor issues.
Yeah, I think it's important to probably pitch it as a reallocation of labor if you do have autonomous because they still need to be babysit. It's in some aspect, but it allows you to focus your labor down the middle, right down the corridors, and you know, maybe you can repetitively do some detailed things that your golfers really appreciate, you know, whether it's edging sprinklers to filling all the
fairway divots, whatever those time consuming things might be. You know, Autonomous is going to be able to reallocate the labor to really not just do the bare minimum, but to maybe do a little extra. Those things will be, uh will be exciting.
We're we're you testing faraways rocks.
Or bath faaraways, mostly faaraways. Yeah. The challenges with pharaoays obviously is the scale, right, the scale of mowing thirty to fifty acres or how many acres of faraways you have, and typically it takes three to five mowers, so you've got a lot of labor tied up for four or five hours in the day. But if a stick falls in the faraway or somebody's balls in the fairway, you know, all those things still have to be managed by a human. So it's also job security.
From what I've gathered, like the aspirational job on the crew is the faaraway mower. That's like what you work up to and like seniority is the guy riding the faraway mower. That has to be a big shift, right.
Yeah, I think. I mean if I think about our staff, are our highest skilled Faraoy Moor, who mows our cleanup passes. I mean we always say he was born out of Toro. He can mow a laser beam like nobody can, and cleanups from a presentation standpoint, from our part of our restoration is a huge part. I mean our cleanup passes. I probably use ten cases of turf paint every year painting our cleanup passes on our fairways, which ten years ago I wouldn't have even thought about that. You know,
it was painting cleanups on greens. So yeah, he's never gonna want to give that up.
What what would you if you could remove one expectation from golf course maintenance? What would it be in terms of golfer expectation? If there's one thing you could you're you're the Tzar of golf and you could wave your wand and nobody asked for this anymore, what would it be?
Probably comparing clubs to clubs, right, the comparison to we go right back to this, right.
Why are our greens as fast as so.
Yeah, yeah, because everybody plays in guest days and member guests and and uh, everybody amps up their own golf course for those events. So then the expectations are you go play X y Z club and their greens were you know, rock star status. But that was a you know, that was just like the a PGA tour stop. I mean, they most places. It's just that's a snippet of what their normal conditionings are. So yeah, comparing apples to apples is almost impossible because every club is different.
Yeah. I always guess me, I get people like I'll play and it's like a hot day, and they'll like apologize about the greens being slower, and I'm like, honestly, I'm really happy they're slow, because I probably would like the golf course more at this speed than if you had them ramped up out of this world fast, because then I'd just be like, this is kind of silly. You know, You've got four pin whole locations on the screen when you could have ten, you know.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. It goes back to the culture of the club too, right of embracing the golf course changes every day throughout the day and That's the beauty of this game is that you play on a field that changes, and it could change from the front end of the back nine. And there's no reason to apologize for you know, a mucky, humid day where you can't even have gold bond. The greens are gonna are gonna be sticky.
I one of the things that I think is crazy. And Steven Britain, uh superintendent at the Chevy Chase Club, brought this up, Well, why why do we need to have the same firmness across all the greens. Trying to achieve the same firmness on a on a green that's in the corner, that's in shade all morning, is that's insanity to try and strive to get the same firmness as say, your no hole that sits way up in
the air is exposed the sun all day. And also when you go for this like homogeneous condition, it removes some of what you should want, which is local knowledge. Remember, oh this green I remember as a kid, and oh, this green is always wet. I need to control my spin a little bit here, or this green, this, this green is always a little bit slower. And these were the things part of the aspects that made up a
great home course advantage. And I don't understand with like the way maintenance has gone in a lot of ways in some architecture, with like flattening greens for higher green speeds. What all you're doing is you're removing your home course advantage, which historically has been like a huge part of golf. Like if you go all the way back, it was like, oh, you have to go play the you have to go beat the parks in a challenge match at at Musselborrow.
You know, I think that's where they played. If I if I mess that up, I apologize to the hundred historians that know that they'll correct you. Yeah, or you have to go play old Tom Morris at the old course, right, Like that was always the premise of the sport was this great. And all we're doing, it seems like, is chasing our tails to make every golf course the same, which is just irrational to me. And I always think
courses in food and restaurants are a great comparison. And if this was the strive of restaurants across the country to make everything the same, yeah, people would be like throwing a fit. And it seems like golfers are embracing it.
Yeah, yeah, they wouldn't. They wouldn't digest the product. I think it again, it goes back to the culture of uh thinking. Somehow we've found our way to think that these things should all be the same. I mean, my grandfather's hero was Ben Hogan, and Ben Hogan was always like, you know, what separates the good players from the best is their ability to adapt to the conditions. I mean, we go as far as bunkering, and people think bunker sand on the north side of green in the south
side of the green should play the same. I mean, it's it's physically impossible. But I also think that and this isn't a dig but I think that. You know, when you look at golf courses and restorations these days and renovations, we do have, you know, a monastan of turf that literally looks perfect. From an esthetical standpoint, it looks perfect, and to our detriment our ability to train our staff and for them to execute our maintenance programs at such a high level. You don't need a PGA
tour stop to look that way. We've got a ton of them in town and they look absolutely perfect. And I think that with that comes, you know, you lose a little bit of that rubb embracing rubb, of the rub of the green it you you expect perfection because it looks perfect.
Yeah. Yeah, I think that's obviously and I think the general trends of restoration, and I think part of it is just the the amazing advances that have happened with turf grass. Yeah, you know, and that advantage is that these new grasses present has also eroded some of the wonderfulness that the old school patina of of of worn in grass presents.
Yeah. And and you know, for us, we weren't we weren't interested in regrassing. We wanted to keep the patina. I mean we actually flipped stot On tea boxes to keep it old. I mean, urbina is so old school. He wanted us to cut our bunker faces off and and put that grass back on the new bunkers, because you do lose some of that patina. And that's not to say that you can't have a classic golf course that still looks classic if it's regrassed. But also the infra,
you know, the the infrastructures that we're investing in. I mean some of the numbers that clubs are spending are almost unattainable, but it it is getting them closer and closer to providing a product, or at least expecting that the product is going to be pretty damn similar every single day. But it's the pursuit of perfection is it's it's so fleeting and it's impossible to obtain other than a quick minute. But there's a lot of us that are pretty good at getting there.
All right, let's get you out of here on a few quick questions. What is your favorite golf course outside of Midland to go visit in Minneapolis area?
Minneapolis area, Minnicata.
What's what's the superior twin city Minneapolis or Saint Paul.
And why I think? I think most people in Minneapolis don't know Saint Paul exists, and people want to keep it that way. And I and I concur I live on the west side, but I work on the east side, and there is a a fantastic dynamic to uh to Saint Paula's wanting to keep the Minneapolis people on that side of the river.
Favorite off season activity winter activity?
Uh, probably music? Music music.
What's the next show?
H next show is Vampire Weekend. Oh yeah, they've been playing a long time either, so I now, Yeah.
They're playing at the Greek and and uh in in Berkeley and I'm unfortunately going to be at the US Outpen. I was super bummed out, like, yeah, you talk, great band, historic, historic venue, and uh, I am not going to be here sadly. What what do you have? A just a music rack of one band that you've been listening to that maybe people haven't heard of, or maybe it's a retread that you should re listen to.
Uh, that's a good question. I think I've been listening to this band called Jungle, okay, and Jungle is probably I don't know, give them a listen. You probably haven't heard Jungle.
But okay, I'm gonna. I got it on Spotify now, all right, I'm gonna I'll queue it up right after we're done talking.
So I love it.
All right, Thank you, Mike and uh. I really appreciate your time and look forward to seeing you hopefully this this summer in the Twin City.
Absolutely hopefully not in an empty parking lot.
All right, thank you for listening to another episode of the Friday Golf Podcast, and big thanks to Meg Atkins for another wonderful light edit. Thank you Meg. As a quick reminder, one of the things that Meg works on a ton is the Frida Egg Pro Shop. That's pro Shop dot Thefrida Egg dot com. There you can find a wide array of new gear. We've got that thing stocked. I think we're starting to head into spring. I'm starting to see some trees blooming here on the West Coast.
I know you're only a couple of weeks away Midwest and in Northeast, and you've had unseasonable, unseasonably warm weather. So start to think about spring, start to think about golf season. Check out the pro Shop, Proshop dot Thefrida Egg dot com. And thanks for listening to another episode of the fridayg Golf Podcast. We'll be back next week with a We've got a top fifty player in the world coming on, so that will be out on Monday
at some point Monday, probably Monday afternoon. But thank you guys for listening and we will see
You next week.