Russ Myers

Southern Hills Country Club down in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Russ has had a great career in the superintendent industry, working at Augusta National Ocean Reef down in Key Largo LACC, as well as two stints at Southern Hills, so he's got a lot of great stories from the masters to the PGA at Southern Hills and then also restoring both LACC and Southern Hills. Before we get to Russ, I'm excited to announce a new Print of the Week program on the Friday Egg. Each week we'll be selling some of

my original photography of golf courses. Each month, print sales will benefit a different charity, so check out the pro shop on the Friday Egg today for the very first print of the week, which features a shot of Sand Valley's second hole. Twenty percent of these proceeds will go to the Daniel Murphy Scholarship Fund, an organization that gives high school scholarships and educational support to kids who need it. Now onto Russ Myers. I miss the 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 fried egg Friday egg, the dreaded Frida egg Frida egg Frida egg egg Frida egg bride egg lie, I'm about ready to run off of the course. What's what's your favorite fruit?

pump with a tank of gas. And one summer, the club champ at the time we were sitting in the clubhouse having a beer and he said, how come you don't go to Cobleskille? And I said, why the hell would I want to go to Cobleskill. He said, because they got a career for They got a degree for what you do? I said, what do I do? He said, golf course maintenance. I had no idea it existed, and so I explored it and got into it, and it kind of picked up from there.

So it was things like that that got me introduced to the game of golf and get me going.

That was a great experience. A lot a lot of them over the years, and certainly the seven PGA here was was special for me.

they've all evolved, right. I think when I was first doing this and going to US opens and walker cups and working the masters, it was an experience like no other. And evolution has progressed to where they're trying to drive as much dollar out of these things as they can anymore, and it's not quite the personal relationships it used to be. When I was coming up and showed up to work and open or a US Amateur or Women's open Tim Morgan, we'd go around each hole and whether it was Tim

or Mike or even Tom Meeks back then. You name it. You know, you're putting to holes and they're talking about it, and there's a lot of inner relationship with that drive to never make a mistake and try to perfect the wheel and maybe to some degree overcome what technology is doing to them and getting courses ready. Everything has become more data driven. You know, how far are they hitting it

and and how fast can the greens really be? And and to some agree, do we really trust the numbers we're getting And if we get a whole location out of out of comfort zone, what was that data and how did it compare? You almost have to be ready to defend everything you do. So I think in general the organizations have tried to own their own information, separate a hair from from the days of past where they relied a lot on the local knowledge of the superintendents.

It doesn't mean they don't rely on it, but but deep down they know they're the ones going to get blamed on TV. So they now bring their own, you know, local regional USGA agronomists to run a stimpmeter because they need to know that it's their people. You know, those types of things. I think the way they've evolved has been interesting and when so when I try to compare and contrast that now, I won't speak for the RNA. I wouldn't say I had a close enough working relationship

with them. But but the PGA, with Carrie Haig basically being the lone face of that, I think he knows what level of risk he's willing to take there and tends to tends to do a pretty good job of finding that balance. That makes that a little less necessary and thus keeps guys like myself who want to be a part of the course set up, want to be a part of helping make the right decisions, you know, to ensure the best outcomes. It allows us to be more engaged. I don't know if that clearly answers it.

I think I think the USGA has advanced beyond that stage a little farther than they were back in the

late nineties. I think that relationship certainly, you know, whether that was working with Paul Atchaw Congressional or John Zimmer's at Okahat, those relationships were always there, and then to some degree posts two thousand and four shinnikok that just were never comfortable doing that fully Again, it doesn't mean they don't seek the input, doesn't mean they don't take the advice, but it kind of all of a sudden, Now we're measuring percent slopes all the time on whole locations,

and we're checking firmness meteors, and we're redefining things to make sure the data fits instead of the course set up.

And I can still recall Johnny Miller saying best conditioned open he's ever seen the start of the play that week on Thursday, And I recall Saturday sitting in the break room at the maintenance area and watching the broadcast and David Fay was in the booth at the time, and the second to last group of the day on a Saturday that was cool and breezy and windy. The

put on seventh green right there were Danna seventh. The put on seven got away from him and went off the green, and I recall hearing David Fay say on there that green was inadvertently rolled that morning, and I said to the guy sitting next to me, I said, that's not going to go well. And he said, what do you mean, And I said, he basically just stated that the golf course maintenance staff made a mistake and

inadvertently rolled the green, which couldn't have been true. And by the way, it was fine for every golfer all day long until the second last one of the day. Now what happened beyond that, I don't really know all the certainties of it. There was accusations of night rolling, which I could probably say ninety nine point five percent of the chance that didn't happen, because I know people who were supposedly involved in that, and they were sitting next to me at a pool drinking a beer that night.

But regardless, the fact of the matter is that happened on Saturday night, and the statement was made before anything happened on Sunday, and there was plenty of opportunity to fix that issue, but for whatever reason, it wasn't done. And I remember telling my friend on Saturday night that I wanted to catch an early flight out on Sunday.

And this may come across his cowardice, but he said, well is I was a young guy at the time, and I said, because I'd like to host one of these one of these days, and if this goes bad tomorrow, which I think it's gonna because people were pretty fired up, I don't want to be standing in the backdrop while

this is going on. And unfortunately there just I mean, there was a lot of people who could have solved that issue, in my opinion looking back, and I've talked about this with people who worked there at the time, and I think they all agree nobody's I mean, it's just what happens when the fingers started getting pointed, and now it's like, well, what do you want to do? I mean my understanding is Mark Michad went and said, hey, forget it, it's over, what do you want to do?

And they just didn't come to the right conclusion. The next day.

still a lot of collaboration. I just think that there's so much double checking over top of that now, and there's a lot of voices, and that there was a lot of voices in the decision. There seems to be a shift here going on recently to try to, you know, have a very clear vision moving forward, So maybe that's changing.

I think there was a stretch here where there was a lot of voices in putting things, and Mike would take all that information and try to combine it into the best outcome, and I think in generally did the problem I've seen. I listened to a radio show the week of the open and this guy was talking about how the USGA has just blown it for so many years, and I was like, what exactly have they blown? I mean, you know, depending on how you want to shape your argument,

you can. But they went to some news sites that they probably needed to err a little bit on the conservative side, not knowing exactly how they're going to play. They maybe got a bad whole location on Saturday at Shinnecock. Maybe they could have had a little more water whatever. But there's still great championships and you're gonna get a bad whole location. We had bad ones back in the days of Payne Stewart. When it opens, seems like we

do okay with it, I don't. I think when you look at their intent and what Mike tried to do over the last fifteen years, people were gonna people were gonna be pretty positive about it in hindsight, you know. I think as far as course set up stuff, I think, yeah, I.

I can't I can't. I don't think it was brokedale it was, I can't remember, but it was where brooks Kopka was yelling at a rules Officially it's like my boss moving, I'm not hidn't it, like you know, and like if that was a USGA E then would just be crucified.

didn't happen, you know. But the mind games that just eat these guys alive sometimes, you know, I mean, they believe stuff's happening that isn't happening. And I think a lot of that happens with especially you know, the open it's let's come in guarded right out the gun, and you know, unless you're filling, you are obviously trying to take a positive approach or something, you know what I mean.

Watching it over the years has been has been a funny deal for me, just because being there inside of ropes and to some degree hereing some of that over time. You keep going, Man, it's amazing in this God these guys think we rebuild the twelfth Green every year at Augusta over the years, you know, and it just wasn't happening. And marsh Benson used to say, you know, you're a young guy and you'd look at Superintendent and say, we're

going to speed up the greens for Sunday. And he'd march had this way where he would talk and say, the nerves will take care of that. We don't need to be doing that, you know. I mean, there's so much about the the mind of the golfer, as you know from to watch me play.

him student assistant and I did. And as I was finishing my last year at college, I didn't have any eligibility left. He wanted me to be. He wanted me to go do a graduate assistance job with Raleigh Massamino, who was then coaching at Cleveland State University. And there was another place as well that he had recommended. And so I sent off applications to do graduate assistant work and coaching, and I didn't know if I was going to get them, And in the meantime I fired off

four resumes. I think I fired one to Augusta, one to I think the Shinnecock one to I think Oak Hill because it was somewhat local for us, and I don't know where the the other might have been Pebble or Pine Valley or something right, I don't know, but I fired off four resumes and I got a call back pretty good spot. Yeah yeah, just in case, and you know, looking for I always knew in my mind I could go back to Watkins Gun Golf Club work

the summer if I needed to. And and I had done my internship for a guy named a Jim Hango who had just left Binghamton Country Club to build a course designed by h. Mark Munchum did the most of it, but Corners Stovn Munchem at the time and in Appalachia, New York. And I didn't know this, but this guy knew I had sent those and he reached out to Marsha Augusta and just said, hey, I know you're interview asked this guy to come for an interview. You really

should look at him. And so I went down for the interview, and to this day, it's probably still the hardest interview I've ever had, as far as the stuff I had to do and fill out and stuff and questions like what's your favorite food on there kind of would throw me. I'm like, And I went back and fortunately they offered me a job. I went from making a I think I was making six fifty an hour at Watkins Gun Golf Club and they paid me six and a quarter to come to Augusta.

retain them. So we put a lot more effort. Our guys typically spend the first day on the job with an assistant or with me in a cart, and about half the second day before they even step into you know, jumping on a piece of aquiler. Certainly need to be trained on it all, but it's a lot hard. It's a lot more and a lot more detail into it now,

just for no other reason. Is you you know, the obvious reason, you want to know what they're doing and want to be safe, but for more than that, you need them to know that you care and you want them comfortable, comfortable, so they're not leaving. It's a big shift. I mean, I've been in part of clubs where the labor market was a different time and and somebody didn't want to stay late to help with the practice, And

I watch guys terminate employment. Now you're just you know, you got to navigate all the time, get over higher positions. You gotta because you just it's it's a self stretch, right or with staff.

that come there. They you know, they have a few parties they call them or that that aren't overwhelmingly difficult as far as you know, big crowds or anything like that, but you're you're really trying to some agree to not be seen there as you would any great club. But it's it's pretty pretty standard. Then you you know, you go through the tournament, you start start prep a few months in advance. I know they've narrowed some of that, to my knowledge, narrowed some of it down the time windows.

But you know, whether that's scoreboards starting to go up or starting to go through bunkers. Back in when I was there, I mean a lot of time spent getting the bunker depths exactly perfect and firm, and then there was a light coding on back I probably changed some since I was there. So there's there's kind of a pocket of people who keep working through things and then

they you know, one of the cool events there. The Jamboree is a few weeks before the week before I think the Masters, and the course is always phenomenal for that. And back in my time, we would you know, record scores and turn them into the scoreboards and members names and their guests would be up on or I think it's member members, so their members would be up on

the scoreboard. And it was cool stuff like that. And then you know, you go through the Masters, and then we try to get it back to playable as quick as you can for the month after it. And we were fortunate enough to have I assume they still do it an employee appreciation week where we could bring a guest or and you know, marshals. Different people had opportunities

to play that week and then it shuts down. Well, we would cover the bunkers in black plastic to keep them clean a debris, so they'd go through and cover

them all for all summer. Some back then there was still some native soil greens and maybe tent those greens, and everything at that point shifted to growing a strong bermuda base to get ready for the next overseating and keeping the greens alive throughout the summer, and it was, you know, a lot of sodding For a while, I spent a lot of time on the end of a hose and managing the greens management group for Brad and marsh.

for whatever reason, I liked to learn how to. They had a really good guy who changed cups there at the time, name of John Anderson, and he taught me how to change cups and I enjoyed doing it, and in the evenings so we didn't have to mess with in the morning, I would go change the cups on the pudding Green and I think it was the Wednesday night I'm up there changing cups late and they're the only two people putting on the green are Tom Kite

and Ben Crenshaw. And it occurred to me, oh man, they just came back from mister Pennock's funeral and they're in suits. And I kind of walk up and said, hey, mister Crenshaw, I'm sorry to hear about miss panic. And he's over the pot. And never met him before my life, never spoke to him. Probably wouldn't have been surprised if he looked at me and said, you really think I want to hear about this right now? You know what

I mean? You know, he pops right up and just as everybody who has ever met him, know as probably nicest man in the planet, that is so nice to you to say, I really appreciate that, shakes my hand and you know, he's sure a great man. And this is after he's probably been doing that all day long, right and and it just it sat with me, and obviously anybody who's met him has similar experiences. And to this day I met him years later at La Country

Club and he's funny how he always introduced himself. You know, hey, Ben Crenshaw, and you're like, no kidding, you know, like Tiger you know, Tiger gives you his name. Yeah, really, thanks for letting me know. But it was pretty cool. And and then you know, you go on to the

next year and it's similar deal. You're Greg Norman sitting there with a six stroke lead and on the putting green and and I'm changing the cop I'm on the last one, and it's the greens are really dry and firm, and they're hard to cut the cups, and I'm taking a break over the cup cutter, and he's walking towards me. I can see him out of the corner of my eye, and I'm trying to wait till he either goes by or does something else so he doesn't watch me struggle

to cut this cup. And he knows I'm waiting, so he stands there and he says, no, no, I want to I want to see you cut this thing. And I said, oh, therese would be no problem, and everything I had in my power to get it kicked down, and about two kicks pulled it out and said yeah, I told you they're easy, and he just laughed and walked away, and you know, I wished him luck, and and that one was interesting in a lot of ways.

I mean, like anybody. I happened to be standing left to ten Green when he came off ten that day Sunday, and you know that I kind of image of him walking by and the stare in his eyes. I mean I was right there and saw that, and and then followed that group and stood up behind eleven and the galleries, and the just awful feeling that was around that facility that day was unbelievable. I mean, you're just like, oh my gosh, this this is really bad and it's compelling moments.

And then and then to turn it right back around. And I think it was ninety six Tigers first, I think it might have been an amateur. It was it ninety five.

It's it's weird to me that, you know, that's early in my career right there, ninety five, and then thirteen years later or whatever, he's winning a PGA here at seven and and I'm fortunate enough to be here. And anyway,

I mean, just cool things. And you go on to the next year and and there's Tiger and that image of him pumping his fist up on eighteen and I'm standing down in the lower range waiting to open up an irrigation valve so we can start watering behind play because we'd always isolate down the system and so you didn't have a geyser or something. And I watched a lot of you know, following that stuff over the years. Just really cool.

of bloom. I mean, some years are going to get all of them, some years are going to get there early, and some years you get the late. Some of you might not get any. But but no, I don't I don't think they were ever iced while I was there.

comes with a ton of credibility out there. And so when Fred was captain and the President's Cup at Mirrorfield, Paul b Letch I was a superintendent a Mirrorfield and I was a big friend of Paul's and would go out and help him for years at Mirrorfield. So I came out for the President's Cup. So it had been wet and raining, and it was sticky, and it was

early in the week. So Freddy really wanted those greens fast and just as fast as you could get him because he thought the international guys were going to hit it above the hole and and they'd be, you know, in trouble, and American guys weren't going to hit above

the hole. So during the prize he would I'd see him and he'd keep asking me, and and the greens were plenty fast enough, right, he was just needle and he was shooting for more and he knew I would go say something to Paul, so he was needling me. And uh So there was a couple of members of the club around that were friends of his, and I took him on the cart and we were watching the practice round and fred he's you know, as you if you can tell, he is kind of what you see, right,

I mean, he's that guy. He's clowning around and needling people all the time. And he ultimately ropes me into coming out onto the green on the seventh green. You know, I'm like, no, I'm good, I'm fine, I'll stay here. He's not, come on, you're scared. I'm not scared, but let's go. So he walks me up to seven green and introduces me to Matt Kocher and introduced me to a couple other guys, Joey Lkava and Davis Lover out there, and he's needling me all along the way. I can

tell Rddy's behind me. And so he introduced me to Tiger and every one of them. He's asking are these greens fast? And he's behind me, you know, given to tell him no, tell him no. So he says, Tiger me Russ Myers. I said, hey, Tiger, nice to meet chest and actually I was a superintendent oh seven Southern Hills. Freddy says, Tiger, these greens fast. He said, yeah, they're pretty quick. He says, how come they're so soft? I said, well, tigers been like ninety eight percent humidity and you know

it rained the last couple of days. I said, they'll get there. He goes, don't they have supper? I go, well, it's a little bit of a myth there, Tiger. I said, it doesn't really dry out the green. It gets rid of the excess moisture, and you know it's not going to do it that quick, doesn't my house? I said, hey, Tiger, you can teach me how to run that putter. Right there,

But don't teach me how to grow grass. All right now, If Fred he's loving it, he's lost his mind, you know, he's yelling, and the putters of him here and Tiger loved it. You know. They were all needle and they just they don't want to meet some guy and I go through that. So they were having a ball with the needle and the tiger starts giving it back to me about eating lead tape on his putter because the greens are too slow. So that's good stuff.

one issue that I can recall outside the ropes. I had great staff here that I had inherited superintendent before me, very successful John Zelenski now at Charlotte Country Club and left me with great guys, and I never had to mess with any of that stuff. And it allowed me to just stay focused in here with them. And so I think, you know, I watched while we got two cuts in today, let's try to get three tomorrow. And that just I'm not saying it was wrong at other

places just for us. It didn't make sense. I wanted to I wanted to present the place well. I didn't want it to get worse. As the week went on, we backed off. We I don't know when the last time there was just a single cut done the day of a tournament and no nighttime cut. I mean, we did that that week just because it was just going

to continue to wear collars for no added benefit. We were going to achieve the speeds we wanted in the firmnace we could get considering the heat that week, and we ended up with a great you know, Tiger went in and a great event, and you know, some of the probably most challenging, the weirdest thing about that week was nobody practiced. I mean, you know, these guys they'll sit on the tee all day long and just beat away. It was so hot they didn't want to be out there.

rebuild the greens to put them in. And when I was here for my first stint, I vowed to myself I wouldn't ever rebuild the green without putting them in, because I just think it has such a strong long term value to extending the life of greens and overall ability to manipulate the environment. And so we put in the infrastructure for it on both courses. And this is the best system put in by far, design wise and fully operational on all the bent grass surfaces on the course.

And when I took yesterday here near fourth of July week, and I took yesterday to go up to the lake with my family, it was probably ninety six degrees outside and pretty hot, and felt pretty darn comfortable. We weren't going to deal with any stress now. This will be the first summer of it all in and we got to see where we're at. But it sure was nice to know that it was about seventy five degrees and the soil times down there.

that was about the extent of my architectural knowledge. And you know, some would argue it's probably not much beyond that now, including Jim Wagner, But I don't know that. When I looked at the property before I ever looked at it like that. When I looked at a tea box and I looked where to put tea markers, I was more worried about divot pattern or where then I

probably was how the hole played. When we looked at planning a landscaping at the entrance of the club, I probably thought of it more about that individual box than how it related to the entire property and the theme of the property and what The time I spent with Gil and Jim and Jeff Shackelford out at LA just that constant reminders, and there was a lot of stuff. I didn't know what they wanted to look like, the native grasses. I didn't know quite what the look was.

I didn't know how dry they wanted the roughs. And we would keep communicating after the work was done with photos and Jeff would come out a lot and say, is this the look?

a US amateur. There wasn't a lot of time to really digest that stuff anyway, but I wouldn't have known what to look for, and I wasn't as tuned into how whole location relation to team markers and things like that, and all that came from five, you know, five six years in LA working with those guys, and it really rejuvenated me. I mean I from the start didn't know if I was ever gonna want to be a superintendent. I've managed to like it and at times contemplated doing

other things. And fortunately for me, every time I've contemplated something else, there's been a new interesting challenge that's kind of said, no, I think I want to try that. And you know, leaving here was hard. I had a It's a great club, great members, great managers, I liked who I worked for. Part of leaving was a little

bit of fear. I mean I was pretty young then, and I'm sitting there going, what is this is not an easy place to go through summers on that bent grass And you start looking at your long term and say, is there a likelihood you're going to go twenty twenty five years here and retire when you're gonna have some problems. I mean, I don't care how good you are. This is a tough place to go grass in the summer,

on bed grass. Some of it was geez, maybe I should look at this, but some of it was the opportunity to move away from the style of Southern Hills, in the style of Augusta National that's cleaned wall the wall, and experience this more rugged, you loose feel to things. And so when the opportunity came, it just felt like it made sense. I tell everybody I left Southern Hills for La Country Club because I was leaving for a

better job. But at the time I left LA Country Club to come back here, I felt the same way. I felt like Southern Hills was a better job at that point. And part of it was the opportunities I saw that could be there for that property. It didn't know if we would do a your renovation work or anything like that at restoration, but but I had learned so much that I was like, geez, that stuff would really that type of thinking would really fit there and would advance that place.

of grass? You know, as every bunker looked perfect, and as you as you evolved, you started look at it differently, and LA was like perfect imperfection, right, how could you make it look as unperfect as possible and still maintain exceptional playability? And that became fun. I mean when I say we watered, we watered the roughs at La Country Club the last couple of years. I was there like

one day a month. I mean that was it. I mean we pounded him for like an hour ahead for one day, soaked him and then just let him dry down. And you know, that type of stuff was fun and it took some time. I mean, I've nobody pays attention to what I say most time anyway, so they won't

remember it. But when we opened up the North Course, people were raving about it, right, And it was hard to take account molement from my perspective because the conditioning wasn't good, But the architecture carried the day for like two years there to where we finally caught up with the conditioning. And to some degree, that's what's happening here. There's a lot of smoke and mirrors and a lot of imperfections right now that are masked by bermuda that's

actively growing. But we got a lot of little things to tie together, whether it's you know, edges of greens that still need to be top dressed smooth, or a ditchline that's settled and you know, goofy stuff like that. But I don't I don't panic about that stuff. Like I might have ten years ago, because it has no bearing on what's great about the playability. I just want to keep the playability as good as I can.

was open. A huge part of that restoration out there was course set up, a huge part, and it's the hardest thing to train other staff members on the mentality of how each hole can set up differently and how if you do one thing here, you probably want to do this somewhere else to counter it, and something as simple as a bad tea marker setup can mess that up.

And it became very very hard to get away from it for me, because every day there's something going on, right, the ladies are doing this, or the seniors are playing here, and you had these setup issues, and I needed to make sure at least put my eyes on it to make sure the setup was right. Otherwise it was like, well, that's weird. Why are you playing that front right pen on the third green so long? You know what I mean? And so it was hard to get away from the place.

And the second thing that added to that dynamic was we had both my wife and I, Lindsay had both our kids while we were out there, and I would walk out of that house every morning to two closed doors and get lucky if I get home at six thirty quarter or seven, maybe play with them for an hour before they went to bed. That got to be where it really wore on me. I didn't want to live my life that way with my kids, and I had to figure out how to solve that, and it

was getting hard to do. I would have figured it out but it ended up luckily I didn't have to.

but even it wasn't bad. We had a great contractor to ack of a job, in Augustine Sanchez with Heritage Lanks and obviously Foremost Irrigation and with you know, Seamus Malee was on site every day, so you know, I would I need. I say it a lot that I'm going to the lake. I tell people that all the time, and I go sometimes. I'll probably go as much as I tell people I do, but but in some ways I got it. If I don't enjoy the time with my kids, I'm gonna hate being here and I won't last.

So you gotta let me do it. At some point, my kids probably won't want me around.

with the Southern Hills. I was called by Nick Si Dorcas and asked me to prepare some thoughts for the executive committee on the various architects in the industry. And I said, okay, I'll do you know, I'll compile what I can, what I know, and I had a conference call with the Executive committee to kind of go over some thoughts. Didn't, you know, lead him any one way. I just told them how each stylistically either you know

what you know of them. And they asked at the time if I would have a conversation with Gil to see if he would have any interest in guiding them through a short game construction and driving range because they were going to build this teaching center or golf performance center.

I said, I'd do it. I did. Gil said he would do that, probably somewhat reluctantly at the time, obviously extremely busy, and to come out and build a short game facility in the corner of a property on a flat piece of land, and you know, oversea driver range was probably not something he was totally excited about, but he also knew there was possibilities in the future. And you know, our relationship certainly probably didn't help or didn't.

he is a piece of work. I've lost my train of thought on where we were we.

thoughts of it. They thought that was great. Gil found time to do it and and it resulted in the you know, the master plan or whatever you want to call it, of the of the of the work, with no you know, no recommendation of anything. It just said, these are the things I think you should look at and do. This board, I've said it before, and it's wisdom.

It was in the middle of some facility planning stuff as far as tennis what we called the cartbarn being rebuilt and the lockeromen's locker room, not to mention the teaching center, and they they didn't want to affect the membership more than once. So they piled this whole thing into one project, which turned out, you know, ultimately to be this. You know, our end of it ended up being ten and a half million for everything and that you know that includes million and a half in hydronics,

and so, you know, defend Gil a little it. Sometimes they get thrown in that the numbers of their projects are getting inflated. Certainly wasn't here. I mean we were golf course alone. We were probably under nine million for that work.

understood where we were going with it. There were times I was I got a little concerned that because they trusted so much of it to the board and to Nick and Carrie and myself, and obviously probably that trust came because of Gil and Jim, but but they trusted so much of it was that they didn't They weren't standing there every step of the way. And it was one of these deals where I felt like we were going to do the big reveal and they were like going to be like, well, why did we do that?

But it wasn't. And so I had analyzed so much of two and the split fairway there and ten and adding the creek, and that I wasn't surprised by those things. Seventeen. I knew they were going to I felt very confident those were going to be great. Probably the one that I didn't know coming into it. And I've never been quite able to figure that hole out that I think is so great now it's probably gonna end up being eleven. I just think that it was kind of an to me.

It was always kind of a nondescript hole there in the corner with bunkers wrapped around it. You just had to hit the green and boom and now you got to hit it. But there's a lot of dynamics there with with the creek down to the left being put back in. I just don't think that's that. I think that it reminds me a lot of the British holes there in the Scottish holes and the postage stamps.

unbelievable the land and everything. But the par three's are really fascinating, I think because they're all in corners of the property and they all they're all connector holes kind of that connect you to the next great part four, from one great part four to the next great hole. Like you know, eleven's a perfect example. It's on this terrain that's it's too severe to put a part four or par five with the way that bank comes down, but then you know it's connect It connects ten and twelve,

like two of the most iconic holes on the golf course. Now, yeah, and it's just it's such a fascinating and eleven's just it's a really cool hole, and you know it's you've got that prevailing wind and that ridge line almost like

blocks the wind. And I think you're going to see so many guys just miss it right there because now with that left side where it shaved down and runs right into the creek, it's like you're so scared of that you can't and you think this wind's going to push it over there, and it just doesn't do anything to it.

Twelve tea was just kind of down there, flat and didn't really you know, it stood up in the middle of this open area. It just was weird. And now it gives that area of body and character. But I didn't really mention it or think about it at the time. But the thing that came out better and it's not as you know, I had high expectations for the golf course stuff, but that area up around the first tee came out. Every bit is good and better than I

could ever picture of it. The vista's up there now, or it's always been incredible off of one tee, but you just don't feel enclosed in up there anymore. And it feels like there's an atmosphere and a vibe and in an area to hang out and communicate with the small putting green in there, and that that whole thing's changed a.

so much of that rejuvenation for me. I mean it's I mean, it's just that relationship ship really got me fired up. I look at this property now and I don't do that as much now that it's done right, I don't see anything that that I'm itching to modify and and I know La North. We finished, and we spent the next four years doing more stuff. It was all under Gill's you know, advice, but it was just a function of how much was done in the original main body of the project and what was continued later.

only real dynamic difference. The time that Jim may have spent on the excavator at La Country Club was probably replaced by Seamus doing it here and taking that lead role as far as the actual day to day operation. And then when Jim would come in and out, he would you know, fill in and I fill in. He would take charge for a few days and then hand it back to Seamus, and it was kind of more that way. Yeah, fill in is not really something Jim does.

dried up a lot. There just wasn't there. So, you know, we had Scott Boordener, a friend of mine in Chicago golf club, had mentioned to me a couple of years ago that he was having good luck with high school kids, and we were left with no choice but to try some things like that and reached out to the local schools and guidance counselors and just got inundated with unbelievable

amount of requests for employment. And it's been great. I mean, we overhire them just because we kind of take the approach of we're going to try to get you to go Tuesday through Sunday six thirty in the morning until whatever, eleven o'clock eleven thirty. If they want to work a bunch more, great, But you can still be a high school kid. You can have your summers, you can do whatever. We'll over hire the number of them, so if they want a day off here or there, we're not going

to fight with them about it. You know, hey, go for it. We got plenty of guys, and financially that's made sense. And they've been much better than most of the planet thinks they would be. You know, I mean, they get they get off my lawn. World of these these new kids these days, they don't know how to work, hasn't shown to be true to me. They've been very reliable. They've been at high energy. They bring a pulse to this operation that we were probably missing. So that's been

a big part. Now it leaves us a little exposed right when they go back to school for you know, a month, and right before they come for a month, and we've got to still try to figure that out. It's tough. I mean, you drop twenty eight thirty guys and you're still growing and you got to mow for about a month. That can be tough. Until the grass

shuts down enough that we're not pushed. Probably out of that thirty, probably fifteen percent of them our college kids put some of them are one that worked for us in high school that are coming back and doing it in college.

lot of them high school kids. So they're somewhere in the neighborhood of two hundred and sixty local high school kids coming out here four days a week whatever they are right, and they're being exposed to leaders in the community and working with them and walking with them, and they're embracing that that stuff is what clubs were about when you started caddying and when you know people were coming up my age. It's a pretty cool thing. If we can sustain and if it builds the way you want.

I mean, the number of people you talk to they are members of this club that got their start to the game of golf through caddy and is huge. So whether it's golf course maintenance or caddy and whatever they like to do, it can't hurt the game to get them going. And that's a lot of kids. I mean, that's that's just under half the number of members we got that are working here that are all, you know, still in their educational formative years.

but if you look at him. The last time I looked at him, I was trying to make a case to the club about walking and and I asked them to stop me when they got to the course on the list that did more or the same amount of heart rounds as we were doing, and it was below us, I mean, the top thirty. I mean, you know, maybe Pebble, but Pebble's doing it on car paths only. So I guess to Southern Hills's credit, we were, you know, the highest ranked of the courses that are allowing a high

amount of golf carts. So when when we first institute Carrie first kind of built the program. It had a little bit of an impact, had about a seven percent impact, but that wasn't going to really move the needle. And and so now coming out of this we're walking only for the first month. We're about to shift to a cap of thirty six carts a day, which is going to sound like a lot to some clubs, not like

not many to others. Dere, Yeah, it is hot, and but that's seventy two golfers, and and we've we've been doing pretty good numbers in the walking only stage, so we think there's a better than average chance that that thirty six will accommodate all we need. There may be some days where it doesn't, but we're hopeful that that'll

work well and it'll be embraced by the membership. But at some point in August, we're to shift to where our tea we have sixteen times an hour, two of them are going to be reserved for walking only, which in and of itself is a big shift from where we were. I mean, that's thirty three percent and we were doing ninety three percent cart rounds. So we'll see,

we're working at it. It's being the people walking are embracing that like crazy got push carts for the first time and I don't know what fifty years.

drops and you have to mow. And time have we mow rough on Mondays now when we're closed, instead of doing productive maintenance oriented work like venting or something to smooth stuff out. We're getting rough modes so we don't have to be out there mowing amokst play. That's not ideal, but it's where we're at now, So yes, it helps to help them well being of our members. Yes, it

creates an atmosphere that feels more like a classic facility. Yes, it steadies the pace of what's going on out there, and it allows us to find openings to work without interfering with golfers. You know, there could be a three hole gap and if there's cards singing around, somebody's just going to jump over there in that gap and start playing.

And we're in the middle of trying to I don't know, fertilized dry you know, weak areas around a bunker, and then you got our sprinklers are trying to water them in and so there's such a huge benefit to getting it, as I'm preaching to the choir, I know, but but it's a it's a three six here with the walk and only you know, it's just really cool.

told the story. You know, they're both about either doing opening their course from a project or about to do one. And and I said, it's funny. You know, we open the course May something late May May twenty ninth. And the good news about our project is when we open, we're the worst we're going to be. We're going to get better each day because we get into more heat and that bermuda is going to grow more and we can do more with their projects and coolst seasoned grasses.

They're now if they open at that time, the best they're going to be is probably when they open that summer, because now you're implementing imperfections and stresses and so so there's some advantage to being down here from that standpoint.

sand injected to everything has has had latent impacts. I mean, I don't know that the ice damage was ever as bad in the in the Northeast as it is in recent years. And it makes me wonder how much of that is the incorporation of sand, and this a lot of these native soil, you know, push up greens because obviously it's colder, you know, in the sand, and you

know there's benefits in the in the summer. But but you now have probably an increase in additional issues like nematodes or or or ice damage due to due to years of trying to incorporate sand into these things.

But the biggest thing that impacts us on the Championship course it's kind of twofold, but they both revolve around the same thing. I wish I could eliminate figure out clippings on fairways without having to use blowers to do it and get the same effectiveness because that noise is a big shoe. But for us to mow fairways and deal with clippings, it's a twelve person job. There's eight fairway moors and four blowers out there. That's a lot. So if there was a way to get that robotics

on large areas like that. That would be huge. I know there's robotics now for range pickers and stuff like that. I think it's common.