Sean Tully

Welcome to another edition of the Frida Egg Podcast. Before we get to the Sean Tullian Zach Player episode, just a reminder to sign up for our promotion with Cricket shirts at Deel Golf and the Congress Hotel. Visit our Twitter page, Instagram or newsletter to enter for your chance to win a trip to Austin for the Dell Match Play Championship. I went to this tournament last year. It was an awesome event and Austin is one of my

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 Frida Egg Friday Egg, the dreaded Frida Egg, Fridagg Frida Egg Bride Egg Lie, I'm about ready to.

Run off of the.

Ladies and gentlemen, Welcome back to another edition of the Frida Egg Podcast. Today we are joined by Zach Blair, podcast regular and then the superintendent at the Meadow Club, noted golf historian and the godfather of with Sean Tully. Sean, welcome on.

Thank you.

I feel like I owe you royalties.

You know, with an angles, it's kind of a ripoff from the man that's you know, been preaching with for years. How does it feel to have an era wherewith is becoming almost embraced.

It's been great to see.

It's it's taken a long time watching all the tournament golf that we see on TV where all the bunkers are lost in the rough, and I feel like it feels really good to see that we need that in the game today for sure, for the for golf to be enjoyable for all all levels of play.

Yeah, we just Zach and I just finished playing up here at Metal Club Alistair McKenzie's first design.

Lots of wid Zach, what do you think?

Yeah, I've been lucky enough to play up here a couple of times, played here in college about every year I was at b YU, So it's always fun to come back, so I knew we had to definitely hit this spot up on the on the Blair Wish Project San Francisco Voyage.

Yes, it's it's been a good one. We we've hit up a bunch of different golf courses, but a few Alisair Mackenzie's Sean, how do you was it when you got this job in two thousand that you really became enamored with Mackenzie or did it start before then?

I definitely started before then.

I've always he just knowing what he was able to do and seeing pictures at that time living in Wisconsin and not being out here just seeing the golf courses and knowing what I was what I was seeing and wanted to embrace that a little bit more. Had to come out to California to see it.

Though.

When how did you get into golf? Like being from Wisconsin and.

Yeah, this was my first job in high school. My brother, who's a superintendent in Chicago, was supposed to go interview for a job and he wasn't. He was woke up that morning it was like, I'm not going in, and for some reason I said I'm going in.

So I went into interview.

For the job and The superintendent was quite confused when I said my name was Sean Tully and not Ryan Tully. But I'm very thankful that he didn't want to go to work that day or go to his interview.

And you know, the.

Same golf course that my dad worked at, and the superintendent knew my dad, so it was I think he was going to hire us either way.

But it's a you just got a different Tully. Yeah, yeah, what course was that at Dellbrook in Delvan, Wisconsin. It's an old Foulis brother, one of the foulest brothers.

I haven't had chance to figure that one out, but one one degree of separation from Oldton Morris which kind of got me started.

So that you have this, you know, directory of historical findings and all this stuff. As a kid, were you really into history and is that they just naturally lend itself into golf.

Yes, I've always you know, I don't read fiction. I'm a nonfiction guy, so I like the facts and my dad.

Just being in the game.

He was a really good golfer, qualified for the Greater Milwaukee Open as an amateur, and just his love of the game, my grandfather's love of the game. It keeps me close to both of those of my family in the game. Just being good on the.

Golf course parents in the game. That's like you ze.

Yeah, it's always nice to have you know, you get to spend time with him and then it just kind of like like totally said, it kind of keeps you close to him. So it's cool. It's definitely a neat sport that way.

So, Sean, You've got a lot of different things from a historical and you found a bunch of things.

What's like the coolest piece of golf.

History or artifact or information that you've uncovered in your time.

That's a good question. Probably just learning more about the evolution of golf and how good or how not so good. Some of the early stuff was Pebble Beach when it first opened, it kind of got lambasted.

To some degree.

And Herbert Fowler was brought in almost within within a year of the course opening, and he drew up plans and finding finding his plans and his his description of the golf course and his changes was pretty pretty amazing to find that when I came across the the information about Billy Bell doing some of the bunker work at

And it doesn't have to be off the tee to be challenging.

And you know, it's about angles and having the opportunity to find that, and we don't need twenty two yard fairways.

So with the modern game, the ball goes further, sometimes more offline is do you think with is about the same or should it be wider to accommodate for the longer distances people are hitting it.

I'm not always going to say more width is better. It can be challenging. I mean I don't I can already say I don't hit the ball very far. But if you hit the ball online and where you need to hit it, then you're in a good place. And if you mishit your shot or or have some factors that you haven't factored into your shot, and you're going to be more offline, further offline than you need to be, and find new, new and different challenges.

Hopefully.

Yeah, we we played, Zach and I played a golf course today that isn't known by many and doesn't have a lot of with Northwood, a nine hole Mackenzie golf course in Del Monte or is it del del Rio Monte Rio. It's a cool little town. Is that one of the you know, golf's biggest kind of tragedies and where it is right now compared to what it could be.

Well, Sharp Park is always the easy go to for that.

You know, the course is suffered with a lot of the river, the Russian River, going over its banks quite a few times, I think the twenty feet over the eighth green, so it gets when the water, when the ever goes over there, it's over. And they've you know, ed Bail, the superintendent there, he's been there for for a number of years. He could tell you how many times he's had to rebuild that green there in a.

Couple of the other holes. So it's they're lucky, we're lucky to even have the course with that much water.

It's such a cool place.

It's in this little town and you just drive up and you never would expected what got Mackenzie up there to do that proadject.

The story that that I understand it is is John or Jack Neville, a noted amateur player played you know, had his hand in design, was the one that introduced Hunter and Mackenzie to the property. There's been quite a few people have done research and we still have not found There's some people that feel there's a connection to the Bohemian.

Club, which is right there as well. So far.

That's the story that that we're sticking with at the moment. But there we haven't found any thing that really is cut and dry.

You know.

I think that place has like a sneaky more width than we're giving it credit for though, because like we didn't hit one tree out there the entire day, realistically one. But I think the trees are so massive that it just looks extremely tight.

There's that visual especially watching the drone footage you guys did today, it just makes it look even tighter. But I also saw you guys hit the ball to egg and the trees were weren't going to be an issue no matter what you guys were playing really good?

Is yeah that I guess that it is almost a thing with scale. It goes to scale, how I mean with with how important is it to have matching scale?

It's really important. I mean, you know, we have fairly good scale here with our bunkers.

You know, they aren't.

Super big out here, but they fit and they feel good with the contours that we have. You know, another good example would be San Francisco Golf Club. You know the scale that property is so huge, and you have some of the bunkers on three that big, The one that runs short right off your T shot is a great bunker and it ties in with the bunkers behind it. A lot of it is scale and you don't need big bunkers if you layer your bunkers. And I and we talked about that quite a few times with our

I noticed that with Golden Age architects they layered greens on top.

Of each other.

So well, but then those bunkers and they catch your eye and sometimes, you know, we live in this day and age of technology where visual deception is a bit lost. Because we play with rangefinders. We always know what that what the exact.

Yardage is, and we can shoot bunkers.

But it was Mackenzie the greatest, in your opinion, at layering and stacking bunkers on and making you know, deceiving the eye.

Well, I would say yes, obviously given his background with camouflage and trying to he is challenging your eye in a lot of ways, more so than you know, other architects were privy to.

The challenge.

You know, we talk about yardages and if you hit a t shot, it's one hundred and seventy five yards and the bunkers at one hundred and sixty. But we don't like bunkers by nature, we don't want to be in them. So no matter how many few bunkers or how many more bunkers are in the background. Your your mind may know the yardage, but it still is looking at those bunkers, going, I don't like the bunkers. I

You guys have been working with Mike Devrees since nineteen ninety nine, you got here two thousand. It's been you know, you've kind of been chipping away at it a lot. And I obviously a lot of clubs in America don't necessarily have the financial resources to do full brown blown restorations right out of the gate or even member buy in to do them. What advice do you have for a club that might be trying to start the restoration and really improvement process.

Like, first of all, it's been really great to work with Mike. I mean, his vision and understanding of what we have here has really helped push this program or restoration program along. To get to your question, what has really worked for us is figuring out which hole, which is our fifth hole here has the most documentation in being able to draw from the pictures in state the historical nature of that hole.

It's a copy of the.

Eden Hoole from Saint Andrews and the importance of it and the scale and scope of the of the design and trying to get back to that and we did it over, you know, try to gain the members trust of those that may not understand what we're trying to do. Some of that was with tree removal, which can be hard. I mean there's you know, when most of our members joined here, there was the course had become more of a parkling course, had lost that meadow definition that is in the name of the club.

So for some of them it's.

Been pretty hard to see our trees come down. But it's at the same time it's been pretty amazing to see and be able to see more of the golf course and understand the design and the thoughts that went into it.

But you know, just trying to figure out where you.

Can best make your case and have the history work in your favor to tell you to tell the story and make the work that you're doing work for you. And there's obviously there's different ways to do the work, and when we first started our restoration, the process was trying to figure out what would work an intern that was working for Mike at the time. Mark Thley, who now works with Kyle Phillips, did a dissertation at Arizona

They love this course as they should.

And the the program went over a five year period, six year period, you know, with minimal impact, and the turnaround was pretty quick. By the time we got to the end the last year, our process was really good.

Zach, you played this course a couple of times in college. How have you noticed the change over the years.

When we played or when I was in school, Some of the stuff was already done, you know, some of the big changes, Like fifteen and thirteen, they'd kind of taken down the trees and they'd done a lot of the bunker work, I mean most of it, honestly. Now you know they're really working on the aprons, kind of around the green, kind of promoting that ground game and everything, and I mean it's even better than you know when I played it four or five years ago. So it's always fun to come back.

It's cool to see a walking through your clubhouse. There's so many old photos, and I think you're lucky and that they have you that finds all this stuff, but also that there's so much documentation available because you see, it was a meadow. I mean there's no trees, there's nothing, and there's all of a sudden, all these angles and different options to play. Like you know, today I played

Like that's got to goot just frustrating.

There is some frustration there, but at the end of the day, you know, it was frustrated. As being historian, it's it's really hard to not feel that way, and knowing how good the golf course was, it's just my job to educate the golfers as the best I can, to get them to understand what we're trying to do from an agronomic standpoint, and then you know, trying to give them the best product, the best golf course they can.

So what got Metal Club for those that don't know, is the first Mackenzie design in America? Did he come to America to specifically designed metal club or did he come here for like what got him over there?

Well, it was more of his trip to Australia, so it was a stopping off you're gonna make I think it was he met with Perry Maxwell and they traveled across and stopped in Oklahoma to see his course there, and then he got out here. And at that time Robert Hunter was, by reading through some of the correspondents, he was more or less acting as an agent for Mackenzie. It was trying to get him work while he was traveling through And you know, there's other stories, but that's

So I asked this question to Jim or being a if you could have either Robert Hunter. You're building a golf course tomorrow and you can bring him back from time, you could have Robert Hunter or Perry Maxwell as your associate, which one are you taking?

I know much more about Robert Hunter, and I don't know how much architecture talk we would have because I would be asking him all about all his socialist tendencies and hanging out with Mark Twain and almost being killed in New York and a bombing where he.

Was supposed to give a talk.

But it feels like Perry Maxwell was a little a little more closer to the I don't know what I'm trying to say, but.

More refrained, more religious.

I'll say that I'm always trying not to go there, but you know, just looking at some of the books that Parry Maxwell was reading, it it sounds like I don't know if I would have been it would have been as enlightening a conversation with him, But.

To work it would be great to work with both.

I having just seen Old Town this last year or almost two years now, that is amazing the work that he was able to do there and the work that Corn Crenshaw did.

But it's kind of similar to the work you guys are doing here.

Yeah, yeah, I mean, I mean the width that they have there. Again, here we go the with on the last couple holes, you know, seventeen eighteen nine and.

Whatever the other hole was there.

I mean, it's just amazing with that double green coming in and the t shot up the hill. I mean, I just I stood out there for way too long. It was just an amazing I didn't want to leave. It was just amazing there. But Robert Hunter gets it just because of I've done way more research on Robert Hunter, and it's he's he's fascinating.

So most of your research has been centered around California. GoF.

I try. I try to keep it the California.

But if anybody knows, the guys that are that know me are laughing because I've helped out.

What I try to do is I do all.

My research and then I just keep finding things and finding things, and you know, if I know somebody at the course, I'll send it to him if it's really good. Chris Turtaba when he was at Northland, I sent him a picture of the eighteenth green there and he was like,

I want to see the changes to the positive.

And I feel like the superintendent should be knowledgeable. I agree with Kyle Heglund in his wonderful podcast superintendent should know about golf course architecture and understand it and the relevance of whoever designed their golf course.

I think it's important.

I got a question, what are a couple restoration projects or a couple courses that have restored, you know, their courses back to the original, the originality of the course that you think have done really well, and then what are a couple that you would really like to see do a complete restoration.

Old Town was amazing.

I mean I again, that was really good Valley Club with their restoration.

Work and their turf changes with the Bermuda grass. I went out there and played. I didn't even play it, I walked it.

In February of twenty fifteen, and it was amazing the work that they have done out there.

La Country Club.

I'm a little more California centric, obviously, I don't get out there too far, but cal Club is wonderful. But you know, to speak to the courses, I would love to see restored. Riviera would be amazing. Crystal Downs, you know, just squeezing out a little bit more Mackenzie there would be incredible. But you know, Sharp Park would be amazing. That the front nine out there, the original front nine, if anybody's ever looked at it, If they haven't, you

You know.

Just it almost doesn't matter what course though. I mean to me, it's widening the fairways, reducing the rough, slowing the greens down, and just getting back to enjoying the game. Anybody just restoring the golf course to those features because the green speeds are too fast, the rough is too long, there's too much rough, and it just goes. We've gotten so far away from how simple the game can be, with trying to make it harder and trying to make

It harder for the day to day golfers.

And we've done a really good job of doing that, and we need people to enjoy the game.

Isn't it way more economical though, to rebuild a green just to slow them down? It does. We had a funny conversation about stint meters earlier today and how the USGA started manufacturing them and giving them to people, but then they don't You were saying, they don't tell the.

Stip meter reading of the US Open.

Yeah, I mean.

The stip meter is I'm a little too infatuated with the stip meter for a lot of different reasons. But it's just become what it shouldn't have been as a

It's amazing how many people don't even fully under I mean like they don't even come close to actually understanding green speeds. You'll sit there and you guys, yeah, the greens are rolling eleven today and I'm sitting there going like there may be like a not like people don't understand how fast like a ten is.

And you know, no matter you know, no matter who I talk to as a superintendent, there's what what I try to do when a member asked me or a golfer. If they ask me what the green speed is, I'll ask them what they think it is first, and invariably it'll be slower than what the actual number is. And we have a range that we try to hit here so that our members don't have to ask. They know that it's within a range of ten nine till eleven three, and it's been moving up. Green speed in the United

I think I might start selling signs.

You just made me think of it, of you know, today's stimpmeter and have it just be a permanent number.

Well, no matter what you do, it's always gonna be eleven to five, just every day, eleven five, no matter what.

It's Zach from a professional side, like I remember watching your like a Ryder Cup in the British Open or the Open Championship, and hearing that sometimes the slower greens can really mess with the American players more so than the Europeans. Do you ever see that playing abroad versus here?

Yeah? I just think, you know, out there, we're so used to putting on really fast greens, and you know, you've kind of you kind of stroke your putts to that type of speed, you know, and your whole games kind of around you know, your whole game on the green is built around that certain kind of tempo or that style, and then when you get to slower greens and kind of have to change that up to to kind of hit putts harder instead of stroke them. Yeah, I think it kind of really screws with guys.

So do you think it's more would be would challenge players more to have slower greens with pins on more slope or faster greens with pins on less slope.

I think guys would be able to adapt either way. You know, if if the PGA Tour played slow greens, it might mess with guys for a couple of weeks, but then they would they would be able to figure it out. So I think it's kind of the best players in the world out there, so they'd get it.

So Sean with Mackenzie, what do you feel is the most underappreciated aspect of his designs.

That's a good question. I don't think about it like that. Probably just his use of the routing, his routings. You know, some people kind of downplay it for certain courses. But you know, one of my favorites is just how simple he does it at Metal Club, at Valley Club, at Cypress Point where he uses hills and you know the hill on nine at Cyprus. You know how many greens come into that area, how many greens come into the area here.

That Metal Club, in that Valley.

Club, you have all these teas built up on the hills, playing from one hill the next. And what that really is is, you know, there's intimacy there, so that his courses are very intimate until you start adding length. But but there's something else there that it's the economic there's a word, a couple of words I'm missing here, but where he's designing golf courses.

With like the idea of like ease of maintenance.

The ease of maintenance, there's but he designed you know when he designed Bayside, that course was built within so many months and open. But then also when you have five greens in one area, you can go in and mow all those greens and have five greens mode by two guys instead of two guys walking all over and getting three three greens mode.

So there was a.

Degree where he was paying attention. And later in his career, you know, Lake Merced just turned up some really cool information where he was offering the surfaces services to help improve their greenkeeping work at the course. So and if you read any later on, he's talking and writing about how green key being has changed over the years. And I mean the other part is, you know his connection with Hunter. Everybody is like, it doesn't seem like there

So many things.

But they were very cosmopolitan. I mean, they were a part of so many different things back then, and it would have been just really amazing to sit in on some conversations with those guys.

So you get to sit in. Let's just say you got to ask McKenzie one question.

What would it be?

That's yeah, there's a couple of things.

It could be a really complex question too, you know, if you want to if you need to have multiple parts.

It would be. Yeah, I just got a bunch of stuff going in my head.

Give the guy a couple of questions.

Let him ask a couple of questions.

Yeah, we'll say, like, you know, what are the what are the things that you you always wonder about?

Okay, it comes. This one's really simple. It's you know, you got certain architects. They left all the stuff behind and with him the golden Lamb, or so to speak of. What I want is the routing map for Metal Club. And there's stories that Jack Fleming had it, and then John Fleming, his son had it, and then they're gone and.

They just disappeared.

Somebody was giving the story was they were given to a golf writer and myself and Bob Beck we've been trying to work on this. Bob Bex is, a noted historian, plays out at Pasa Tampo. If we could find those plans, how cool would that be to find the actual routing map for Metal Club in his hand or in Patty Cole's hand or Flemings or whoever.

I don't care, I want to see it.

You look at Billy Bell and George Thomas, the work they did. You know, Stanford Riviera, you know some of those early courses that they did.

They have aerial views of the course right after it opened.

I don't know if it was on their on their call or what, but I wish we had earlier aerials here. And Mackenzie was proponent of ariels uh aerial photography in the twenties. He was telling municipalities or whatever they call him in England. You know, if you guys really want to plan for growth, you need to take aerial for talkraphy photography of your villages and hamlets and whatever to understand how and where you can grow. I wish people

Yeah, the aerials are cool. I find myself down a rabbit hole all the time, and then you start looking at it just and then you go out to places and you get, you know, just frustrating to see how narrow some of the places are.

Yeah, Brian Palmer from Short Acres called me already, texted me right before we left on our trip over there to betme and the British trif Crass Management Exposition, and he's like, Tully, NASA County's got aerials up from nineteen twenty six. And I started driving back to the shop and my cart wasn't going fast enough, so I just parked my cart and started running and were on the phone texting back and forth. Have you seen Piping Rock? Have you seen Lido? And you know, we're going back

I mean it was. To be able to see these courses in nineteen twenty six was amazing.

And uh, I still need to get back and look at those, but the last thing I needed was to see those right before.

Right wells planning my trip and getting ready to go.

One of my buddies came across an aerial of the National and Shinnacock and Shinnacock's Mid under the Knife.

Transitioning from what year? Can I ask thirty? I have it on my computer.

I will need to see that.

Yeah, I'll show it to you.

So it's uh, it's you know, it's Mid under the Knife. So it like half the holes are Rainer McDonald, half the holes are flam It's insane.

I mean, these old.

Aeroals are just treasures for and that makes a good point. You know, if you only have a forty one of Meadow as the youngest.

Very earliest one, you went through the.

Great Depression, your midst World War two, so that's when really a lot of the loss.

Was Yeah, I mean for us, the Depression didn't really hurt the club as much.

We still had labor. But when World War two came, it was the labor was gone. And then had in forty one there was a drought. So in the areial it looks like the farm circles when you're flying over Oklahoma or something where it's just green. They just ran sprinkler heads at tease landing areas and fairways and so it's we're probably missing some fairway bunkers here and there. In the aerial because it's just brown. You can't really

So I asked this of architects all the time. I asked this question, is what.

Do you wish you know the average member understood more about architecture?

Like one thing, it doesn't have to be as hard as most people try to make it for some spy glass.

What do we know about spyglass?

It's one of the more challenging, hardest tests to golf you'll find in our area.

And that's great.

I mean, can we just leave it there and not have to bring it home to our course and have fairways be tightened and trees planet or what have you. Not every course has to be play one way. I mean, obviously I'm going to say we need to widen a lot of fairways on a lot of courses, but we do.

That's a fact.

Well, it's like you watch Zach play. If the fairways twenty five yards wide doesn't really matter for you that much, it's not like you're gonna miss You're you don't miss many fairways regardless of how wide it is.

Yeah, it just depends on the day, I guess.

I mean, if it's fifty yards wide, like you're probably not gonna miss many.

Yeah.

But like when it's twenty like Northwoods, you didn't miss any fairways and it's those are twenty five thirty yard wide fairways.

Yeah. Yeah, it was a good It's a good couple of days. I guess.

Those hickories don't go offline.

Yeah, dude, you were striping that thing. It's crazy.

It's I mean, I might just play hickories from now and I'm over over the real golf ball. So if say, uh, you found everything there was to find on Mackenzie, like tomorrow you had everything, what what would be the next project.

I'm kind of already started it in my mind, but it would be a way to connect golf historians together to share information. You know, you start talking with somebody and they're looking into one thing or another, and and you know, even though I try to stay to the Bay area, I've got a lot of stuff from all over the East Coast and even in England and Scotland. I don't I have never been able to draw a line and say I want to stop. But to be able to share that information and help other guys that

And Willie Locke.

And Willy Locke ended up getting the job, which when you think about the other two gentlemen that had been in the business, and I mean Willie Locke caddied for Herbert Fowler when he was a kid, so for him to get that job, it was it was a pretty big thing for him.

But there we have the story. But yet there's who knows, they may have had somebody else in there.

I guess you would be you'd be the perfect person to ask about this. What what do you think about the whole Cyprus routing about you know, some people talk about maybe Seth Rayner routed at some like you know, other people say, no way, what are your thoughts?

Well, it's a it's an open ended question still.

I mean, there's been a lot of talk with the Rainer folks and the Mackenzie people, and I mean just about anybody that wants to.

Throw their name in the hat.

You know, we definitely can see there's a ad Mills took a photograph of the sixteenth Green in nineteen twenty five with a flag on it, and then so that's er Rayner doing the routing, and he we can definitely say.

That that was the green location that he decided on.

And then there's another flag on the rock outcropping just behind the current eighteen t that they were going to build a bridge to. Some people want to call that the McKenzie bridge, but it really, you know, it was more of a rainer bridge. Because he was out there, he had the flag. Somebody put the flag out.

There for him. I'm sure he didn't put it out there.

But.

You know, and there was changes, you know, Robert Hunter Junior, that was one of his.

He kind of cut his teeth here with Jack Fleming. The club here didn't want Hunter Junior to get the work by himself because he hadn't really he was pretty young to say the least. But he went in there and you know, he got in trouble for a little bit of the work that they did, but they re routed a couple of the holes to make room for

Yeah, those would be two really cool like architect maps to kind of look at and compare and say, like, you know, you never know, maybe you know, maybe they were both very similar.

So we got a Rainer nut and a Mackenzie nut sitting next to each other. I want to know from each of you what your favorite thing about the other architect is, So Sean, your favorite thing about Rayner and Zach, your favorite thing about Mackenzie.

Lido the lido course, you know, just the engineering feet that they when it went out after and uh, I just wish he had said more and written more or had you know.

That's that's another treasure, another thing somebody needs to find.

Huh.

Yeah, there's not much out there.

I mean, I know Tony Piapi's he's out there looking and finding some things. But uh, you know, that would be amazing if his diary would turn up or something. But that's just me dreaming. I'm always dreaming, trying to think of the possibilities.

But yeah, for me, I'm kind of turning into a Mackenzie net. You know, we're on a nice little road trip here, but I mean it's it's easy to go with. You know, the bunkering is just like out of control, not only the way it looks, but you know, just bunker placement and just how it all ties together. Kind of the whole layering aspect of everything is just out of control.

There there are so many good ones.

I mean, the I think I've come to realize the most beautiful bunkers in the US are in California. Between Thomas Bell, Mackenzie, and Hunter. It's pretty outstanding work.

Yeah, I mean it's that there's definitely a California feel to it by definition of it being in California, but literally, but to get to a point, Mackenzie was already starting it and doing some of that work, and if you look at some of his later work prior to coming to California, you can see him kind of putting it together. But one aspect in you know, the research I've done is how.

Far did it get east?

And there was a couple of different architects that were actually in Michigan. I can't I'm drawing a blank on their name, but one golf course in particular, that's seminal in how the bunkering, the original bunkering. If you look, there's a great picture in Golf tam magazine on the cover in nineteen thirty or thirty one, and it looks just incredible. But you're looking at it and you're like, is that seminal? And you're like, of course it is.

It's got all the.

Palm trees in the background and whatnot. But what was going on to have that happen? Why were those bunkers designed there?

That's the question I have.

And obviously Dick Wilson did all his stuff and they've been changed and I haven't been I haven't been there to see the work that Corn Crenshaw has done yet. But it's interesting in that, you know, in the research I've done, I've got Bobby Jones out for the nineteen twenty nine US Amateur and just in a short little column they asked him one word comments about the golf courses he was playing or had played, and it was posit Tiempo, Riviera, La Country Club, San Francisco, Pebble and

Was Riviera Pebble Beach was.

He went a little wordy and he said not as good as I thought it was going to be, or I was told or something. And La country Club was was sporty again. I think he used that twice. But the kicker was when he got to Cypress Point. The way he described it kind of set the.

Tone for his thinking.

You know, very early on that he was probably gonna have McKenzie there for his course, and Cypress Point was very simply of course I wouldn't mind having in my backyard. So I'm wondering if the work that rosted at Seminole had some correlation of him trying to feed off of mackenzie's work in style. But that's just me asking a question, trying to figure out why that style went that direction, because the bunkering is nothing like Ross's bunkering, So why

And can and I might know, So if if you could, if there's one, you know, say, we're going to say non living architect that you could have just all their work they did erased.

Never you could remove all of it from the world.

Which one would it be non living non living? We're going to keep it friendly here.

I mean I would answer in the opposite. One architect that we don't have anything nearly enough of that we need to know more of is William Langford, Because I mean, no matter the work that those guys were doing there, there's a handful of guys that you know, weren't up to snuff with the other guys back in the day. But I'd almost rather have their course than some of the guys that are living some of their work in the sixties, seventies and eighties and nineties. That's just a

Yeah, Langford is a victim of a lot of bad renovations to people that just didn't understand the bold contours and the idea of of green that's unpinnable, or you know these.

Big slopes and giant scale.

It's I'm lucky, I get I'm in like Langford Central and Chicago, so I've seen a lot of his stuff and he is definitely underappreciated over you know, yes, it's so you want to do some overrated underrated.

If we're at that point already.

I got one Hickory's underrated.

What about overrated? Underrated Pebble Beach?

It's for me, it's overrated. And can I answer this for me and Chris Dahlheimer. I have this conversation with them all the time, just how it's not I mean, I'm not trying to pick on them. I just enjoy talking with him about it. Just the size of the greens, and it's become it's that the shifting baseline. And it's also how the golf course has become defined by how small the greens are. Another golf course is Brookline. Brookline

Yeah, some of those some of those old pictures that have been popping up on Twitter the last you know, two three months of you know, six, seven, nine, eight ten, those holes kind of on the coast at Pebble just look out of control. How cool they were.

Yeah, I mean it's I mean, I've got a couple different I've got like three or four different write ups on all the chain that he made.

I mean, it's just Egan. He gets slampooned a little bit for.

Eugene, you know, with all the work that wasn't so good, but what he did there was really good.

One of Chicago's finest. Yeah, Olympian X for a member that Don Holt, shout out Don Hilton. He's done a lot of He's a great historian.

Yeah, yeah, I think Egan is he was a precursor to Bobby Jones. You know, he he took the game by storm, and you know he was a flogger. I mean he hit the ball along ways he just didn't know where it was going, but he could recover. And uh, I think it was the four oh five Open Amateurs that he won Chicago and somebody.

Else Olympics too. No, he came in second second.

And yeah, you know what was interesting to hear about what he was mentioning about Pebble kind of before they changed it for the US am. You know a lot of those fairways kind of way off the cliffs and stuff kind of reminds me of Tory. Yeah, sad deal. Got to use the gotta use the natural hazards, right, they're.

The most intimidating thing you could put on a golf course is an ocean cliff.

Yes, that's like five hundred feet.

Yeah, it's probably like the best hazard and the most the best way you can intimidate someone to play away from the ideal line.

Right, it seems like Tory Pines. It's like, so it's almost too easy to put a good golf course out there that it's so sad to see what it is with how easy it could be. Unbelievable. What do you think about that?

Well, for me, for me, I played it a couple of years ago now, and the setup was what I was having a hard time the setup. I mean, the rough was too long. It was just it was set up for you, not for me. And uh and again you get a lot of people going out there for that, but yeah, I mean it just felt like it was there.

There was a lot of potential out there.

So one of the municipality's big pushbacks on wid is always maintenance costs going up.

I always say, well you could.

You're probably gonna have more rounds to combat that because people are going to go around faster and they're gonna play more. Like what kind of maintenance costs say you were going from twenty five to forty increase, would.

You see, Well, it depends on the area of country here, and I mean if you go back east, they're gonna they're funderside.

Budget's gonna go double.

But for us out here, I mean, you guys say, some snow mold on our fairways, we don't really, it's very minimal. We'll have it and we won't treat it. But you know, it's just another it's a different mower mow in the grass.

I mean.

The coughs.

As you're saying, the costs will offset itself to some degree by having more people out there to enjoy it and to get them around the course a little quicker because they're going to be able to find their ball or you know, it's just an easier walk.

You know, if they stayed wide, you wouldn't see car pass inside of bunkers.

That's true.

What's your biggest pet? Peeve?

Just cart use? Whoops?

I mean Zach had a bad cart use today.

No, I don't think it was bad. I think we just needed it. Uh, we needed the you had the drone in there. It's like I didn't want to have to carry the camera around I was doing it more for you. Honestly, I didn't want to ride.

I mean for me. I make.

When you get out to play golf, I mean, the whole point is to get out and enjoy being outside, enjoy the camaraderie with your fellow golfers. You get behind the wheel and it's just you might as well be on the on the one oh one. You know, you you're turning the radio stations on your phone, texting somebody. You know, just drop it, you know, get out of

He's like, I'm over here walking and see me.

You know.

It's but it's it's trying to change the culture, and you know, cal Club is you know, probably the embodiment embodiment of that culture change, and it's not an easy culture change. I think Thomas Bastus when he was still there, he tweeted out a picture of just a member event. I don't know if it was a member guest or whatnot, but it was all walking backs and you just don't see that when you have an outside event. I mean, it's let's get in the cart and go play golf

But when I do, it's gonna be walking and with some good company.

It really is amazing how much more enjoyable golf is when you walk. Like I mean, I even noticed it today. I'm sitting there, you know, texting and looking at Twitter, and all you guys are back there talking and then I get up to the ball and sit there for like two or three minutes waiting for everybody, you know, and all you guys are just talking about how cool all the features are looking at everything, and I'm like, gosh,

It sucks, and it's really easy to promote it instead of you know, somebody comes into the pro shop and y know, I'm gonna play eighteen holes.

Oh are you going to walk today? I mean usually it's the opposite. Are you going to take a cart? I mean, we just just need to simply change the conversation right in walk.

What kills me is the places that have the cart included in the rate. You know, like our rate sixty dollars with it, it comes with a cart cart included.

It's like, what why would you do that? I think?

You know, I got on this conversation with my dad the other day, who is in that side of the business, and he kind of talked about it's that that revenue. You know, it's the pro shop, the pros wanting to make a couple extra box by by getting the carts, you know, the cart money. Yeah, just sad.

There's the flip side of cart paths and ropes and signs. I mean, especially out here where we're it's such a beautiful property and one of the things we're trying to do is illuminate signs in ropes. But there's still we have outside play on some mondays and it's the carts still will just end up going anywhere if you don't put the ropes up. I mean there's new technology with the GPS and all that, but it all costs money.

And just walking it's good for your health. I mean, we have a we have a gentleman here that's in his I mean he's ninety eight. I thought it was.

Ninety five, but not a big difference there. But he plays eighteen holes and then he'll jump on a cart and play another nine.

Geeze.

So for the it's good for your health.

So ten rounds Northern California. So we're gonna take We're gonna say from kind of the pebble Cypress, Monterey North, how are you you get ten rounds?

How are you split them up? You can do multiples at places.

This is an exercise I do occasionally. I kind of keep it to the Bay Area because I don't want to throw Monterey in it. But I would only play Cypress. Are we talking ten times in one year?

Or just you get ten rounds?

Ten rounds?

I would still I will say I will play Cypress once, okay, And just because when I go out there, I'm gonna it's gonna be that moment that I'm there, and if I play it more than once, then I'm not gonna it's not gonna be. I'm taking advantage of it. San Francisco's in there, Metal Club, Claremont, I guess there'll have to be multiple times, but uh, you know, Monterey Peninsula. I have yet to see the Dunes course, so I'll

I would lose Country lost, I know.

But uh, you know, Clairemont for me, I would always say ten ten rounds of golf just in the Bay area, and it would be, you know, about six times at Meadow, three times at Sam Francisco, and then one at Claremont. I really like Claremont, the crossing holes, the history, it doesn't have to be long, to be fun, and it's challenging.

So I would say one of the cooler things like we learned this week that wasn't today, was how we learned that the Presidio was the original s you know, San Francisco Golf Club, and then they moved to a place, and then then they moved again. Yeah, then they moved again and Cal Club bought ingle Side, the second one, the second you know, the second go around, and then found another place and built it. So at one time that Ingle Side was Cal Club and s F and.

It was almost and it was almost Olympic Club.

Dang, that would have been so Olympic Club.

Was looking at the second course and they ended up buying the Lakeside property golf course which had.

Just been built, and they made a bunch of quite a few changes to it, so there was quite a jumble. And it didn't help that ingleside the old course and the new course. I mean, they were so close to each other. It makes it a challenge to do some research on it and figure out.

Which course they're actually talking about. Yeah, you know San Francisco.

Is that was probably one of the courses I did my most research on because you would look at the course ratings, you know, the top one hundreds, and Golf Digest would say it was designed.

I mean it opened.

It was a tilling Acid open in nineteen eighteen, and then Golf Week would say it was nineteen twenty one or twenty and somebody else would say another date. And I'm like, wow, you would think somebody would have this figured out by now when it opened and who designed it.

And I got interested in the history of it.

And for me, you know, I try to identify the architects and the evolution of a golf course and the importance of not sticking to what becomes mythology, which is in some ways rooted in facts, but it.

Gets bigger and bigger.

To build up the stature of a certain club, and it happens all over the place. It doesn't matter what course it is. But you know San Francisco the first, you know, the first property eighteen ninety five. I can't say that with accuracy the original architect, but it played over just the first couple of holes right there off the clubhouse. All nine holes played over nine, ten and eighteen today and then they moved due to the use of the property as the training grounds for the military.

They moved to the second Engle Side course, and I believe I have the artchitect of the course, but I need to get another verification.

But it was one of John Clark, who had two sons that would go on to be golf pros. But and then they moved and opened up the current course in February of nineteen eighteen, and it was designed by three members, so and it kind of got lampooned in the same way that Pebble Beach did when.

It first opened.

There was quite a bit of criticism over the quality of the Lynks and some changes were made even before tilling Ass was there, to the point that you know what we see on the front nine was drastically changed before tilling Ass to even made changes to the course. And then tilling Ass was brought in and the end of nineteen nineteen and twenty and he had a plan drawn up.

And this is the same time Herbert Follower was in the area.

So it's really interesting the dichotomy of and Rayner was there and nineteen eighteen he actually stayed at the clubhouse at San Francisco.

I knew I felt it.

Have you guys seen did you did you guys play Olympic.

Club already we played the cliffs course.

Okay, did you see the routing map? Have you seen his routing map for rainers routing map?

Someone posted it. I've seen it a little bit, but we didn't look at it the other day.

It's pretty cools. It in there, Yeah, it's in there.

We missed, we missed a boat there. Would you say I got one more overrated? Underrated San Francisco Golf Club? Overrated, underrated.

Tracky it's.

Or properly rated, properly rated.

I'm the middle of the road on that one. I mean, I feel like.

There's I know, I know it more from a historical standpoint, I love you know, they've they've added some bunkers that you know, tilling Us had taken out later on again, for me, the Greens feel like they need to be a little bigger. The fairway with is awesome out there. My favorite t shot is number one with Mega with it's you know, it's it's a close second to Saint Andrews on with I haven't measured it, but it can't.

Be whiter than that. But it's a special place.

Yeah, and I mean, you know, with.

You know, you're drawing a fine line on honoring all.

The work that's been done out there, and but at the same time you're nervous and are we going to make it better or are we compromising something? And you don't want to compromise anything, especially at San Francisco Golf Club. It's it's that special of a place. When you walk out there, it just gives me the chills. On most days it does give you the chills, but depending on how much FOG's there. But it's I think it's right where it needs to be. And you know, they they're

But Samson Samson really loved the dog like the tree lined dog like huh.

He worked those pretty hard.

Shout out to the Da Keto for bringing it back, right.

I think Tom Duk did the work.

Yeah, right, I think so, yeah, yeah, yeah, good job.

Yeah, that little green bunk ring there is phenomenal. I think it's in the front line of Front nine. Topography is pretty unbelievable.

I definitely for me, the front nine is is great out there, just the variety of shots, and you know, the twelfth is another great hole out there. I love the T shot and the challenge of getting the second shot figured out.

Would you go Front nine s F back nine, PASA if you could put two Bay Area nine together.

Ye can't wait to see PASA tomorrow.

It's gonna be It's gonna be good.

So uh, I guess the last overrated underrated would will be yardage finder guns and finders, range finders, range finders overrated.

I'm kind of from I'm just old school. I just will stand up and I'm gonna I'm gonna just look at it and gauge it, and I think it for you know, some of the stuff that we have out here and some of the other courses, Mackenzie courses where he's visually challenging you to know, the yardage kind of

Was all. He did a great thing for golf, but I think he kind of ushered in a more consumer based golf and thought and you know, cart golf and you know what shoes I'm going to wear tigerproofing and tigerproofing.

You know, I mean, me and Andy talk about it a little bit. I think they got the whole tigerproofing thing so wrong.

You know.

It's like, he's such a he's such a long hitter, and he was hitting it by everybody, and he was a power player, and so they wanted to push the t's further back, and they wanted to make the bunkers more in play for you know, longer hitters. But it's like all they should have done to tigerproof courses is like make courses shorter and wider, and the exact opposite.

Yeah, I mean, we just keep seeing the yards go up. And you know, one of the things I've looked at is US Opens and how they've changed the first course over seventh. The first course at seven thousand yards was in nineteen thirty seven at Oakland Hills, and it would be sixty years before they got to seventy two hundred yards, and then all of a sudden, in the last twenty one years or.

So, what did we hit seventy We're pushing eight thousand.

So the golf has it's changed that dramatically in such a short period of time. And they used these numbers where they talk about the average yardage has gone up point two yards on certain tours and gone down on the others by point two. If you do the math, I mean you should add about three yards in the last fifteen or so years. I think it's fourteen years

They've added a par four. Yeah, it's long a lot more.

I played there last year from the US Open tees and it's a it's definitely a big boy course, so it'll be interesting to see it is awesome though that place is sick.

Yeah, and you know the corn Crunshaw did the work leading up to it, and they've widened.

The fairways a lot mega with and now they've kind of narrowed them down a little bit. I mean, as much as the USA wants to say.

This is still wider than the previous US Open, they still send a negative connotation by narrowing it. They're still saying it's there's an issue with it being wide, and it's just for me, it's a hang up that a lot of people have just this notion that golf has to be hard or a challenge, or it can't be easier because we cut down these trees. We don't want to make the golf course easier. I mean, it's show me the scores.

The other thing is like everybody's like, well, this era is so much more talented, so much better players like their you know, technology is better, Like the game's not the same as it used to be, but we still have to hold on to the same score as like the sacred number, Like, oh this is the if it's not close to par a, it's not a real us opening. It's like, well, the game has changed dramatically, so like why would the par still be the same if everybody's better and technology is better.

Yeah, I mean even you're just talking about from the players standpoint, I mean you need to talk about what we're doing as superintendents in the technology that we bring to the game with our moisture meters, our new products of wedding agents, and I mean there's a lot of stuff that we're doing that has driven some of this as well. And so technology as a whole has really taken the game and pushed it in the wrong direction.

And we can be our own worst enemy, and we can.

We have a lot of tools to do a lot of things, but at some point the game's going to be We're already up against it with yardage and all these other things. But at the same time, the cost of maintaining courses, the dues that are members see environmental concerns. I mean there's all these in labor.

I mean labor.

If you talk to anybody in our industry, labor is at our I mean we're running into robot mowers now. I mean we're out there trying to figure out how can we maintain greens and do all this work, but with a labor force that's reducing and in our association, our golf course superintendents in Northern California, we're trying to figure out how we can get interns to come out and work at some of our better courses. And it's

Character building and you know, you can take care of your family stuff.

Yeah, it's pretty cool gig to just get to hang out on the golf course every day too.

It's not bad the early mornings, sunrises, sunsets. I mean, it's just I don't know where i'd be if I wasn't doing this work.

What's better light? Morning light or night light or like a sunset light for pictures?

What do you think.

For my personal schedule? The morning light is better, But I love being up here late in the afternoons. The colors are the It just looks better, looks drier. I guess it doesn't have as much luster when you have the do and stuff.

Which of your peers has the best Instagram feed? Like, who's the guy the best photos of all of the supers?

I just I literally just got on and started using Instagram. When you have six Twitter feeds, it's it's hard.

To not be anywhere else.

But uh.

But I mean, I'm you know, Clyde Johnson, Is that right, Clyde? I really he's well, you.

Know him, Clyde. Brian Palmer and Scott Pobacco. They just wrapped up yesterday their trip that we were on together with turf Net over in the UK and they hang out late and they were taking some amazing pictures of the golf that they're playing. They just need to keep doing that when they get home so we can see that what they're doing at their courses.

Scott Vincent from on once a Club takes unbelievable photos.

He's like real pro photo photographer, pros pro, pros pro.

I'm working on it.

I love you just see different things and we're superintendents. We know where the sun's coming up, we know where it's going down, we know which trees we don't want to have in the picture because we might be taking it out or or or you know, let's take a picture of this tree before we take it out, so we can show what it looked like before and after.

You can just get that photoshop game down where you can just get them all out of there.

Well that's I is it Google Earth before they changed you? Because now it's free, right.

If you use one or the other, I can't remember which one, it'll flatten. If you go to street view on the golf course, it takes out all the trees, but it keeps the elevations.

So I found that out.

Late one night and I was up for a couple hours and I would just hit a t shot, stand in the fairway on one and just spin myself around, go to the green and spin myself around. And I did all eighteen holes, just looking for things that I don't normally see because of trees. And I went for I went to different golf courses all around the area. And I mean on my Google Earth, I've got all the maps that I put on, you know, all the different things we do for management of grubs and bermuda

I'm and you know, I'm out there. I've got with a new Google Earth now it's free.

I can measure the fairway wits and to verify how things are going, and you know, to see where we're at and be able to you know, shinnecock. I've What I love is to be able to go in and uh because I was trying to figure out what the yardage was to add to my my my.

Study of yardages.

And I would go to the twenty sixteen seventeen find out where the t's are and then switch back to two thousand and four to see where they are in relation to what the tea's used to be. And it's really fun to study and see how they did it or you know, in some cases it's a lot of work. They cut trees down and moved I think it's on two or three. Maybe it's too you know, the tea moves over, gets closer over to to national a little bit, and you know, again the rhythm of a golf course

And they really didn't.

And at some point, you know, that's a long course. But we're going to start. We've already lost how many courses?

And then you know, yeah, I played the PGA there. Yeah, it's a it's a big course. It's hard, big ballpark, big ballpark.

It's just a lot of walking.

I mean in golf now with the guy sitting the ball for there, it slows play down if you hit the balls as far as you do, because you have to walk even further to get to the ball. It takes longer to walk that distance if it's another thirty forty yards.

So there's there's a factor there. So that's why I mean five hour rounds.

They're taking a long time right now. Yeah, not good. Four hours and ten seconds over a shot, four minutes, four minutes.

Four hours felt like that geez can but uh, yeah, how can people find Sean Tully?

Well, I got the one Twitter handle that I would point them to a couple of them. I just I try to stay under the radar, and I think only a couple of people I know.

A couple of people know those burners.

Yes, burners.

It's just gonna but with one of them one day.

The one is My main Twitter feed is at toll Fescue. I've had Tollescu as a it was like my first email address back in school trying to figure out something. Somebody us just leaned over and he said, Tollscue is your Twitter is your email address?

And I was like that's good.

And I've just kept it with everything. But it's mostly golf course architecture and just talking about golf and you know, anything that really gets me going. But uh, I posts for metal Club uh and uh and uh our association for golf course superintendents and then the other burners.

I won't talk about.

The next podcast, ye, just about the burner.

Yeah, so thanks for coming on awesome day to day and yeah, everybody foul Sean and start walking off yardage fair away with.

Please do thank you very much. It was it was great.

I finally have you out here and do this podcast, and then we've tried to do it quite a few times.

Yeah, hopefully you're the first of many. Yeah, thanks Zach.

Absolutely you've been listening to the Fried Egg podcast. We do the digging for you.