Welcome back to another edition of the Frida Egg Podcast. Today's episode is brought to you by b Dratty. This morning, I was out at Wingfoot shooting for some US Open footage and then checking out the golf course as well as some in the area. Went on a tilling hast binge with golf architect Jaeger Kovich. We uh we also recorded a pod so that'll be out later. But it was a chilli morning. It was a it was a layering morning, pure fall morning. I was wearing my b
Dratty quarter zip. It was it was absolutely perfect. Quickly it warmed up, I was, uh, you know, then shed it and was wearing a b Dratty cotton shirt. So I I highly recommend the quarter zip. It is a you know, functional piece that you can wear so many different ways, whether it's to the office, uh, on the golf course or you know, out and about. So check it out at bdradty dot com and yeah, look for future wigfoot content coming up. That's actually where Billy Draddy's
a member, so great spot there. I'm really excited for the next year's US Open. But in this pot Garrett Morrison and I are back. We're continuing our conversation from the last pot about our recent trip through the Carolinas. So in this podcast we cover Roaring Gap, Aiken, which is where we had the Thoroughbread so Garrett hadn't been and we talk about that for a little while, and then we also talk about Paul Mettow, which is a Alister mackenzie design. You know, it's been worked on by
Tom Doak and Gil Hants in recent years. In Aiken. It's a private club, but it also allows uh guest play, public play. Really the week of the Masters, highly recommend checking it out. Is phenomenal golf course if you can, if you can swing the green fee, it is a great place to experience a day at So without further ado, here's Garrett and myself talking about our trip. 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 brid egg Friday egg, the dreaded Frida egg Frida egg Frida egg bride egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off the gump, all right. So after we saw Old Town Club, we had the opportunity before
heading over to Atlanta and Aiken. Later on for the Thoroughbred Our event, we saw in the mountains of North Carolina Roaring Gap Club, which is a nineteen twenty five Donald Ross design that was restored around the same time, in fact, exactly overlapping with the restoration of Old Town Club, and the restoration chairman at Roaring Gap was again Dunlop White, the golf chairman at Old Town Club who oversaw the
process of restoring Old Town as well. So Roaring Gap is a really cool place, you know, It's kind of this getaway in the mountains. It's got an interesting history with the Pinehurst Resort and and a pretty unique golf course. So what were some of your thoughts about about Roaring Gaps.
I mean, it's always cool play golf literally on a mountain. Yeah, you know the I think I've been thinking about it a lot. I it's just like a very fun golf course to play. I think you you think about the place, it's it gets like sixty seven hundred rounds a year, seven thousand, barely anybody plays it, and you think the memberships probably shades a little bit older, and it's like just like that's it fits what it is so well. Because it's just it's not going to kill you, but
it's just like fun. Yeah, I mean, and you play up, and you play down and around, you play right up to the edge of the mountain and the land is gets really, really, really good from I would say a whole five five or six.
The one that five is the one that goes that goes down five five, which and then six is the volcano.
I'd say five through twelve is where it is like kind of the peak. It's interesting, though, the ninth were flipped, and that's what I've been kind of fixated on in my head, and I I tend to keep coming back to the I wish that the night the routing would go back to the other way.
Interesting why is that?
I think it just tells a better story. I understand why they flipped it. They flipped it because the seventh, the current seventeenth plays right out to the cliff and then eighteenth of par three that comes back to the clubhouse, and you know, that's your kind of fairy tale ending to your day at Roaring Gap. But it dismisses the fact that the best land for golf. I think the round is more cohesive the other way because you start and the really good land and it gives you the
taste of what Roaring Gap is. Ten and eleven's a bunker less par five that's just got these tremendous rolling features that kind of like they cascade in from the right and then the left, and the green sits up there, and so you kind of you get a taste of it, and they take you away and they bring you out, and they bring you out to that cliff, you know, and then they bring you back into the great Land to finish, and I just think it's I just I've
thought about this is all I've been thinking about about Roaring Gap is flipping the nines back, and I'm obsessed with it.
Yeah, because you know, the counter argument to that would be what you mentioned earlier that the round kind of culminates out on this cliff that you that you go through the woods, and then finally in those last few holes, the landscape kind of opens up and then boom, you reach the climax right out on the very top of the mountain with that view over the valley. And then there's a long part three that takes you back to the clubhouse and there's a there's a certain dramatic appeal
to that. But I guess what you're saying is that people may be mistaking what the actual best holes at Roaring Gap are. Yeah, because seventeen is not the best hole. I would say, I.
Would actually say seventeen is the weakest hole at Roaring Gap.
Do you think, So why is that?
I just I think it's pretty it's just hit it here, hit it there.
Yeah. I mean if you if you stay along the right side, along where the bunkers are, you you have there's a semblance of strategy right yeah there in the in the fairway cants a little bit to the left. When you're down at the bottom of that, it's not an easy shot, so there's a little bit of strategic unity there. But the land is pretty flat.
Flastically and the greens very you know, because of the I mean so many of the greens there are dictated by the slope of the land because you're playing on this mountain. So like a lot of times you'll look at a hole and you're like, oh, that I'm hitting into green that's front back to front, and and really it's front to back because of the topography, like and you know, you're either playing up or down the mountain, and that is that is the flattest, least you know,
to me least interesting land on the golf course. And it's it's green's not you know, the green's good. It's and this is like not an indictment, it's it, you know. And you could never say that's the worst of the week because of the view, but like in terms of just pure golf. And and it makes me think a lot about Cypress, right, you know, where there's like layers to the routing right where you see the ocean right off the first hole right you and then they take
you away from it. And and that's Roaring GAP's best golf is in that section of the land that that would be the start and the finish of the round, you know. And then Cypress, you see the ocean, you come back to the ocean to finish, right. The best the Roaring Gap, well, the mountain is what people believe to be the ocean. Their real ocean for golf is the rolling hills that are that are situated on holes five through twelve.
Yeah. Yeah, that's that's really well put and I think I agree with that. That's that's what you really come for. That's what's exciting at Roaring Gap is the land that starts when you get to basically the top of the mountain right holds one, two, three, four, play uphill and at the highest point you see that building and I know I should know what that building is. Yeah, that's right, okay, And it's a cool it's a cool building, you know. And then you get right up there basically to the
lawn in front of this building. That's the fourth green, and then you walk over to the fifth te and it's a spectacular short par four that plays downhill, dramatic contours in the fairway that dictate the strategy of the hole. The next hole after that is the volcano par three that I think a lot of people probably like taking pictures of that falls off really severely on the right side of the putting surface. And the seven is a
par five that again goes over incredible land. These are great, great golf holes, and that basically continues until the that that land. The terrain, the dramatic terrain in that section of the golf course takes you all the way through hole twelve and then and then there are some really cool golf holes after that too. But you know, especially on number eleven. The part five that you're describing earlier that goes over those huge contours is just a wonderful yeah design.
Twelve twelve so neat too with that, you know.
I short part four kind of goes over the shoulder of the hill and you can see the green from some parts of the hole and other other parts of the hole you can't.
I carry around a per Simon driver and I don't use it all the time. And about four holes and uh and do uh roaring gap, you just realize, like it's a way more fun golf course to play with the with the persim and driver, because that's a golf course that modern equipment has really really take it a toll.
But like if you put if you put it back to the per Simon, like all of a sudden, all the all of those features, Like the twelfth hole has this huge cascading ridge that runs down the right side of the fairway and we both ended up on it. You do not want to be on it. It leaves it's a very short part four, like three point fifty. You have a wedge and you're just hitting from a lie that's you know, ball way above your feet. You know, it's very difficult to hit from.
And you have to cut it from there too to get anywhere near the green. Yeah, your ball's way above your feet if you're a right hander, and you've got to cut it.
Yeah, and you know, if I was playing my regular driver, I just hit it right over that thing. You know, I wouldn't have been even in the ballpark. But with the persimon, I hit it right into it. I tried to hit it over and didn't get there. So it's that that golf course is so fun. And it's another one where when the ball's like alive. We played it at the end of the season and there's a lot of moisture in the air, so it's a little soft.
But like when that ball is running, it's just got to be so much fun to play.
Yeah that your your ball can travel hundreds of feet even in in one role, and that's part of the adventure of the course. And yeah, if you if you're just hitting over those landforms, it becomes less fun, you know. Since I since I'm a little bit shorter, the course still works. It works for me with with modern equipment, I think, but in any case, for the for the
eleventh hole, for instance, that par five. You know, the big feature of that hole is the a ridge or I guess uh you know this, uh, this diagonal slope that cuts about one hundred yards in front of the green and then the land goes down into the goal into a goalie and then way up to the green. And the question on that hole is where do you
want your second shot to end up? Do you want to be on top of the ridge with kind of a weird lie but you're on the same level the green, or do you want to go ahead and hit it past that and then have a blind shot up to the green That that would be quite difficult as well. I think if you were playing modern equipment, you'd probably get your ball around the green and two shots every time. But rolling yourself back a little bit reintroduces some of the questions that the hole is supposed to ask, and
it is. You know, it's a short course by modern standards, it's sixty four hundred yards, but man, if you're if you're hitting the ball off the tee not much more than two hundred or two hundred and twenty five yards, that course becomes really adventurous and difficult because of because of how it just sits on this mountain and doesn't hold back in terms of taking you over the biggest landforms.
What I would you say, what would you say? You know, what would do you like to see different there?
Well, we talked about this a little bit during the round. It would be it would be cool to see the turf in the fairways especially come to its full potential. And we saw it toward the end of the season. We saw it in October. That course closes down at the end of October, right basically three weeks was it the last week? So even earlier the course is essentially
shut down at this point, its season is over. And I'm sure if we saw it earlier in the summer, we would have seen different realities in terms of the turf. But yeah, it was it was soggy and the ball wasn't running like clearly it normally would. And you know, I do think that there probably could be some stuff done so that the turf is a little bit more
lively through the season. Another thing that I noticed as I was playing the course is that maybe some of the mowing lines aren't aren't quite they could be, you know, their whole number seven comes to mind, specifically where on the right side, there's a mowing line that kind of cuts into some area where that you might want to play with strategically getting your ball out there and seeing it roll. I think that's the case on a few holes.
Yeah, some trees too.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's on the on the front nine or the current front nine especially, would you say.
Yeah, I'd say that. And then you know on the back, like there's one between seventeen and eighteen the tree there's a pine tree that a fair way that could be extended over on the left that would make the hole much better. But you know, for the most part, it's it's really good, you know, And I don't think I don't think that course it for what it is. It's really good, right.
And what do you think it is? What do you think it's it's trying to be.
I mean, it's just like a lax place to go hang out that everybody that's a member there is like a second or third club, you know, and to a certain extent, like golf is just a part of you know, being up in the mountains, right.
Yes, yeah, I agree, you know, it's I think Donald Ross delivered exactly what the intention of that course was. Was it's a pleasant getaway from busier places down on flatter land, you know. It was. It was designed as an adjunct to the Pinehurst resort, and it sort of functions that way. It's it's although it's on a mountain, it's not too taxing. It's just it's just really pleasing and a fun, fun place to play golf. But I wouldn't call it, and I don't know if this is
even a good term. I wouldn't call it a major course, right, not in terms of major championship But it's not a major work in Donald Ross's body of work. It's uh, you know, Oakland Hills and Pinehurst number two, those are those are his big, huge statements, roaring gap and I made this comparison in a discussion we had afterwards. But if you're going to compare Donald Ross's courses to Bruce Springsteen albums, I don't know why you'd want to do that.
It just jumped to mind. But Pinehurst number two, uh, and and his uh, the current Donald Ross major championship courses are kind of his born to run or born in the USA, those big statements and big loud, you know albums that that have a lot of instruments and h and spectacular songs. Roaring Gap is more like Bruce Springsteen's album Nebraska, which is a cute, acoustic, stripped down beautiful and you know, it's a beautiful, lovely album that shows a different side of Springsteen, but it's not a
major statement and it doesn't intend to be. I think that you can sort of see Roaring Gap the same way. It shows a different dimension of Ross's talent as an architect.
Yeah, I agree with that. It's it's it's like it's charming, you know, yes, that's the way. It's just a it's a very enjoyable place to go play golf, right, you know.
Yeah, yeah, I'm glad we went there.
Yeah. So yeah, then uh then you got to go see Achin. Now for a quick word from our sponsor. Today's episode is powered by tdum rhor Trade. Whether on the course or in the market, it helps to have a second set of eyes to keep you on your game. That's why tedum ror Trades Trade Desk is here to help gut check your strategies so you always feel confident teeing up a trade. Visit tedomritrade dot com slash fried egg to learn more about what the trade desk can
do for you member SIPC. Now back to Aichen.
Oh man, this was quite a trip. Actually, it felt like it happened pretty quickly, but we covered a lot of grounds.
I'm so tired at the end of it.
Oh yeah, yeah, we did quite a bit of driving. But yeah. We we got over to Aiken and had our event there, played three rounds at Aiken within a day and a half and that was a completely delightful experience.
Achin Golf Club. You've written about it on the website, but it's just a wonderful local golf course that just shows what you can do if you have an ownership that that commits themselves entirely to making the golf course as good as possible and where they know what they're doing, you know they and they just turned that golf course into a design that is better than it has any business being so really fun to play there. It was I think the event worked out really well. But yeah,
great great place. And then in the same town you have Palmeto Golf Club on the on the on the private side, and it makes Aiken one of the best small towns for golf that I've ever seen maybe the best.
I actually think it is the best. I don't think there's a there's a town, even a city, even cities
that have a better private public combo. I was actually I was a little nervous before Aiken because I feel like, you know, I don't know, I had this like self doubt creep in where I was just like, maybe, like, maybe this golf course isn't as good as I think this golf courses because like just I feel like not that many people had been to it, you know, like there wasn't like a I don't know, like Tom Dok hasn't been there, you know, and there's like a little
doubt that and but then like you know, everybody got there and played it and everybody was like blown away. It was like quite relieving, and it was like, Okay, I did think like I wasn't losing my mind or something.
And totally understand. I've been that way about golf courses before, where nobody else is talking about them, you think it's really great, and you're like, oh, have I just gone insane?
Yeah, Well, it was like the fact that all these people are going I'm like, I hope it's not as good as I think it is, you know, but like I was re refferred because you know the commentary afterwards. But you know, there isn't a with a public golf course, like there aren't many public golf courses that can map like. There are plenty of private courses that match Palmetto, but I can't think of any town that's got a public that even comes in the close in the stratosphere of of akin.
Yeah, it's pretty stunning, how good it is. So what were you hearing from people after they play it? Played it? What were what were some of the comments that you heard.
I'm curious, you know, people just it was just, you know, how wildly unique it is, how incredible, Like I mean, the greens are just incredible.
Yeah, yes, every green's different, and and there are green concepts out there, just ideas for what you could do with the total entity of the green that I just haven't seen before. Yeah, and I just literally haven't seen someone design a green like that before. That's that's what's out there at this golf course.
Well, it's because the guy never designed, agreed before he designs. Usually that that situation doesn't work out like that. It's just it's such a cool place. The the other thing is the way it's connected to the town makes it a little bit more special too. Where you can it's a two minute walk from downtown Aiken, which is a nice town. It's a it's a very nice town. You know, I haven't been there a couple of times now, Like
I Aiken's a really nice town. And you you just can walk from downtown and then there's this golf course that's weaved in through the neighborhood. You cross roads and you go out and back and it's just and and the best is, like it takes so little time to play the golf course. It's just not it's like the complete opposite of every American golf course, every American public golf course in a way, not everyone, but like it's so different, wildly different.
And it's a great model of how to how to weave a golf course, as you say, into a residential community, right, because often that doesn't work out very well. Often houses and golf courses don't go very well together. But even though the corridors out there are fairly isolated from each other and there aren't these kind of open expanses where a bunch of golf holes are all together on the land. You're kind of going through the neighborhood out and back.
In fact that the ninth hole doesn't go back to the golf to the clubhouse, right. The course wanders out and then eventually comes back, and it's through neighborhoods the whole time. But it doesn't feel like you're being encroached upon. The houses don't feel like they're on top of the course. And maybe that's just because the corridors are wide enough, and maybe it's because they're set back from the golf
course well enough and concealed well enough. But the golf courses is part of that residential community and it doesn't feel like well, I think one compromises the other.
I think the big difference is that the golf course was there and then the homes came.
Yeah.
Yeah, and that's I think that's how it always works better.
Yeah, because you get to use the good land for golf first, and then you can fill fill in the residential componently.
And then like the early housing development courses were kind of the same way, Like Pasa Tempo Sedgefield was an early residential course where the golf course was was selected and then the houses were built next to it, right, Yeah, And it's like that that's the the the appropriate way to do residential golf.
And it's not a prefabricated community, right, it's an organically built community where you know, there wasn't like a master plan or anything like that. It just grew up there. And so it feels all completely natural that this golf course and and this neighborhood that it's in coexist and and and supplement each other. It's it's really nice. And they have that putting course just outside the clubhouse. The clubhouse itself is cool. There's a great there's a great whole.
Putting course is awesome. I mean it's all grass putting course with a bunker in it and and like cool putting holes, like well designed putting holes. It's just so simple. It doesn't take up that much room. I was looking at this and thinking, why in the heck do we not see this other places? But you just don't. And maybe there's this the extra care that has to be put into designing and taking care of bullshit.
Yeah, the extra care. Jim Nicknaer maintains that golf course with a crew of four guys.
Yeah, that's true. There's very little. We were very efficient.
We were planning to start the event at eight and he's like, hey, can we push it to a thirty. I mean it's a big task doing a shotgun at eight here with a crew of four us. Yeah.
Absolutely, you know that's understandable. Yeah, it just works in every way, from from the golf course to the quote unquote amenities around it. It's just all in its proper place and what it should be. And uh and then there's just really right. Yeah. Yeah, well we can get the short the back to back short part fours on the on the back nine I think are stunning.
The first hole is awesome, it's a great hole.
Yeah, the third could you here describe the first hole? So let's let's talk about that one because I still don't really know how to play it, and that's part of the magical.
I think I figured it out finally. I've now played the course like six times. I think I always used to. I used to hit drive or so that there's a it's like three hundred and forty yards and uh, if the green is up on a ridge, it's a double green. It shares the seventeenth green and eighteen plays back down the other ways a par three just to give you an idea of like, you know, length, and it's it's so you you've got this kind of ridge line that
cuts through the center of the fairway. I mean, if you want to hit it onto the ridge, you have to hit like a one hundred and seventy yards one hundred and eighty yards and that leaves you like one hundred and fifty yards shot to an elevated green on the first.
Ault, and it kicks away on all sides, right, And especially when you're looking at it, it's super intimidating because all you see is this crown right. Yes, it appears to reject balls on all sides.
It's got like a big knob.
You know.
McNair used a lot of like Maxwell muffins out there.
He did. Yeah, I know, some of the greens were very Maxwellish.
Yeah.
I was wondering if that was just recency bias and because I had been prime to look for that stuff. But yeah, that's what I'm talking about, is those little quirky contours in the greens that just make them so distinctive. Because most people don't build with that kind of detail. They do a big tier or something large instead of just one small.
I like kind of comparing them to like land mind. Right, It's like these little knobs are just so effective because they anything around them just become you become really worried, you know, if you're putting over them, if you're trying to hit an approach shot, like you all of a sudden have to do things you don't want to do because there's a land mine right there right, you know, And if if you were, like if you were, if you knew there's a land mine in your town, like
you'd have to make concessions and do things differently than
the way you'd want to do them, right. It's kind of like what Mackenzie says is about, like, you know, the bunker should be right where you want to hit it, like right where everybody wants to like, and that's the beauty of just putting a knob right in the center of a green, because that's where every good player wants to hit the ball, you know, Like, yeah, none of them are really aiming at pins, like you're kind of just like, you know, I'm going to aim over here.
You know. It's like it, but but then one so you got that knob in the center of the green. Sorry, got off topic there.
I started to thinking, you got the knob in the center of the green, and then yeah, in the big hollow before the green, and the green sits on the ridge.
So you kind of have to decide, like in the you have to decide whether you want to play up on the ridge, and then there's like almost a secondary ridge before you get down to the depth of the hollow. If you hit driver, you're gonna be in the depth of the hollow, yes, and you're gonna have like this weird forty five yard web shot, like up up a hill to green you can't see with a huge knob in it.
Like, just just to give an idea, that's where I was every time I played the hole. Yeah, every single time I was down, and every time I was like, why am I down here? Why did I play the hole this way? And I don't think I successfully executed that web shot once.
I just I started hitting three iron and it's just it gets me to like a spot where it's one hundred yard.
Shot, do you go out right? Because out right on that hole is eighteen eighteenth whole corridor. It kicks it down a little bit because the landslopes right right to low left.
You got to hit it right because like you can't hit it left there's there's like out of bounds or a hazard running down the left side.
Also, so yeah, I mean Sean Martin's thicket.
Yeah, you've got like eighty yards of space to hit it into.
Yeah, so exactly.
But it's just a cool first hole. I mean, there's so many great holes out there.
Yeah, you could go through hole by hole and talk about their unique characteristics. The bunkering out there is really cool.
There's this, there's these striking contrasts, and again maybe this is a factor of just not having been trained to do things in a conforming or common way, but the bunkering is so odd and cool where you have these little, these clusters of little pot bunkers, right of little circular bunkers contrasted with these big wild kind of fescue I don't know if it's actually fescue, but you know what I mean, like long grass fringed bunkers that that you know,
function as kind of waste areas. In fact, they play everything as waste areas out there. But there's these there's these big little contrasts, and you know, formally shaped bunkers versus naturally or wildly shaped bunkers all over the course, and it just makes it really striking. I've just never really seen people, never seen a course execute bunker shaping and in quite that way.
It was.
It was very distinctive.
You know, the other thing about it is it's it's golf done really well on a smaller scale. Like the land has some good scale like good size scale movement to it, but the features aren't huge. And I mean he's fifty eight hundred yards and I think it it's like a perfect example.
It's just.
The amount of time. It takes so little time to play. I mean, I played, we played a sixsome in the event in sub four hours six and everybody.
Puts you an alternate shot ten later.
Yeah, alternate shot tens in like three point fifteen.
Yeah, right, you know, and.
And the I think some people might raise their pace of play with me, but you know that might be one factor.
Yeah, but nobody wants to be the slow guy in Andy's group right at this point.
But the it's just it just shows that like golf doesn't have to be massive, Like it doesn't have to be mammoth dunes with its ninety for everybody to be able to get around and play it in a quick, timely manner. You know, it doesn't have to be one hundred yard wide fair aways. It it's much more. And I think this is where with Tom Doak, what he's doing with the course, the third course at Sand Valley's
trying to go this direction. But this is an example of it in America, right, Like the golf course is a par seventy just because of pure necessity of marketing, Like the reality is just like par sixty seven.
Yeah, right, because the par fives are four hundred and fifty yards. Oh yeah, you know, a couple of them play pretty long, but but yeah, there aren't holes that really stretch the boundaries of on the high side of their par.
So, you know, like this is this is what he's It is a very sharp contrast from Old Town in that sense. Right.
Yeah. Well, it's it's almost by necessity that the course laterally is on a smaller scale.
Right.
The fairways are narrower, the corridors are narrower, just because it's you know, that's the footprint of the golf course. That's what they cleared out in terms of the trees and now there are houses on the sides of a lot of the holes, and so the footprint is pretty small. And so you know, aside from the first hole that we're describing, you know, it's funny enough we chose the
one hole with like a really ultra wide fairway. But aside from the first hole, the holes are able to do a lot of interesting things other than giving you that classic array of width based options. Right, it's not
a course that really emphasizes lateral strategy that much. Instead, there's these kind of interesting diagonal lines going on, and there are lots of cool things that the hole do holes do aside from the classic illustration of a big wide fairway that you can choose your line down, Yeah, a.
Lot of it's because of the topography and where you're picking whether you want to be high or low. Right, do I want to be up on top of this ridge or do I want to get it down? Push it down? And there's the risk like when you're pushing with driver is like it's not that wide, so you have to really hit a good drive right Like it's it's you don't feel like you can just whale away at it all the time.
There yeah, Yeah, very few holes are a green light just to just to smash it.
And he does it with trees sometimes too, Like the six hole would be a good example of that, where the green half the green sits behind a tree and you know, he's he's you have to play right there, you know, but there's a bunker there, and there's a boundary, there's a road, you know, in order to get your angle into that left pin, and there's just there's a lot of neat stuff.
Yeah, it's it's a golf course that people can learn from, for sure, because it violates a lot of the established norms about what makes good architecture. And it just shows you the many different ways that that simple ideas, manageable ideas at a public golf course can really create a lot of fun.
Yeah, it's just different than what if somebody hired, you know, like nobody would be asking for that golf course right now, and everybody almost should be yeah, right.
Right, Yeah, every every town needs one. Now, I don't know if it works necessarily in every town, but it's it's certainly working there. And yeah, that's the overwhelming feeling you come away with. And this is what I heard from a bunch of other people at the event, is that Why aren't there more courses that do this? It seems so simple, it seems so manageable, and yet Aiken stands as is almost completely unique, at least in my experience of seeing golf courses.
Yeah, yeah, I agree.
All right, So Palmetto, well, I'll just touch on it on it briefly because you didn't play that round played that morning. You've played it before though. Yeah, I mean, you know, Palmetto is fantastic. What more can be said? It's it's also an Aken It's just a hop, skipping and jump away from Aiken Golf Club, and it's obviously
a private course, but a very very relaxed atmosphere. It's one of those places that has a local membership supplemented by a national membership, and there's a really cool, casual golf focus vibe at the club. You know, the head pro was incredibly friendly and talk to our group for a long time before and after the round. Just a really welcoming atmosphere, unpretentious, and then what you've got in the golf course is just one of the best sets
of greens I think I've ever seen. I mean, it's hard to describe how good those greens are, how good the surrounds are, how different they are from each other. You know, greens I find to be very hard to describe in words and very hard to photograph. You just kind of have to walk them and see them. But the best thing that can be said about those greens a Palmetto is that when there are no bunkers around them.
I was going to say even when there are, but maybe even especially when there aren't any bunkers around the green, it's completely fascinating and so challenging. The contours are are just really kind of expertly shaped and placed, and so it's a tremendous amount of fun to play around those greens. And each green ends up speaking to you right back to the tee, where the difficulties that you'll encounter once you get around the green will factor in when you're
hitting your t shot on additional rounds there. Every green does that every green is different from the last, and they and they Palmetto does not. That design does not use bunkers to create the primary interest in in a hole or in a green site. It's just contour and short grass and and they're so so cool.
Yeah, the you know what you hit on when with the greens talking back, like if you turn around and look, it's it's Eric Lang did a video there with Doddie Pepper and David norm Oil.
Yeah.
I saw this and David norm Oil is like one of the most brilliant people on golf and it was funny because he was walking the golf course backwards and ever since I saw him and I had played it and when I when I when I saw what he was doing, I thought to myself, Man, I really wish I could do that, because it it's such a neat
golf course and the greens are totally it. Like I mean, I'll never forget like playing the second hole and getting to that green house like holy cow, like I like, that's when I was like, my god, I am in for something today.
That's a very challenging green that one that one kicks away on all sides just about.
Yeah, and it runs away like you can't even see it because it's elevated up and it runs. I mean it. That place is I think the I think the the big thing there is the the atmosphere adds so much to it because it's this very very nice place with with lots of history, and I think this might be something with just the town of Acn what make it's such an inviting place. And you know, you go to so many clubs and they're so the opposite way of
this and akens the same way as it. And maybe that's what makes the town and why it's got the best golf of maybe any town in America, you know, in terms of public and private, is that it's just they're they're inviting places like there are places that you want to spend time at, you know, and you're comfortable spending time at.
And and the lack of pretension I think allows everybody to focus on the golf. There's there's not this there's not this desire at these places to to show off or to uh, you know, present themselves as something other than a really great golf course. And so you don't see the huge clubhouse. Now that there's nothing wrong with a huge clubhouse, but that that's not the choice that
Paul Metal Golf Club has made, you know. It's it's a it's a simple, down to earth place where the focus is just entirely on great golf and uh and so yeah, it's it's just the course doesn't doesn't really show off either, Right, it's not. It's not hitting you over the head with its greatness. It's just got a lot of subtle features, especially in the ground tour, ground contour, ground tour. I've coined a new term. That's gonna that should be the replacement for the Friday Egg. Actually that
should be the new name of the company. But uh, it's yeah, from the from the ground tour comes all comes, all the interest, and and it's not what people notice first. It's not what shows up well in photos or you know, things that scream. They're not features that scream at the top of their lungs that they're great. But once you start playing on them, once you see what the ball does on them, you can see the fun that you
can have at the place. And that's that's Palmetto. It's just one great green after another, one great set of contours after another.
Yeah, Yeah, it's it's cool. I mean, the you can definitely see. I don't know if that range was always there. I have a suspicion that it wasn't.
Maybe maybe the holes, yeah played a little differently. Yeah, I suspected the same thing. Yeah, because the sixteenth hole the par three is the only one that's you know, a little bit odd.
Yeah, yeah, And but fifteen, that par four is amazing.
Really cool. A bunkerless green. Yeah, very short part four strange looking fair away from the tee. That just kind of is is, you know, you hit your t shot right into the crest of this hill and then it's a wedge into this green and if you're if you're too close to it and you're trying to hit a lob wedge pitch of off of short grass to you know, well, basically you're just going to end up forty feet past the pin if you don't get it exactly right. Great
golf hole. Yeah, And seventeen and eighteen are cool too. They're they're kind of wedged into this fairly small piece of land. But you know, eighteen has kind of a similar effect where it's a short part four, you have a you have a short second shot, but there's a lot of challenge in the way that the green behaves.
You don't want to head driver in this.
For sure.
There are these what did you think of those mounds, like those big mounds around the green around so many of them.
Yeah, it was very uk Ish, yes, yeah, well, yeah, it was they were. So it's one of those courses where you don't have a lot of apparent earth moving in the fairways at all. Would you would you say the same, Oh, yeah, that the fairways are super naturalistic in the way that they sit on the land. Now, I don't know what was actually moved or what wasn't, but I suspect that basically nothing was. Then around the greens you have some pretty obviously man made features, you do.
You have you have mounds around the green, but you know, somehow or another, they never appear to be uninteresting or banal because they're not uniform, right, It's not like there are these little dollops that that said, at even spacing around the green, there are uneven shapes that look man made but that are are really ir regular and unpredictable, and you know, create a lot of that fun that I'm talking about when you get around the greens, because
you know, depending on where you are, you could have completely different shots. You know, if your balls, like you have two balls that are six feet away from each other, it could be a completely different shot because of the intensive micro conjuring around the greens.
So Palmetto's open augusta week to everybody. Yeah, it's it's like four hundred bucks.
Would you would you were there? Would were you there?
Would you pay four hundred bucks to play Palmetto?
That's a hard question to ask. I think four hundred dollars means something different to me than it means to you know, everybody. Would I pay four hundred dollars to play Palmetto?
Say four hundred dollars? You would eat? You'd pay four hundred dollars to go play Kio Island or Whistling Streets or you know.
That's what I was thinking, if I'm going to pay that much money to play spy Glass Hill, for instance. So that's exactly what spy Glass Hill is.
And this is the way you have to I think you have to textualize the four hundred dollars right. Compare it to other four hundred dollars courses.
Does it stack up absolutely against the courses that we just mentioned, I mean, for sure, I uh, you know, I think it's a really wonderful golf experience. You know.
I like spy Glass Hill a lot. I lived next to spy Glass Hill for five years, and that's a that's a spectacular golf course, and I think that it's you know, uh, maybe doesn't doesn't do everything that I want a golf course to do necessarily, but I can see why people would see see it as worth it and would walk away from that golf course being really impressed.
But yeah, if you're going to pay four hundred dollars to play that course, you'll get a completely different kind of experience at Palmetto, but one that I think is just as valuable and uh and and memorable. So yeah, I mean, what it's it's hard to say what what the value of a dollar is to everybody, but yeah, if they're going to open up their course and give people an opportunity to play at once and see it for that amount of money, I think it's certainly worth it.
Yeah, I agree, that's kind of the way I've equated it. And especially with what other courses charge August a week, it's like, you know, paying it's.
Got to be a pretty decent deal. Yeah, compared to what's.
Some places they're paying more at Stage Valley, I think, and I think a gust of country clubs in that four hundred dollars range, and I mean a can charge is one hundred Bucks. That's the best deal by far around during a gust a week.
So yeah, it's kind of like when they're there's a US open at Pebble Beach and they do this even a little bit during pro am week. But Pacific Grove doubles their green fee for out of town specific Grove is charging right, absolutely, there's absolutely nothing wrong with it. I think it's a smart move. But yeah, Pacific Grove starts charging one hundred and twenty one hundred and thirty dollars because they know that a lot of people who are coming to town have some money, they have some
disposable income. They're out to spend a little bit of money and have themselves a fun vacation. And that's certainly a Master's week, you know, when that population of people descends on Georgia and is out there to see the Masters. I think that four hundred dollars probably fits very well into plans that people have financially for that particular weekend, don't you think?
Yeah? Yeah, I definitely agree.
Yeah yeah. So so yeah, what a what a great trip that was? That was a really really good one.
That it was a good one. It's uh, in all the ones to we missed. Still, you know that's the trouble.
There are a ton more North Carolina is uh. North Carolina, South Carolina.
Are unbelievable golf states.
Amazing golf states. Yeah, so we we have any We talked about the lot of the classic courses. Just think of the array of modern courses that are in those states as well, the different experiences that you could have public and private. Yeah, it's it's a mecca.
Yeah, so uh, we'll talk soon. Excited you're going up to Bandon Dunes. I'm excited to hear about the Sheep Ranch.
Yeah. Yeah, that should be an interesting trip. I don't know what the weather is going to kind of be a crapshoot and we'll see if the drone wants to behave I I don't know if it's going to get there, but yeah, I'm going to see Banda. I'm going to be there for a couple of days, only playing a couple of rounds of golf, but definitely going to see Sheep Ranch and a lot of the other things I'm going to be doing is just kind of walking around
the resort. Because when I visited Bandon last year with my dad, we played thirty six holes basically every day, and it was a really great experience, unforgettable. I'd highly recommend that everybody do it. But I found when I was playing those courses that all I really wanted to do was just go out and take a hike around them, just go and look at them, kind of wander freely around the paths along the golf courses and just look at them, because when you play them, it seems like
it goes by so quickly. So that's a good amount of what I'm going to be doing. I'm just going to be walking around the property like I'm on a vision quest or something. It should be so it should be pretty fun and we'll probably get some decent photos stories out of it. We'll see what happens.
Awesome, awesome. We'll talk to you soon. M