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Today.
I am joined by Managing editor of The Fried Egg, Garrett Morrison. Garrett and I just got back from a trip through North Carolina and South Carolina. We hit up a couple courses and we're going to break them down for you today and this will be a two parter. So in part one we will cover Old Town Club in Reynolds Park in Winston Salem, and before part three we jump over to Roaring Gap Aken and Paul Meadow without further ado.
Here is Garrett Morrison. 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 bright Egg Friday Egg, the Dreaded Frida Egg Friday frid egg Bright, egg.
Frida, egg Bride, egg Lie.
I'm about ready to run off of the.
Garrett. What's happening up in uh Oregon?
A lot of rain, a lot of gray skies, not much golf, but you know, I don't I don't really play golf when I'm at home anymore. It's it's just on trips.
Yeah, that's it's kind of It's not terrible my life too, Yeah, exactly.
I've been traveling a ton though lately, so it's it's been. It's just nice being home in general.
Yeah, you've been away a lot more than you've been home, right.
Yeah, it's been. It's been bad.
I I'm going to enact a travel ban here in November. It's gonna be mandatory home time.
So it's Friday travel ban.
Yeah yeah, yeah, but uh so we uh we were together though, we uh playing more Perry Maxwell's. You know, it seems like the only time we're going to be together just playing Perry Maxwell's.
It's not terrible, but it has been a very Perry Maxwell summer for sure. We've we've traveled to play a few of his courses and they've all been awesome.
So yeah, they I mean, I'm in like in a deep love affair with Perry Maxwell now, which is it's not bad thing, but it's just amazing how few people talk about them. I'm just amazed in general.
Yeah, why do you think that is?
I think, you know, the more I more I think about it, is like he didn't design any golf course in New York or California.
Yeah, you think it's as simple, Yeah, don't really get to them.
I mean it's just like if you compare it to like anything like sports or all the coverage goes to like the New York teams and the l A teams because they have huge markets, right, Yeah, and he didn't design anything in Chicago, he didn't design anything in any of the biggest cities in the in the country, That's right, and then nobody gives him the credit he deserves for Augusta.
Very true as well. Right, everybody everybody wants to talk about Mackenzie and Bobby Jones there because they're sort of romantic figures. But a ton of those greens are are Perry Maxwell greens, and they're and they're very very good.
Yeah.
So we were at before we went to the Thoroughbred, which was at Aiken and we can talk a little bit about Aiken and Palmetto. We did Winston Salem, so we did Reynolds Park and Old Town Club, and then we drove up which are both Perry Maxwell courses. Reynolds Park is the municipal golf course in Winston Salem, and then we drove up to Roaring Gap, which is at Donal Ross in the Mountain. So let's let's just kick
it off by starting to talk about Reynolds Park. This was I guess I saw Moresville too in Charlotte, which is a dal Ross Chris spent project, which good, you know, affordable place to play that's close to Charlotte.
You know, I think there.
It's not something I would go out of my way to go play, but it's a it's a very good public option for golf. It it's got really interesting land on the front nine, which is the Ross original nine, and you can just it's the the course added nine holes in the sixties. It's really interesting to see just the difference in the uh in the routing in terms of like how intimate and close together the front nine
is and how it uses the land. And then you go to the back nine and it's it's basically like cut out of a forest, you know, and every hole is its own own hole, own corridor, like you can't see anything else going around.
And and I.
Mean you can tell that Chris didn't have a ton of stuff to work with on that back nine when he was doing his redesign, because the doors were so narrow, there were homes that had been added, and uh, you know it just it was really an interesting juxtaposition and uh, but but a really nice course, good shape, it's walkable.
I would recommend it.
I'd go play there again if I was, like if I flew into Charlotte and had an afternoon or if I lived there. It's a it's a really good place to play for public.
Off, right, And that would be that's Morrisville, Moorville, Mooresville.
It's like, it's about twenty five minutes north of Charlotte. So I need to go back and do a proper Charlotte tour. But I just needed something quick in the afternoon to go see.
And that one checks some boxes, right.
What you're describing just there with the ross nine and then and then another nine added to it struck me as very similar to Thandara, which guest author Colin Chris wrote about on our website not too long ago, where you have this this intimate sort of interlocking routing with a kind of open plan contrasted with a later nine that goes through the woods. It seems like there's there's
not just one place where that's the case. But obviously one of them is a little more more fun to play than the other.
Yeah, I mean, I think you see it all over the place too, Like with Langford and Moreau, they built a lot of nine hole courses in the Midwest, and then you see them add another nine. You know, these courses add another nine in the nineteen sixties seventies. You know, you go down the list, like there's a course in Laporte, Indiana called Legacy Hills and the front nine is all original Langford Moreau and it's really could be something else.
Like it's amazing because I had an old Ariel and you can see the shadowing because of how deep some of these bunkers were, and you can just see this like intense shadowing on like a nineteen forty Aeriel, which is crazy. And then but then they added a nine. You know, you got like Race Pond and it weaves through housing, a housing development, and it's just like that covers three times the amount of land that the Front nine does, and it's a far less interesting golf in my opinion, you know.
Right, pretty typical story. So I was in the air flying out to Charlotte when you were looking at that course. And the next day we drove out toward Winston Salem, where before going to the Wake Forest Campus, an old town, we stopped by Reynolds Park, which is a municipal course designed by Perry Maxwell. And I think it's safe to say that we are both blown away by what we found there, right.
Yeah, Yeah, that was I'd been looking at Reynolds Park for like two years on Google Maps, and obviously the one thing that never shows is topography, and I had no clue what we were going to find there, and I mean it was.
It was stunning.
It just jumped to the top of near the top or the top of the list of golf courses that I want to see restored.
Yeah, ultra dramatic land. There are kind of two general sections of the course. They're not separated by nines. It's more like there are six holes on one side of the highway and then there are the other twelve holes on the other side.
Yeah, it's like one, two, three play and then you cross the road and then it finishes the nine and then the back nine all on that other side.
Right and where the back nine is is I think where we both started to really see some classic Perry Maxwell stuff. The way the holes went right over the boldest features in the land. Both sides of the road were really cool. I think that there has been more modern intervention on the other side of the road with the front nine, but still just the Obviously it's an overused term, but the sheer scale of the land is incredibly impressive, and there are some holes out there that
are just completely unique looking to my eye. It was really really exciting to see that there. Obviously, it needs some work, it needs some support, but what a cool golf course.
Yeah, it's like one of my favorite things about just going to these golf courses, like you never know what to expect.
And we went there on I think it was Tuesday morning. It was.
It was it was like kind of gray and windy.
Not good light for taking photos, and the.
Course was packed though. It was filled with with golfers and yes, and we ended up, we parked and we went over and we were on the on the holes, the section that holds four through nine, and we just started walking around and I think like we got over the hill and both of us were just like, holy cow, couldn't believe what was like what unfolded down in front of us. And you know, you're walking around that side I was, you know, in you can see that the
bunkers have been messed around with. But then you know, there were a few greens out there that like were distinctly Maxwell greens where you saw his his rolls or as as as Dunlop White who at Old Town Club coin muffined in the greens, and it was just like, God, how does no way talk about this way like? And it's just it just was an amazing place in terms of for somebody that dreams about what it could be. And I know I'm guilty of being a golf course dreamer.
Well with that one, it's completely legitimate to dream about what it could be, because there are a lot of courses where that dreamers are attracted to where you're just never going to get back what was there, and it's almost fruitless to try to pursue it, But at Reynolds Park you wouldn't really need to do much. It's basically all still there. I think a lot of what the
course needs probably has to do with deferred maintenance. But it's a cool course already and there's not much that would need to happen to it in order to make it instantly one of the best municipal courses in the country in my opinion. But yeah, the greens, a lot
of the greens are still there. In fact, it's stunning some of the stuff that's still there because there's some really there are some really quirky moves in that design, and a lot of that is intact, maybe because somebody just preserved it or maybe through a process of benign neglect. But when you walk around, you really see what that
design was. It was funny. I was out there, you know, looking at the back nine and just taking some photos and really getting into it, and I was approached by the superintendent of the course, a guy named Ryan mcclannon, and he asked me what I was doing, and I told him, and he was really really nice guy, and he was like, yeah, I was just afraid that, you know, we've had some problems recently with kids coming out here and playing Pokemon Go, and I was wondering if you
were one of those people. But once he found out what I was doing, he was super welcoming and we were totally free to just kind of walk around the place. But that's kind of the vibe of the place, very casual, and it's it's part of the community.
Said for Pokemon Go apparently.
Yeah, not only is it.
A you know, something that could be great golf course, it also is a you know, regular spot for people searching for Pokemont.
Right yeah, who needs foot golf when you when you have a Pokemon venue.
It's uh but uh yeah, the that uh that place it was I think both of us were walking around that that one side, the first side we were on, which is four through nine, and we were like, this is unreal. And I personally was expecting to cross the road and see something like way different and and uh and it turned out to be like way better, world's better on the.
Other side of the road, right.
Yeah. We thought we had seen the good stuff when we saw the front nine or the six holes on that side of the road, but the good stuff really is on on the other side that the tenth hole out there, the seventeenth hole, just going over these big contours, these kind of waves in the land that you see Maxwell going directly over on a lot of his best courses. Yeah, you can. You can see the routing, you can see the holes as they were designed. It's a pretty exciting place.
So, yeah, there's a there's a spot where the kind of the low point on that side of the land is in is in the corner of the property, and both the thirteenth and the seventeenth play down into it from different angles, and the greens are just benched one
on top of the other. The thirteenth sits just slightly above it on a ridge, and then the seventeenth place under it down on another ridge, and it's just like that spot, I'm just like holy, like you know, that was where I turned and looked at I was just like, my god, I cannot believe this place exists.
Yeah, it's Yeah, it was great. I'd love to go back there actually and and dig in some more, but we might have some stuff coming up on that. We did get some pictures and and hopefully i'd be able to all be able to write something about it eventually.
Yeah, we got to figure out when that what's going on with the management situation, because it's it's just a place that it's begging for restoration. And you talk about all the great municipal courses and I mean, I guess to put it into perspective for somebody, is it's got it's got land, like the land is could be is very similar to Bethpage Black's land, but it's Perry Maxwell with really interesting greens.
Like in terms of the.
Muscular it's not you know, it's not as expansive in the routing how Bethpage Black covers just a ton of property.
It's more intimate.
But in terms of the movement and the and the ridges and the and you know, you're hitting up and you're hitting you're teeing off from let from ridges down
and hitting down. In terms of the sheer up elevation movement, it would be it would be similar to that, but in a much more intimate setting for golf, where you especially if they did to re removal you, I mean, you'd see all across the golf course on the on the from holes one through three, and uh and nine through eighteen, you'd see you could see everybody basically everywhere.
Right, Yeah, And when when Jeff Shackelfer talks about how one of the great things that the USGA could do would be to help generate funds to restore and renovate great city municipal courses, I think Reynolds Park is absolutely the perfect candidate for that because, as I said earlier, you wouldn't have to do much. The land is still there, the routing is still there, many of the greens are still there. It would just take a little bit to
push that place over the top. I can think of a few other courses and a few other cities that are similar and would benefit similarly from that kind of program, but Reynolds Park really is the perfect example of of course that would benefit from that.
A place that reminds me too, like that in that same vein would be there's a Stanley Thompson designed sleepy hollow in Cleveland that's unbelievable too, like similar, similar state where it's just sitting there and you know, really great land and really great design.
That's just it's just.
Because nothing ever happened really bad, it's still just there, you know, which is you know we talked, I talk to so many architects that have said that, like, sometimes the best thing that can happen is never having money to screw it up. In Reynolds Park, it probably falls into that bucket.
Yeah, definitely. Isn't there a municipal ross course out in Cleveland as well?
Yeah, Manikiki, it's really good. I think Sleepy Hollow. I Sleepy Hollow's got a lot more potential, but they're both really really good.
Like where.
I always think of it this way as like if you if they if they turned into a private club and got to do a restoration, like, man, there's a chance Sleepy Hollow would be the best course in all of Cleveland.
Yeah. Well, there was a time when a lot of the best terrain for golf around cities was used for municipal courses. Right, There was a time when these tracks of land that had huge potential specifically for golf were actually devoted to golf. And that time is not that that's no longer the time we live in, right, we
have to look elsewhere for that land now. But that's why these municipal courses, these city courses built in the nineteen twenties and especially in the nineteen thirties and the air of the works progress administration are so valuable, such great resources for the golf world because so many of them are built on pieces of land that we would just the public would no longer have access to anymore. And there and they're still there. They just need a little bit of help, a little bit of capital, a
little bit of support. And that's definitely easier said than done. Yeah, there's going to come from before. Yeah, that's and that's tough in city government, right, it's not a people are dealing with really immediate and I'd sympathize with the city governments are dealing with a lot of really immediate problems. I mean, I think if you're a council person in the Cleveland area, are you really thinking about golf all that much? Maybe not, or in Winston Salem for that matter.
But I think that that if you take the long view and you see the potential of these places, that that kind of work on golf courses, that sort of input could be a real value to many communities.
Yeah, I think there's an opportunity. I think if if this cop trick thing goes well, which I did a podcast on with Joe Bosh and Mike Serba, and Philadelphia. Yeah, where they've done where they've gotten the they've gotten a private lease and it's privately funded and you know, but it's going to remain essentially run like a municipal would be run in the census for the people. I think if that can be a big, smashing success, it could really changed the future for a lot of these places.
Yeah, domino effect.
Yeah, and I think we'd hope for Yeah.
And also you know, Washington, d C. With East Potomac would be another example.
All Right. The hope is that we've seen in the past fifteen to twenty years a restoration movement in the private club sector, and the hope is that that would move eventually to public access golf. But that's a very difficult transition.
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Now back to our podcast.
But it's funny because you know, right after we saw Reynolds Park, this great candidate for restoration, we went over to Old Town Club, which represents I think many of the best aspects of the private club restoration movement. We got over to Old Town Club that evening after we had seen Reynolds Park, and once again, you know, this was another really pleasant surprise. Immediately taken by this course. What were some of your first impressions of it?
Well, it was just interesting because we went from a course where you're like Wow, this thing could be really really great. You know, to a course that like right down the road that essentially is what Reynolds Park could be. You know, it was like looking like you're walking off and it's like, yep, this is this is what it is.
I think.
I mean Old Town Club. I two years ago. I started doing this because I it's hard because there's so many places I want to go see and given years and I started to make lists of five five courses that I wanted to see, like, and they be in different parts of the country. So because knowing that, like you go one of these places, you're going to see
some other stuff while you're there. And like two years ago, I had Old Town like on this list and I didn't get there that year, and then we're getting to the end of this year and I was like, I got to get there. So it was it was great to finally see it. It lived up to all my expectations. It's just amazing. It's an amazing golf course. Especially, I mean,
it's just stunning to see. I think in terms of all the places we played, it's the most maxwell like in comparison to Southern Hills and Perry Dunes, there's more Maxwell preserved and showing at at Old Town than anywhere else.
Like they've got they've got it all the way.
You know, it's one of the courses that is getting the most out of its course that I've seen. You know, from a standpoint of presentation, Like you don't walk around there and say like, oh if they if they did this, it would really bump it. It's like it's pretty maxed out ast you know, like it's great.
They've gotten there. Yeah, it was really cool to see a course kind of fulfilling its potential in that way. And just to give a little background on Old Town Club, it was built in early nineteen thirty nine by Perry Maxwell. So nineteen thirty nine is quite late in the Golden Age. In fact, many people would say Old Town Club is the last great work of the Golden Age of golf course architecture, and so in that sense it's already of historical interest. But it was built after Prairie Dunes, after
Southern Hill. This is Perry Maxwell maybe at his most mature. And then you know, through the years, Old Town Club I think was always regarded as a really good course, but it lost some of its initial character in the usual ways, you know that, a lot of tree planting and kind of shrinking more shrinking greens. Yeah, more conformity in the mowing lines and the bunker shapes and all
that kind of stuff. And so in twenty thirteen, after what sounds like years of activism on the part of Dunlop White, who's currently the golf chairman at Old Town Club, the club hired Bill Corer and Ben Crenshaw to come in and restore the course essentially to the form that it's in now. And Bill Corps still visits the place and gives suggestions. It's an ongoing process, but it truly
is a wonderful restoration. So yeah, So, okay. One of the remarkable things about Old Town is it's it's land, right, And I've been struggling to come up with a way to describe this land because it's it's not like prairie dunes, it's not like southern hills, you know, it's it's something else that's maybe in between those two in some way or another. How how would you describe what the topography is like out there?
So it's it's clay based soil, So it's not like prairie dunes is sand and it it's not like saying it's just I don't know how to explain it. To be honest, it's it's very it's very muscular. It's got these big landforms that you play over, and but at the same time, it's a very small piece of land, right,
everything is really packed into there. And the way the course plays, you play the first three out, you play on one side of the clubhouse, and then you go back to the other side, and the fourth hole plays up this crest and you don't really see from the clubhouse, and from the first three holes you don't really know what's coming up. But then you play the fourth hole and you crest this hill and it's just like an
open expanse of golf. And you've got you've got creeks that run through it that are similar to the way Southern Hills has the dominant creek that runs through it, and uh, you know the you know the river kind of it's a big river bed essentially, and then uh yeah,
it's just it's a very oddly shaped property too. That's the thing is that I remember Bill Corr talking about this one I when I interviewed him, because he said Old Town Club was one of, you know, the most impactful courses he'd ever you know, he visited early and I asked why he goes how he fit eighteen holes on that property, The way its shaped, the and how severe it is is truly remarkable, and like then going out and seeing it, And that's like one of the
reasons I wanted to see Old Town so bad, was what Bill Corr said on the podcast about it. And and I just don't think a lot of architects would have been able to get, Like if you gave them that site with nothing on it, I don't think a lot of architects would be able to get eighteen great holes on it.
Yeah. I agree with that. It's a weird site. It's not only kind of compact, but it's also got odd landforms on it. Yeah, and Maxwell actually turned that to an advantage, right. He took these really abrupt, severe year landforms that maybe most architects would avoid, and he routed holes over them that really work.
Yeah.
And it has got all those corners. Yeah, So it's got it's got like a corner where one and two are like one green and two plays into then it's got a corner where five green and six te is and then it's got another corner where ten plays intwo and then it's got where eleven like it's it's just like a there. There are probably eight corners of the property that the course goes to, right.
There must have been a lot of points in the routing where it looked like before the golf course was built, there was nowhere to go. Yeah, when you got back to say the fifteenth green, the par three that goes back into one of these corners and get to the sixteenth tee, who would think of routing the sixteenth hole? This par four that goes over to big Ridge is to a green perched on top of the second ridge.
Who would think of of routing that golfle When you look at it, it it looks incredible and it and it works right, It plays really well. But I don't think many architects would have the daring to put that hole there and not move much land, which is something that Perry and Maxwell never did, right. He just didn't move a whole lot of land, and and those holes go over that most architects would eliminate.
He did just not move land.
He was a he was anybody that moved land the steamshovel hater he was. He was.
He was a fanatic about it, Yeah he was. He subtweeted Langford and Moreau pretty much constantly in every public utterance he made.
We think it was like for I mean, it got to be right.
Yeah, they were working in the same region of the country at the same time, and they had two completely wildly different, wildly different style.
Else Yeah, yeah, for sure.
But at the same.
Time, they shared a lot of the same things. Like like Lankford Barreau, the way they routed golf courses to be is very similar. Like the way they used landforms was very similar to the way Perry Maxwell, where they would drape them over these big contours and use the big contours as and but they were just so wildly
different at the green you know and building hassards. But I think that in terms of routing, there's a lot and I think that might be part of like those two guys they learned from the fact that they worked on all these sites that were really tough sites in the Midwest, and you know, the great planes and and they you know, they did not That's the thing why Perry Maxwell amazes me so much is because he was giving given so much less than so many other architects
with what he had to start to work from, whether it was you know, building in the middle of the Great Depression where you just have less to work with in general, or from the sites and the soils that he worked on as opposed to if you got to work on Long Island exclusively, like you're building on sand, like, you know, it's a little bit different than building on you know, North Carolina clay.
Yeah, and we saw some of we've seen some of the best sites that he got to work on too. Right, Prairie Dunes obviously was a blessed site. And that's why that golf course is special because you get Perry maxwhile working on that kind of site. You can't get anything but one of the best golf courses in the world, which those original nine holes. I think that certainly certainly are. And you know, Old Town's got some cool features and it's got a varied landscape, and so the holes are
are from each other, instantly, instantly memorable. No hole is anywhere near being like any other hole on that course. And that's partly because of the variety of landforms, but also it's a it's a credit to the genius of the routing.
All right.
So one of my favorite questions when with a course, especially for a course like Old Town, it's not like everybody always what's your favorite hole? What's the weakest hole at Old Town?
See, I was just thinking, not specifically about that question, but about Old Town's weaknesses, And I was thinking that one of the things that was distinctive about Old Town is that it has very very few weaknesses, right it is when we talked about Prairie Dunes a month or two ago on the podcast, I think both of us could easily identify some weaknesses in that golf course. I think that Southern Hills might have some weaknesses as well
that are explained by the nature of the land. But the par three's that Southern Hills aren't exactly the most memorable holes at that course, I think to an extent, you could say the same at Old Town, where when you think about the best holes at Old Town, almost all of them that immediately come to mind mind are par four's and par fives, the long holes. And so you know, if there's if there's any critique I think I'd make, it's that the par threes don't stand out
quite as much. But the par threes are are really good, you know, like they're they're very very good golf holes, and they're not They're not dull by any stretch of the imagination. They just don't quite rise to the level of the others. Other than that, I'd have a really hard time identifying the weakest hole. Maybe the fifteenth hole. I don't know, that has a cool green though, that's a that's a green. Yeah, yeah, so, I don't know.
It's kind of cool. How the how the par threes build. One of the things that it does it Old Town is they build like they get. They start with the shortest one is number two, then then number six is a little bit longer. I think it plays about one seventy. Number two plays like one fifty or one forty five, and then uh then number eleven plays to ten, and then number five is like to forty.
You know, different directions, right, they're all yeah, they're all facing different directions. Yeah, I mean they're still well designed. Maybe the weakest tall the course is number eighteen. Maybe that would be it.
That green's awesome though.
It's a great green.
I know.
Well, I'm okay, Well, so what what's what do you think is the weakest tall at all Town? What do you think number one?
No?
Number one is great? So yeah, I.
Don't know, I see it. That's why I asked you.
I didn't want to answer this question right exactly. I think that that that is exactly one of the one of the distinctive things about Old Town though, is that it's really hard to identify weaknesses of the course, either among the holes, weak links in the in the routing. And it's also tough at this point after the work that Corn Crenshaw have done there, it's tough to identify weaknesses in the presentation and set up of the course. Yeah, that's pretty strong all around too.
I loved.
There are some things about the restoration that I like, really really loved.
Is that.
A the aesthetics of it, like the sand just like even the sand color. The choice of the sand color is it just like shows that they they knew what they.
Were going for.
Like you see so many clubs do these restorations, and you know they put these the white sand in, the bright white sand in and it's like it just doesn't fit. You're trying to restore your court like and it it takes out of like makes it less of a hazard. It's like the perfect light just designed to make it easy. And at old time they got this just like this orange sand not orange, but like I'm color blind, so I can't even tell you what color it is really, but like it's like this, like.
It's sort of yeah, it's browner. It's it's darker in color than the than than the blinding white sand that you see a lot of different places, and rockier too, Like there's you know, they're not afraid of having not having it be perfectly pillowy, fine all the way through.
And I almost always, like I go places like one that sticks out of my head is like Inverness.
I go.
I went there and and you know, they did the restoration and you just like look around and you're like, god, there should be so much more fair away. Like you just see the la right where the faraway should be.
And it's not because they're they're chasing championship golf, but like, you know, the at the same time, it's like this is a member's golf course, Like they're like that that landform screams fairway, you know, because you see right where the fairway line was and and at old Town never once, not once in the whole you know, two days there, I ever look and be like, you know, they could add fairaway here like it is they actually have the lines out to where I think it's right and where
you know, like it's restored back to what the fairway withs were back in the day.
The fairway goes all the way to the native basically, yeah, there isn't. I mean there's some there is some maintained rough out there, but in art right, yeah, barely like there's yeah right, yeah, well that's funny because I can't even really remember where it might be maybe between uh numbers one and three, but there the fairway in a lot of places just goes right up to the native areas.
And the native areas are really good. You know, there are a lot of places where you would lose a golf ball, but in the native areas that are actually in play, they're cultivated really well, so that you know, it's an unpredictable penalty hitting into there. You might not lose your golf ball in a lot of places, you might find it, but you also might find yourself in funny positions or there might be an opening for you
to go for it from there. So in that sense they do even a good job off of the golf holes maintaining the course.
Yeah, and the impact that fairway has.
You know, we've talked a lot about these like massive landforms that the course is routed over. You know, a lot of times you'll have this severe topography either running right down the center of the fairway where it acts like a hog's back where if you don't hit it right in the right space, you know place it's gonna shoot your ball right or left. You know what the fairway does is it just it's the most It's the best thing ever in golf is when the ball lands.
That's when it gets really exciting because you don't know where it's going to end up and it and so many of these holes, well, whether it's you know, having a big landform on on one half of it and having a cascade down to the left or the right or down the middle and having it what it does is it makes the fairways are huge. But hitting it to the right spot and the fairways is so difficult because of because of the slopes in the short grass, the ball it's just you know, when the ball hits
the ground. That's when all the you know, it's not done right.
And the and it was bouncy out there when we played too, even though it was toward the end of what would usually be considered the prime golf season. The ball was really taking leaps off of the turf when it landed. And that combined with the bold slopes of the fairways at Old Town Club, which you were mentioning earlier. There's hogs back fairways that are fairways with high sides and low sides, fairways that go uphill, that go downhill. There's fairways that bounce off one hill and then bounce
off another hill. I mean, there's just all sorts of things that the short grass covers there at Old Town where the ball can can run and bound and make all these crazy moves. You combine that with really good firm conditioning, and you've got the golf course, I think as it was really intended to play.
Yeah, it's it's awesome. I mean, there was a was it a third hole?
It was?
The third hole is like the perfect illustration because we both you played it at absolutely perfectly and I like kind of chickened out and uh they eat. So this the third hole place back up to the clubhouse. In the in the fairway cants from right to left, and there's two intimidating bunkers set into the right side of the fairway, and that's right where you want to be. From there, you're going to get the flattest lie and have the best look and best angle into the green.
And you know, if the fairway's really wide right and Garrett hit like this beautiful little cut right up the right side and had it was in the perfect spot. And I hit mine right up the middle, and what happened was it just bounded like probably forty yards left of where it landed into just it just rolled into the into the rough, and all of a sudden, I had a semi blind wedgshot from a flyer lie into a green from like a very poor angle, you know,
an uphill green from a poor angle. And it was you know, granted, like people are always going to look at like the result one time, but that it was just a stressful shot. And over the course of a round, all you're trying to do, if you're really trying to score, is you're trying to reduce stress, not put stress into your round. And you know, I hit a fine shot, but but it just was not a comfortable shot, right. And that's that's the thing, is that over those things
compound over over the round. If you don't get it into the right position out there, you're going to be faced with a much more difficult shot.
Right. And what amplified the difference between your way of playing that hole, in that one round, in my path to the hole, is that the pin was just on the other side of what we've been calling a Maxwell muffin, right, just this little subtle mound in the putting surface. A lot of greens old Town have these features where it's just a simple green, but there's one little mound that a lot of pin positions can play off of. Dunlop
White refers to these. Dunlop White, the golf chairman at Old Town, refers to these as as muffins in the in the greens. And so when I played my shot into that green, I was I was up on the level with the green. It was a pretty easy shot, really, I just you know, it hit a nice easy shot and it got to the other side.
Could you see the mound.
Yes, so I could see right, Yeah, I could see everything on the green, right, I mean it was. It was a ways a way, a little bit elevated. I couldn't see it perfectly, but I had a comfortable vision of the green, and you know, so I.
Seeing it, but I couldn't even see it, so I couldn't see where the pin was in relation to that that muffin. And when I hit my shot, I thought it was perfect, but I was just under the muffin, so I was putting up and over and you were over on the other side of it.
I had a flat putt, yeah, right, I had an easy putt and your putt was up and over that mound, which is very, very difficult because if you're a little bit left, it goes left, if you're a little bit right, it goes right. You have to judge the speed just right. You know, we may have had even like a similar length of putt because I hit a much longer club into the green than you did. For one thing, But just because of the position on the green, one shot
was a lot easier than the other. And I think that's so important, and it's such a smart design feature there, because if the green were just flat, there wouldn't have been that much of a difference between your angle into the green and my angle into the green. You would have hit your good wedge like you usually hit. Doesn't
matter if you can see the green or not. You're going to get it up there within about twenty feet most of the time, and if the green is flat, you'll have basically the same putt that I would have. But but that wasn't the case. And by the way, this is just the This is probably the one hole that I played better than Andy during our round at all time, which is maybe why it was, but it was it was a good illustration of what the hole does. For sure.
Those greens are are so cool. I just the the roles are just I we talked about this the last time we talked about Maxwell, but they're just amazing because
they just bring so much thought. I like found myself like just having so much fun on and around the greens because you know, you start to figure out, like the key to those greens is you just have to find the high point of the muffins, right, and you have to read everything off of that and what part of the muffin you're putting over it, and it once you it kind of unlicked and then all of a sudden, it just it's so fun because it is like you're
just looking at all these different shots and the different ways you can play shots off these things, especially when you're chipping. I mean, it's just a just a really really neat place. It's a golf course, that's yeah. I mean that's the place. And the other thing about it is the club's very i mean very relaxed place. You know, it's it's a very golf centric place.
Yes, yeah. The the the lounge was a was a cool place to hang out. There are people who are just they're having a good time. You know. We had good talks with people and you know, always felt welcome and like we could walk around the golf course and nobody really cared and so so great, A great place to hang out and yeah, just a tremendously fun golf course too, uh to play. I feel like it's it's pretty underrated. I don't know, would you go. It gets
ranked on these lists and stuff. I think people recognize that it's a great course, but to me, it just feels like it's on a level with other courses that consistently get ranked higher or that are discussed more. Do you get the sense that it's a bit underrated in the discussion right now, I do.
I think it's just where it is. Yeah, it's just this effect of.
It to me.
If if it was in a major city, I mean, it's it's as good as anything. I mean, I'm sitting in a major city and it's as good as anything here, if not better, and the like you go down there, they're just you know, I don't. I think part of it's due to the way the rankings are done, like Golf Digest specifically, like you could dock it down for you know, protecting par or whatever they're you know, I mean essentially they have like four of their eight eight
or nine categories are devoted to difficulty. So like that's how I could see it getting bumped down there. It's really well ranked I think in the UH in the Golf Week rankings, I think it's like nineteen or twenty, and that's of in classic courses and that you know, the courses around it I would associate with like where it should be.
But in terms of the.
The golf I don't think it's I think I don't think I mean, I hate ranking there's I don't. I don't think it's even in the top one hundred of the of the Golf Digest rankings, which is yeah, absolutely, it's absolutely insane.
I mean yeah, I mean I wasn't even talking about the rankings so much as because I mean, I just don't think it was more just the Do people talk about it as a great course that often, maybe because maybe because it just doesn't give visited even among people who go to a lot of private courses to play.
It's the same thing like Cal Club is a good comparison. It gets talked about a ton, and it's because it's in San Francisco, right, I think, you know, I think that Old Town's got a little bit more variety, the routings, a little bit more creative. The sites are actually kind of similar.
Yeah, Cal Club's a decent comparison right where both courses are are sort of meeting their potential right now. You don't play those courses and think like, oh man, they didn't do enough there or they kind of screwed that up. You go around thinking, wow, there was really good restoration slash renovation work done here. But yeah, I would say just straight out the holes, the golf holes at Old Town are better. Yeah, they're better golf holes.
And I'd agree with that, but it's like the you know, of course, you know, how often are people in Winston Salem. That's the thing that's why it doesn't get talked about as much, is that. I mean, it's only an hour and twenty from Charlotte, which you know, but I mean in terms I've heard that North Carolina is not the South, you know, but i'd equated to the South. You know, I wouldn't say it's mid Atlantic.
I mean, it's.
Yeah, the people I'm definitely not an expert in that who says that North Carolina is not part of the South.
From the South, you know, people from the South. I'm interested to hear people's opinion. But then people will say, oh, Holston Hills is in the South. Knoxville and Winston Salem are essentially on the same latitude line.
There's a longitude longitude.
It's longitude Yeah, well is it?
No?
Wait wait, you know this is not something actually that we should we should debate because I'm going to be wrong either way. But anyway, it's uh yeah, maybe well who cares really, but maybe it's more cultural than geographic. In any case, it's it's close to a lot of places. It's close enough that a lot of folks can get to this course, and if you have the opportunity to do it, I think it's you've clearly got to get out there and see this place.
Yeah, it's it's a must see. I mean it's it's arguably the best Perry Maxwell design.
Well, that's what I was just going to ask. You know, we we were really lucky this summer to get to see some great Perry Maxwell golf courses, to see Prairie Dunes and play that several times, and then to get out to Southern Hills. Is it worth comparing Old Town to those two? Would that be illuminating or would that just be a flimsy exercise.
I think it's tough to compare.
I think they're all trying to be a little bit different things, right, I agree, And I think they're all in different situations.
Prairie Dunes, I mean, there are some similarities between Prairie Dunes in terms of the club and the location. Not really though. Prairie Dunes is so much more isolated. But I just see maybe some parallels between what those courses could be. You know, if Prairie Dunes were to get those mowing lines where it seems like they should be and kind of complete its full restoration, it would be
absolutely sensational. And it's on a better piece of land than Old Town, and it probably has a much higher ceiling than Old Town, you could argue, and by what you see at old Town is, as we've said several times, of course, meeting its full potential. And uh and so if you're looking for inspiration for how Prairie Dunes could could meet it's very significant, very substantial potential, then Old Town would be a good example of of where that could go.
Yeah, like every single person that that's a member at a Perry Maxwell course, that's like a Greens Mini chairman should be going to Old Town to see It's like this is what you have, you know, and it Reynolds Park, I mean that's the thing. Reynolds Park be the same thing. Yeah, yeah, but yeah, I mean it's remarkable place.
Yeah, old Town Club is is great. I just thought there.
Were I wish there were.
I wish there were Perry Maxwell's up here in Chicago. We got Fairways, which is nine a nine hole Max. Well, that's it's probably got like three holes of Maxwell left.
That's a it's like an hour for me
But I'm pretty sure that's more than Portland, Oregon has so so it at least is something