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 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 hump. Welcome to the Frida Egg Golf Podcast. I'm Garrett Morrison and it is Canada Week for us. The President's Cup at Royal Montreal Golf Club is underway. Look, is this the most
interesting golf course in the world. No, but it does give us an excuse to talk about Canadian golf architecture, and specifically about the greatest Canadian golf architect, Stanley Thompson. I've wanted to discuss Thompson on the pod for a long time. Such a fascinating figure and an enormous talent. To dig into Thompson's life and work, I'm bringing on Ian Andrew. Ian Andrew is a practicing Toronto based golf architect who has focused on restorations and renovations, but has
also done some original work. He's a great thinker and writer about golf course design and one of the world's leading experts on Stanley Thompson, so I'm very excited to speak with Ian. First though, a word about Club TFE, which is Frida Egg Golf's membership. You can find out all the information about CLUBTFE at the Frida Egg dot
com slash membership. It's a broad offering. We have exclusive content for members, including weekly course profiles and design notebook feature where we keep track of what's going on in the golf architecture world. But one thing that I think people would be interesting it in when it comes to Club TFE is the access you get to a variety of wonderful golf courses. First of all, you get early access to Frida Egg Golf events, which is a big deal.
We hold these at some wonderful golf courses across the country and elsewhere. And we're also starting to offer some international trips as well as individual days at certain golf courses where we just you know, offer around offer tea times just to our members. So if you want to find out more about that stuff, if you want to take part in that, CLUBTFE is a great place to go. Again the Frida Egg dot com slash membership. Check it out. All right, let's get to Ian Andrew and talk about
Canadian golf architecture and Stanley Thompson. I am here with Ian Andrew, the golf architect. Ian, thank you for joining me today. How are you doing?
Excellent?
That that pretty much sums it up right there, one word. So we have got the President's Cup at Royal Montreal Golf Club coming up. We are here to talk about Canadian golf architecture in general, Stanley Thompson specifically, but I thought we'd touch quickly on this course that people are going to see on TV this week. Do you have any thoughts about the Blue Course there?
So? I think the Blue Course is a.
Golf course that really benefits the long driver of the ball, and with all the compartments that Reese put in the greens when he redid the greens, being able to get to shorter irons definitely will open up the ability to score and open up the possibility for a lot of birdies. And I really honestly think it's going to be a huge benefit for the American team. I think it's a golf course that really will suit their game.
Okay, so that that is sort of a prediction about the about the way the course is going to affect the competition. It's not surprising that that a design with influences from Rhys Jones might might favor the American team. We've we've seen this dynamic before at past President's Cup courses. Originally this course was if I'm not mistaken at Dick Wilson design. Do you find anything interesting about about Dick Wilson.
You know, he's he strikes me as an interesting figure given that he was working at the same time as Robert Trent Jones and picked up a lot of the jobs that Jones didn't want, and he did slightly different work than Jones, did, I suppose he did.
You've got to think that his main influence has to be sorry, the architect he worked for the Chinacock Hills, Flynn Flynn, Thank you.
Yes, William Flynnlyn Dick Wilson did. That's something that people often forget about Dick Wilson is that he did train with a Golden Age architect, much as Robert Trent Jones in fact trained with Stanley Thompson in a sense. But Flynn was Flinn and Toomey was kind of Dick Wilson's entry into the industry, I suppose.
And you look at some of the ideas the angles playing for a position, a lot of the architecture the strategies are very similar. When you look at a lot of Flynn's work, and when you look at a lot of Wilson's work, you see a lot of the same use of those carry angles or angles or angled greens, looking at things sort of being bookended a little bit by bunkers as well, where you've got to try to maybe you're trying to hit a drawer or fade with fronting bunkers and you've got a back bunker as well
that's sort of containing you. And I just find you can see the influences from his work that just really come through.
Yeah, the tie ins with the Golden Age and Wilson's work seem to be a little clearer than the tie ins from say Robert Trent Jones's work or other post World War Two architects. It seems like Wilson kind of carry forward a little bit more of what he experienced earlier in his career than other architects, I think.
With Robert Trent Jones. So I work with Midvale in Rochester, which is Trent's first work, and he did it with Stanley Thompson. And the interesting thing about it is it's not like the work that came a lot later. I find the pre war work was a lot more elaborate, the greens were a lot smaller, and a lot more intimately contoured, a lot more interior contouring. I happen to think Midvale is a really stunning piece of architecture. It's well worth going to play. I think that sort of
as the war came, we saw mechanization. I think Trent adapted to sort of where golf was going, which was to be a lot more efficient. And even that efficiency goes right through to strategies and architecture as well as the construction and everything else. And I think that I think post war everybody was looking for new rather than looking for the past. I think they were trying to
shed the impact of the war. And I think the architecture, the building style, and even the expression of architecture all represented trying to do something different.
And you even see that gradually emerging after the war, because Jones's work right after World War two again looks a little different than the stuff he might have done in the late fifties and early sixties. Peachtree in Atlanta, for instance, is of course he designed soon after the war, and certainly that style evolved. So that's a very good note and an interesting thing to remember about Trent Jones.
I think what happened was, over time, architects got the ability to move more and more of the site. They had a bigger budget, they had had better equipment. The initial equipment they had, the initial machinery was rudimentary and
had some limitations. And as the equipment got better, whether it's bulldozer's excavators or anything else, as it got bigger, better and they were able to do more with it, I think they started to believe that they should change more of the site because they had the technology to
do it. And instead of accepting the things that I think make places like Peachtree or Midville really spectacular, because the contour still dominates the initial land, you started to see changes, and probably two aggressive changes where they he wanted to try to settle a lot more into bulls that weren't there. And once you start moving things around, you start to lose flow and you start to lose feel.
And I wonder if maybe architects in that post war period also started to design a bit more for maintenance and modern maintenance equipment, and that's a big reason why we see the shaping stuffile shift.
Well, even the bunkering kind of got muted, and a lot of that had to do with well, if I do this, I can get a gang more in between. Now that would be more of his peers. But still you saw that even with Trent's work that they started to if they shaped it just slightly differently, now you can all of a sudden use a large piece of equipment. And again this came back to that whole notion of efficiency, the efficiency in how the architecture was expressed right through
to how the property was maintained. And I think we just went through more and more efficiency, and then finally we sort of started to finally get small reactions and then with Pete a huge reaction to it.
Well, this was sort of a digression, but a very
interesting digression. We started with observing that Dick Wilson was the original architect at Royal Montreal Golf clubber the most decisive architect I suppose in that course's the Blue Course's history, and perhaps you see some indications of his hand in the course still, but a lot of it is quite Reese Jonesy so fairly near Royal Montreal is a course that you designed alongside Mike Weir, who is of course the captain of the international team this year at the
President's Cup. This is the Blue Course at Laval sirl Locke. What was it like working with we're on this project. I'm not sure that people really know that he has experience or interest in golf architecture, but certainly he was involved in this project.
So fun Mike's One of the interesting things about Mike is we spent a data gusta, not a master's data augusta, but actually a data gusta going around the golf course and he talked about what he liked about the golf course and the fun about it was he was playing and he was also explaining why he was playing strategically the way he was playing.
We also did that at Riviera.
We both have common experiences at Royal Melbourne and we actually talked through the holes at Royal Melbourne that we like, and shinnikok Kills ended up coming up because we like the way the edges run off the greens and one of the fun things about Mike is he's very aware of Golden Age architecture because of you know, he wasn't a bomber or a big hitter. He always had to
think about the golf course strategically. And the really interesting one for me, because I'm a huge fan of Riviera, is he talked about how he was able to play really effectively at Riviera by picking his spots. So I remember before I played, one of the things he'd explained to me was do not hit a driver on ten, and you're actually not trying to hit the fairway either, And it worked and mid handicapped me and my by
playing left. And then the funniest part was the next I can't remember what the event was called at that time. I mean he was still the La Open. But the next one he played and he hit driver because that's where he started.
Made six.
So and he had told me never hit a driver, and he and when he won the both times he had he had laid up. But we talked about the use of trees, how they impinge without taking away the
ability to play, and we both like that. We talked a lot about the use of side slopes rather than fairway bunkering that how effective that is for play, and then obviously the beautiful change of angles that happens quite often, and both of us have sort of Obviously, he's won there a couple of times, so he's got an extra love for it. But I really do have a love
affair for Revere. I think it's one of the finest designs in all of golf, and even as much as they tinker with it, the bones underneath it are spectacular.
Something that's so great about Riviera is the use of contour in the landing zones. In fairways. You mentioned the use of side slopes as opposed to five bunkers fifth hole. Wow, yeah, absolutely, I mean the way that kind of rises up and gives you a reward for hitting a great drive, but also kind of holds you up if you don't hit
a great drive. So, okay, I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about that, whether you know, in some cases fairway bunkers can be excluded in favor of some of these slopes, and how do you use those slopes.
So we started doing Lavelle. I'm going to use that and explain.
Sort of the thought process because I think it'll provide a window into mic So we started looking at the design itself, and the fun part about it was when we were going through and picking the corridors that we were going to use as oppose to the corridors we weren't going to use. Because it was two nine holes by two different architects, we ended up with a very little fairway bunkering. There's very little bunkering actually in the golf course.
It's all largely elevated greens with runoffs. We both love all the golf around Melbourne, so that was the prime influence.
But we took.
From Riviera the idea of if we've got I will come back to Roal Montreal for this. If we have slow moving dog legs like bananas that don't turn but actually just keep drifting and drifting and drifting, say it's from right to left and they keep drifting around and there's trees on that corner. There's some really good examples of Revere where you've really got to think out how you're going to try to fit the ball in, and we designed a number of the tea shots where there
are no fairway bunkers at all. But the clearing that we did was using those corridors. And it was actually my favorite thing about Royal Melbourne when I roll Melbourne Roal Montreal when I first played. It was the reason that Tiger played there in his prime and I'm trying to remember if you made the cut, but he really struggled there. And what it was was the longer players didn't play well that week, and it was because at that time it was a very very difficult driving golf course.
And it was actually one of my favorite driving golf courses in the country because.
It had all these slow moving dog legs, But.
When they lengthened it and move some tea's around, they kind of straightened out some of that where it plays a little bit more typical where it's out and then in. But we talked about that when we were working on Laval about we want to get everything grassing lines, bunkering, tree lines, corridors. We want them to move slowly so that if somebody can work the ball, they're they're going
to score really well. But if they can only drive it really far but not really with much ability to move it one way or the other, there may be a direction it works fine for them because they play a fade but if the hole is calling for a draw in the next we were really careful to try and balance out. They would really struggle to deal with those holes. And so there's not a lot of fairway bunkers.
In fact, there's hardly any fairway bunkers. And we did actually lean into the idea of the slow moving tree lines, right, and that's enough.
That's interesting.
That's a conversation we had, But that was something that Mike really leaned in on. He really loved the idea, but it's it wasn't something where I said we should do this. Mike was actually, what do you think about this?
One of the most interesting things that you can ask high level PGA tour golfer is what scares them, what really frightens them off the tee or on an approach or anything. And it's funny how fairway bunkers often don't
really scare them unless they're super punitive. But a slow moving fairway line, a constantly moving fairway line that just keeps kind of working away from you and working away from you, that can be a little bit scary because you have to be precise in where you're placing your drive. You can't just kind of aim down the middle and not worry about how far it goes, because as long
as you hit it straight, it'll be there. With a constantly moving fairway, you have to marry line and distance, and I wonder if that's where that observation from mine came from.
And the other end of it is if you don't have bunkers, or you don't have something in the distance that's a target, particularly, I happen to hate the idea of directional bunkers. I think that they're sort of the bastardization of really good golf architecture. If you don't have those reference points, then and you're working with a slowly moving fairway, you're actually never quite certain on what your
target is. So unless you can pick up maybe you've got a birch tree amongst a bunch of maples, and that makes it really easy. But if it's kind of a mixture of trees, usually you've kind of got to figure out what canopy, what am I even at the little bit of yellow in that one, it's not as it's.
Not quite as certain.
And the other end of it, as you said, it's the miss through, it's the I'm meant to cut it a little bit, and it just stayed dead straight and it runs through into the rough and now they've got to deal with that job. Yep.
Yeah, No, that's that's that's very interesting. I wonder if there's something about a player like Mike Weir that that sort of disposes him to be smart about golf architecture in a way that a lot of elite players aren't. Necessarily, he was a different kind of player. You know, he didn't hit it as far as Tiger Woods did, but he managed to score anyway. He was, you know, as far as top players were concerned, a little bit unusual
in his playing style. And I wonder if it is those kind of eccentrics, I guess, in terms of playing style, who are a little more inclined to think about golf architecture in at least interesting ways.
I think when you take somebody like Mike or Funny enough, I walked Revere with.
Zach or Zak Johnson. Yeah, Zak Johnson, thanks, I'm just for me. It's it's names, it's agent names.
Well, Zak Johnson immediately came to mind for me because if you're talking about genres of players, Mike, he Or and Zach Johnson are not that descent, so.
I got to walk.
Rivere was Zac Johnson as well, so it was set up while I was there. I actually had gone to see the work at La Country Club with Gil and then i'd gone back to Rivier and got introduced to different people and they sent me out with a foursome to walk inside the Ropes, which is on Tuesday, which was awesome, and he was one of the four and he was the most talkative. I think the players who don't have the distance, it's really important to them to tack.
I don't don't know what better. This sort of more of a sailing term, but if they tacked to position, then because they're hitting longer clubs, they can still end up finding place, finding ways or finding moments to be aggressive or to to you know, to to chase because you've you've still got to make some birdies. And I think it's what happens is they think a little bit more about the strategy because it's sort of self preservation.
They need to be in good places to score. I think one of the things sort of frustrating about watching golf in more recent times is the players who hit it so far it didn't actually matter where they were because they had also honed. To their credit, they developed the skill in their wedge game, but they didn't need to play positionally as much. And I got admit that's when golf kind of lost my obsessive viewership and I
became more of a part time of the game. It had a huge impact on me because I found I couldn't get much out of it architecturally. It was better
to actually think about the average player. At least we're back to the sort of attacking and the strategies, and rather than being sort of overcome by either brute strength or today's day and age, they actually get their roots planned for them with percentage golf, so they sort of this is the most effective way to play this golf course, and they're given that as a roadmap that they'll deviate from, but they'll use it a lot. I kind of wish
we weren't in that era. I'd rather watch a Nick Price show up and turnaball right, turnaball left, needs to spin, it needs to hit it low. I loved watching him play. I followed him a wack of times when I was younger, and he was a joy. But he also seemed to be making it up in the fly when he was playing really well because he could.
Yeah, and he came up with those ideas. And yes, it's inevitable that the game, the professional game, has gone where it's gone with the assurances of a team of experts helping you figure out what the optimal strategy for playing a golf course would be. But it does take some individuality out of it, and we've seen that across
many sports. It's happened profoundly in baseball in America. That's been maybe the most affected sport, but golf is not far behind, and you're certainly not alone in feeling less of an interest about it. What's so interesting about players like Mike Weir and Zach Johnson in fact, and why they might play well at an Augusta National, is that they became very good at figuring out when to be aggressive.
They picked their moments. They couldn't always be aggressive. What you see from some players now is that they can be aggressive all the time time because they hit it so far. If there's a hole where the design is resisting aggression, they almost don't care because they can be aggressive with it anyway. So they're not choosing their moments, they're not pushing and backing off. They're just full throttle,
going for it all the time. And there's something that is a little bit deadening about that repetition.
Agreed.
I mean, one of the joys of watching a Nick Faldo play was his ability to understand when not to. I don't know how else to express that, but he not only could he hit great shots under pressure, it seemed like the more pressure the better he was anyway, period, but his ability to understand that in tournament golf, find the fair way, find the green, find the par there was not that that's more compelling. I think we all
enjoyed birdies. And I think when Tiger had that amazing round of Pebble Beach, there wasn't anybody who didn't enjoy that. How could you not enjoy that? That was just I mean, even from an arctech's point of view, it was sad to watch Pebble take apart, but boy, it was fun to watch him do it.
Yeah, and.
We like, we like birdies, and sometimes there has been some events where it's too many pars or just some of the US Open setups are questionable. But yeah, when when even a US Open doesn't seem to.
They're just there.
It's a it's a tack mode. I appreciate the fact that they've got a the the fortitude to do it and be the skills to actually just drive the ball much straight and and hit great webshots, but it's not as watchable.
It is interesting to speak with you about this because you have prepared courses for the Canadian Open, and you've thought about the relationship between golf architecture and and modern professional play and uh, and so that's uh, that's again a bit of a digression, but but a fascinating one. I think it's time now to get into to Stanley Thompson. We've drifted for a bit, but let's talk about I think the greatest Canadian golf architect by by you know,
pretty wide consensus. Let's start with Stanley Thompson's early life. We can just touch on this briefly, but but where did he come from and and what were some of those early experiences that that ended up being important for him.
He was one of five brothers and they were known as the golfing Thompson's. Uh. Some great players amongst them the first pro of Hamilton, which was this year's Canadian Open was Nicol Thompson, his oldest brother, and probably.
Could be argued that he.
Was the first architect that either he or George Cumming who was at Toronto Golf. Stanley caddied at Toronto Golf and George Cumming was actually his early mentor.
So that's why.
Thompson coming in Thompson, which is Nicol Thompson, George Cumming and Stanley Thompson when he eventually went into architecture as the third member of that group that was his foundation. Stam was a great player. I think he got to a semi final if I remember correctly in the Canadian Amateur.
He was a scratch player early on, served in World War One and came back and then he started working for his brother and George in architecture and then eventually became a partner and they faced a decision in twenty one on.
This all happened super fast for him.
He was working on stuff like Branford on site doing construction and then Nicol and George sort of had to make the decision with where they're going to sell golf clubs and be golf pros. So they're going to be architects, and they both told they were at the top clubs in the country other than rural Montreal. Roal Montreal obviously is if not the top club, it's one of the
elite clubs in the country, still is. And they decided on the safety because they weren't sure how things were going to work out, and all of a sudden, Stanley ended up with the business and in twenty two. I'm trying to remember how he did, but I do know. I think it was twenty two. He did eight courses. He did now it's twenty three that he did eight golf courses, but he did forty golf courses before he
got to Jasper Park. Jasper Park is twenty five. Wow or sorry, Bam Springs wrong one Bamp Springs, which is twenty seven. So he did half of his entire catalog by the time he got to Bamp Springs, and so he was doing sort of a round eight golf courses
a year. At one point he had TransCanada Construction was his construction business, and there was a point where they talked about that there were two thousand men on the payroll and at that point, essentially he was initially building greens bunkers, teas and then just grassing properties and obviously felling trees as well, and everything was pretty rudimentary early on, but he did have some experienced people, so Colt was a huge influence.
Colt did Toronto Golf in fourteen.
It's funny I'd expressed the idea of there was a chance he would have seen it in construction, and then it's funny that got quoted in like five different books afterwards, and all I was saying was he was sixteen seventeen years old and working at Toronto Golf in the one that was on the east side of the city, and I just wondered if he would have gone over to have a look at it. So that's always been misconstrued. I do know they corresponded, because Jeff Cornish was able
to confirm that for me. I thought I understood they corresponded, and he said no, they corresponded.
All the way through.
And he was good friends with Charles Allison as well, who do work in Toronto. So Thompson got to see Toronto Golf, which was a landmark golf course for US, most important golf course that was ever built.
Harry Colt designed as Harry.
Colet designed it and Harry Colt was on site for it, and then he did Ancaster and he was on site a little bit for it, and Sutherland, who did the construction forum, ended up actually doing construction work with Stanley afterwards. And then you had some of the people that were on his early construction teams actually came out of the early construction that took place at Summit and Scarborough and
places like that. Some of the early rudimentary courses often done by coming and then Stanley ended up with all these experienced people. So I think some of the work has some of those experiences of what he saw and some of those experiences of the people he worked for. And then slowly over time leading into Jasper and then finally into Banf. His design ideas were evolving and pretty rapidly.
When you start to think about twenty two to twenty seven, and twenty seven is my allows wear on this sure, twenty seven is where I think he went. He went from being Stanley Thompson to as I like to say with a friend of mine when we're playing Stanley fucking Thompson. And at Banff he kind of showed I can do anything and everything I'm as good as anybody practicing. There's nobody I'm not as good as. And the interesting thing
is bamp what an expression. One hundred and forty bunkers, very dramatic, very elaborate, And then he never did anything as elaborate as that. Afterwards it was like it was like, Okay, I've done it. I've showed you, showed you every trick I have, and now I'm just going to go back to building better golf courses. Not that BAMFF isn't a better golf course. It's one of the five most important things he ever did. BAMF is the most flamboyant expression of anything he ever did, and there's sort of a
long journey towards it. And then after he sort of took it back a notch and realized that some gaps, some bunkerless holes, you know, expressing yourself and then actually sort of slowing things down visually and architecturally and then expressing yourself again actually has a bigger impact than just expressing yourself for eighteen holes that if you have a bit of a roller coaster of and what you're seeing,
and they're sort of highs and lows. The one thing that the Golden Age people did so well is the
breather hole. They use the breather hole to take the severity of what they were presenting down or set you up for something that's going to be visually spectacular, so you kind of they relax you, they slow the heart rate down, and then boom something super visual or something really hard, and it just it expresses that sort of a like one and a half times, because it's a comparison, right when we go from a narrow channel to a wide open space, the wide open space seems bigger. Frank
Lloyd Wright called that compression and release. Use it in his houses. But it's the same with architecture. If you make something hard and then make something easy and make something hard hard to easy, the easy feels easier and the easy to heart the heart feels harder. But if it was hard hard heart, it would just feel exactly the same. So it's just something that he did really well, that he pace things out after Baan springs a little bit more.
Yeah, I mean, I would say that the arc you're describing in Thompson's career could stand in for the arc of the Golden Age in general. This kind of push toward the Baroque, and then a slight backing off of that in the late twenties and early thirties as the depression descended. But then, of course that trend got cut short because they weren't building any more golf courses after
about nineteen thirty two or thirty three. Though Thompson did keep working through the depression and into the forties, unlike many many architects of the period. But I want to go back to his beginnings, his initial influences. Toronto just seems like such an engaging place in the nineteen tens and twenties for someone who's interested in golf and golf architecture to be because all of these huge figures came
to town to build golf course verses. We talk about London as being a hotbed of golf architecture and golf architecture discussion, the kind of intellectual ferment of the early nineteen hundreds where golf architecture was really reinvented. We talked about the Philadelphia School of golf Architecture. We talk about Los Angeles with George Thomas and others, being such a concentration of very talented artists. Toronto seems to be in there as a hotbed of golf architecture, and Thompson seems
to have come out of that. So what were some of the influences that you think he absorbed there as a kid? And then when he came back after World War One, as he said, things started moving very quickly. He came back in nineteen nineteen. I believe it would have been because that's when the war ended, and then by a few years later he was deep into many many projects as a golf architect. What would he have been influenced by in Toronto to at that time when it comes to golf course design?
So I'll step back slightly. I do know he saw Lynks courses when he was serving during the war, So.
Was he in did he go to England or was he saying links courses in the seaside in France and Netherlands or something.
I no, it'd be in England, Okay, So I would have to I know. And I also know he got up to Scotland because I know he talked about Glenn Eagles in particular when he was doing Jasper. He had a couple of interesting reference points. Sorry, I'm just not pulling the courses in particular, but I think during the war it was England, and I think at some point he got to Scotland because he did talk about Saint Andrew's. He also went early on in his career. I'm kind
of now jumping ahead on you. I apologize for this. I do know in the leading into Jasper he went to see a number of courses around the New York area because all of his meetings were in New York, for he had meeting Winnie de Capellana. He was in New York all the time, but he was also in New York as well for for other things. And obviously he was working in the States as well. So I mean in the early twenties he was he did a
bunch of work in Cleveland. But you've got Flynn courses in Cleveland, You've got Ross courses in Cleveland.
You've got I mean, you've.
Got great Flynn and Ross was there Cleveland, Cleveland Rocks.
Baby and architecture restorations and renovations that are being done there are are quite good. And I think that those those courses are going to re emerge in the coming years as as important as they are.
Yes, so I talked about Colt he had. He had both Hamilton and Toronto golf built. There. There are some early golf courses that were pretty good. Coming did the original Summit. The original nine holes at Summit was very good.
But you had Willie Park.
So Willie Park did Weston Park did a lot of stuff in Montreal.
Put it this way. His work on the original Dixie Course.
By the way, one of the great losses in all of Canadian golf is the Dixie Course, which is underneath the Montreal Airport. It was so good that Colt suggested that they don't move and just keep that facility. So Colt thought enough of and that was Willy Park's work, and he did Mount Bruno as well. Parker initially started in Toronto and ended up living in Montreal, so you had that influence you had. Tillinghass came up to do
the major renovation of Scarborough. I will say Cornish told me that a very Cornish is full of great stories when you get him talking about things. But he said Tillinghass was the only one he really didn't like, and it was because he lost the Scarborough job to him.
Oh okay, it wasn't just because he didn't like telling Hause personality. There are there are those who don't. You didn't like telling Hause personality. When you hear that somebody didn't like aw Telling House, it's not necessarily a surprise.
Yeah that's funny. Yeah that's true, isn't it.
Well? I think I think he had his hits and his missus at that time. So you had Charles Allison came through and did York Downs and I think that's twenty one or twenty two, and that was a dandy golf course. We've sort of been. You can actually go walk part of it. It's part of a park, but it was a really really good golf course and a really tight layer, very clever routing, and so you had some great early work taking place with some really important architects.
You also had he built a course for Devreau Emmett down in Windsor his construction company. He built York Downs actually for Charles Allison, so he was interacting with these people. Even built the Tillinghouse course at Niagara Falls, which I've never quite been able to put two and two together because that doesn't actually make sense to me in some ways. But I mean that's way earlier than the Scarborough Scarborough's twenty six, that course would be twenty two. I think
Niagara Falls Country Club. So he'd be seeing a lot of things. And then all you've got to do is cross borders. Like I mean, Buffalo is very close by us, and to go to Buffalo, you would have a country club at Buffalo, which is an unbelievably good ross course. You also have Allison's Park country Club. These are all just barely across the border and really excellent examples of architecture.
So I think all of that had some influence. And I think as he started to move into the Clevelands, or started to go out west or started to go at east, you start to run into more and more architecture. And Jeff Cornish said he paid attention to what everybody did and if it was really good, it actually gave him a little bit of depression. But if it gave him a little bit of depression, it also gave him
a little bit of incentive. Stanley had actually had depression issues, but it gave him a little incentive to sort of up his game. And I think part of what made him great over time a wasn't afraid to try different things.
He kept trying.
To evolve, and b was he was competitive enough to try and be better than he was last time, or try to be better than tilling Hast, or be better than other architects. He wanted to be Stanley f and Thompson, right, So he wanted to be sort of at the same level of his peers. He was very conscious of them.
If you were to compare and I want to get into this evolution of his style, and maybe we could do it by use saying a couple of golf courses as examples. If you were to compare his work at Jasper Park to his work at Banff Springs, where would you start in comparing and contrasting those two courses both mountain courses, right, and so in some ways they must be similar, but the outcome, the product is very different.
The two of those Oh they were built just a few years apart, and so what's the comparison and contrast between those two projects.
So the interesting thing with Jasper is just to sort of step one step back. He was starting to clear a little wider before this, but not much. And then when he got to Jasper, Jasper set in a massive, massive bowl between multiple mountain ranges and the thing he did there was he actually cleared not double what he normally did, but at least one and a half, if not one in three quarters than you have cleared before in the past.
And part of that was borrowed scenery.
He, by the way, super well read guy, and he was familiar with who capability Brown was in the idea of borrowed scenery and landscape.
So he cleared more you're saying more trees.
Oh, he cleared it about one and a half to one and three quarters. With of a normal clearing he would have done only a year or two before that. And he did the whole golf course that way. And the idea was when you're walking down the fairways, if you clear the trees further, you get a wider vista. And the other interesting thing that it's either urban legend or it is truly the masterpiece of masterpieces. All eighteen holes actually pointed a different mountain. So I'm going to
go with he's that brilliant. I don't know if it's happened.
Of mountains around, there's lots of peaks to work with.
The One argument is you could say a couple of them actually all line mid mountain and it's the sub the sub peaks or don't count.
Yeah, well, I like the argument for genius though, Yeah, I'll go.
With that anyway.
So, and what he did was he also built greens to a larger scale, but I would say only sort of one and a quarter one and a half times normal pretty big greens, like almost Trent jonesish in size for people if they want sort of perspective. Later Trent Jonesish, not the ten thousand that he was doing in the sixties,
but sort of the six, seven, even eight occasionally. And then he built really really massive bunkers and really large fairways, and he swung the fairways back and forth around the bunkers. The bunkers were I was able to obtain a complete set of photos of opening day, and the one thing that kind of struck me was the bunkers are actually simple. There were really almost no noses and capes. So if you think about Jasper now or you think about Banf, it's like what it was actually kind of simple, and
so everything worked on scale. But the one thing is when you see people in those old photos, they're dwarfed, and what it lacked was a bit of human scale. So he was hired to go renovate the and I know everybody says that the course after the initial course. The initial course was by a different Thompson and William Thompson, and then the new one was by Ross. But Ross laid it out and then they built it with labor from the war. It wasn't much. I have photos of that.
It was very rudimentary. Lay of the land looked like nothing.
Put it this way.
Ross wouldn't have been proud of what the end result was anyways, So Thompson went and rebuilt that and the first two holes, the last two holes if you're taking the original routing one two seventeen eighteen, they used to campground site and that linked it to the hotel which was there, not quite as big as it is now. And then he put a rooting together and then out walking he had discovered the cauldron. So that's seven eighty nine. That wasn't on the property he was supposed to use.
They actually had to change their lease agreement and then so he had his routing. But as he was working he instead of building, he cleared the same with but this time he rather than using a single bunker, used clusters of bunkers. And then rather than having smooth, simple edges, he started to put fingers. And the instruction that he used was he asked the men when they were building the mounds to look at particular peaks and they were
to emulate the ridge lines on those peaks. So they would build a rough version of that using horse drawn scrapers, and then they would rake it out. And he wasn't worried about duplicating it. There's some good absolute duplication out at Cape Breton, the Highlands that's remarkable. First hole in Ben Frannian behind is mind blowing. The backbridge is a duplicate. And there are some duplicates, but they're not a lot of them. You've really got to look for them. But
he did this. But the other thing was he then made very elaborate shapes on the interiors. They're very edgy, and they're much more elaborate than they even are now.
And one of the stories that Corners talked about was they were on a train coming back from Capilano and ended up talking about baff and he said that he would tell the men to look at how the ice pack was up in the mountains and emulate that, and emulate that and emulate that in that face, and that's how they got the edges, and that's why it was actually.
A pretty almost ripped torn edge what we.
Would call it today, that sort of that super loose or mackenzieish edge. If you look at the old photos of the fifth hole at Cypress Point, where they're supposed to emulate the tops of the trees, that's what all the bunkers look like at Bamf. Originally they were elaborate and the idea of that is if you put all the small flourishes and you break the bunkers up, you now put the golfer in human scale, so the golfer
can now relate to where they are. The strategies and the wits and the carry angles and the back and forth and the views are the same, but it's much more relatable and it worked way better. Yeah.
Well, it's a very interesting point that you make about scale and bunkers, because there's kind of a combination of scales that happens when you design the edges the way that Thompson did at Banff, where the whole bunker is big enough scaled up enough to compete with the land, right, it can't be so small that it seems dinky in comparison to the surrounding landforms, so it has to be
scaled up. But if it's just scaled up and plane, then you lose the human perspective and the part of it that helps humans access it right visually, I guess, And that's kind of what maybe the bunkers that at Jasper Park lacked before, was that combination of the scale that's big enough for the entire bunker to live up to the surroundings. Jasper had that, but then also the details that allow the human scale to be part of the picture as well.
It's really, really, really hard to do grand scale. I would say there's only been a handful of architects in history that can actually work in grand scale. Anytime you see anything in grand scale that works, it shows that they are from a peers perspective, they are better than we are good at what they do. Because I've watched a whole series of architects, I've even tried to do some stuff myself by circumstances, and it's really hard not to.
There's a lot of pressure at a grand scale to get every detail right, whereas if you're in a small scale it's got enough sort of nooks and crannies and intimate things going on anyway that on a small scale you can get away with a lot more mistakes or underperformance or lack of flourish because actually scale, the smaller scale in itself provides some intimacy, and the intimacy becomes relatable, and so it always small scale is easier to do. Grand scale, it's very easy to sort of lose the
composition to the scale. Sure, And that's why you look at Yale. I assume you've been to Yale. Yale is just it anybody who says Rainer or Banks, but more so Rainer that anybody sort of underplays his skill set.
First of all, look at all those rootings.
But they don't they don't understand that that scale. And so he's working with telate templates. But it always fits. And it's fucking hard to get something that grand and bold to fit without it just being grand and bold and crap.
Right, And it's at yeah, it is. I mean that the proportions of that course are pretty much flawless. He was great at it. Obviously. Thompson demonstrated that that he could do it at Banff. I would say probably Alistair Mackenzie worked well on a grand scale as well, was able to build landforms, artificial landforms that didn't feel outrageous but felt grand enough to live up to a property like pasitim those Are there other architects that you think are good examples of this?
I think sometimes they've done it, so, you know, I think Ross's work at Oakland Hills, Yes, you know. I like a place like Salem for the smallness and sharpness. But I look at Oakland Hills and go, this is the same guy, like you are just you are so good, and then you do pineher Well. I know everybody talks about Pinehursts. Number two is sort of a what is original? What is not? So why don't I go to Essex?
But Essex is so different than Salem, which is around the corner, which are both so different than Oakland Hills. I mean, oh my god, is he? And then Seminole is a whole other visual feast that's on another different, diferent level.
Like Ross just mixed it. That's the biggest thing.
I think Ross mixed it up so well, and I think if we're really poor it explaining one thing. As historians are interested in architecture. I don't think we ever give Ross the full credit for that unbelievably wide palette that he could paint in. He could do it in four or five ways.
Yeah, and you know, the pieces of land are so different. Pinehurst number two you'd also have to throw into that mix as a place where he just again took a different approach. And it's funny how different restoration architects seemed to be well suited to different types of Ross. Where you know, at Pinehurst number two, maybe no one but Corn Crenshaw could have done that restoration as well, and maybe the same could be said of Seminole at Oakland Hills.
I'm very glad that Hans's team handled that work there because yes, those bunkers on the par three ninth hole, on the par three seventeenth hole, which are set into such massive landforms, seem perfectly in proportion and the picture is in balance.
And I know there's going to be four or five different architects because I know all the bigger player as well, who would be pissed off me for saying that, But only Gil could do that particular job. I actually think Gil's one of the few that can really get out there with scale and get away with it.
Yeah, Gil and of course his design partner Jim Wagner combined in wonderful ways to pull off those visuals and make it truly look and feel like, you know, the historical photos that you're looking at, which is not an easy thing to do, but well.
You're right there.
I think that's an important thing that's kind of lost an arch check. I'm just going to go sideways for a quick side. Yeah.
Absolutely.
I always loved Bill Core's comment about Pacific Dunes of only Tom could have built Pacific Dunes, and that's said is a high compliment, And I do think you're right. I do think there are horses for courses, and whether it's restoration or even whether it's original, I just think that there are there are moments where they're the right person. I think the melding of Bill and Ben at sand Hills Perry Maxwell. One of my ultimate favorite golf courses
in the entire world is Perry Dunes. A I have a warm If you asked me for what is the quintessential American course, it's actually what I would choose because it expresses that site better than any other piece of architecture I can think of. It is absolutely about that site. But again, Perry Maxwell, God, I wish he had more opportunity than he did. I think we would have appreciated him like an Alistair Mackenzie. And I do think Alistair
is sitting on our Mount Rushmore. I think every architect has to start with him and Colt there and then it's just a question of where you go from there.
Right, Yeah, So all the branches kind of go out from there, and and certainly Perry Maxwell's is part of that Mackenzie tree. You can see the influence that working with Mackenzie had on him, Uh, you know, from Crystal Downs, then to his work at Prairie Dunes on the original nine hole course, which is maybe the best set of golf holes ever put in the ground in America, and
then Old Town, one of the best design courses anywhere. There's, uh, there's these these influences, and then Perry Maxwell jumps over time to Core and Crenshaw and that that line of influence firmly intersects with with them. We have we we've certainly gone sideways, as you say, but I love going Yeah, I mean, it's well, it's maybe I shouldn't be resisting it as much as I am. I do want to eventually get lead us back to Stanley Thompson and uh
in some way. There are other courses to talk about, and indeed courses where you have worked and done restorings and renovations. And I want to make sure to mention that it's news to me. I mean, you're currently working on projects at a few different interesting Stanley Thompson golf courses. I want to mention quickly Sleepy Hollow golf Course in Cleveland. Have I heard that you're involved in something there?
Now?
I know it's a long term thing because you're working with Cleveland metro Parks and these things take time, but what's the nature of what you're trying to do there?
So essentially to be very frank to get them to the next stage. So I've given them a master plan which does include even some restoration work for bunkers, but I will not be the one doing it. They've probably got ten years of clearing to do.
Yeah, and so I see on your master plan is a lot of a lot of trees that need to.
They have a time to do. And it was golf course built on an enormous scale. Historically, you could argue it's not eighteen holes of Stanley. There is sort of a history, so you're kind of nine and nine. But he he did do work on the other nine. There's definitely nine holes of his. There is one of the all time great One of the things Stanley was great at was super long part threes. There is one of the all time greatest long part threes he ever did.
Currently played as eleven. I can't even imagine playing that as too. So the idea is we're going to open up so you'll see more of the land. We've started to open up the canyon hole. They've actually got a canyon with a waterfall that the waterfalls now exposed. But the epic second shot on that hole will be spectacular when it's finally opened up. So they're going to clear trees there and then, as I said, I think it's going to be in house, So I think going to
take them about ten years to get there. I'll just be super frank. I won't be working at that point, so which is fine. When we put everything together, I was I'm not sure if I said that to them, but I think I did say that to them. Essentially just clear they know, clear trees until you're done, and then and then at that point you can they do it.
They should rebuild one of the greens in particular, and not because it's too steep or anything like that, but one of thos been altered too much, and then it could use a bunker job. And then I think it's one of the best public golf courses you'll find anywhere. I mean, it would be a good example of his work. The scale is Jasper Bamp. It's overwhelming. The land is spectacularly rolling. It's got to be two hundred and fifty acres that side.
It might be more.
It'll probably be a good example of how trees shut down scale or high it, you know, and as you start to expose that property it becomes very big. That's something for people to keep an eye on. I think Sleepy Hollow is already a pleasure to play, a great municipal golf course designed by Stanley Thompson right there in Cleveland, available to all, and hopefully they take that master plan that you drew up seriously and gradually implement it as
they're as they're able. At Bamp Springs, my understanding is that there's some work potentially happening there as well. What can you tell me about that?
So at the moment, I can give you a visual Oh look.
At this, So for for audio only listeners, was showing me a plan. You're you're you're you're an artist in addition to a golf architect, by the way, and so that the plans you draw on your paintings are are all visually striking.
But that's which is which is awesome in radio.
Yeah, Well, we've started to post these podcasts on YouTube as well, so as maybe people can see it there.
Anyways, they hired me this year to help them restore bunkers. So they had started to do some work in house, and I think they faced some minor criticism about some of the work or had some questions about some of the work, and so they hired me to come out. And I've got a tremendous amount of archival information about the golf course, and so I spent six days going over the golf course and going over bunker by bunker what should be done in every individual bunker so they
can they can restore it. So they've done some and then in the process I just sort of I've given them a grassing The grassing lines have kind of come in a bit, and particularly in some spots badly, and so the idea is to push the grassing lines back out. They're really receptive to going at that right away. And then the other thing is some tree removal where trees are starting to impinge on corridors there, impinge upon the quality of the bunkering or even turf health. That's actually
a little harder because it's Parks Canada. It's a Parks property. Most of it's okay, but anytime we run into Douglas firs, the Parks Canada is really reluctant to take a Douglas fern. And the Seventh Green not any original writing. The current seventh Green on the Thompson eighteen. It's all Douglas Firs around that green site. And it's actually the biggest problem we've got for turf health and bunker health. So we'll see how we do on that. I have an alternative
for how to deal with that. But essentially that's the plan is just so they can go ahead. Some of the things that have been put in by other architects. We're going to get rid of a few things. The greens are renovated, so I'm trying to deal with the fact that when they renovate them, they actually built on top of them. So some of the depths are wrong.
Sometimes we're just going to leave that alone. Other times we're going to fix that because the relationship doesn't work and the banks don't work anymore, so we'll just fix that all up. Also trying to get them to expose some of the river views that they're losing or have lost. We've just got to make sure that we're not overstepping our bounds with them on that one, because the Bow
River is super important. It's a very healthy river with trout and really a wonderful river, so it's really important. But just going through a process on that where they're comfortable with what we're doing.
So that's just started off.
I'll finish off the planning part of it probably this winter.
That was kind of our arrangement.
And so, yeah, I was in the middle of the fairway of the one day on one of the wholes, and all I could think of was it was what I always wanted to do, was to work at bamf Springs. And I got a little emotional at the time and just thought, I can't I can't believe I'm I get the privilege to do this. So there are little moments, you know, it's funny as an architect sometimes you can we're really bad sometimes at lamenting the things we don't
get to do. But I mean, God, the chance to work at BAMF Springs and then we'll probably end up talking about cap Breton Highlands. I got a chance to restore that. I mean, if you ask me when I was young what I hope to do, we're touching on it.
So yeah, yeah, those are the two courses. I mean, there's, at least from my perspective as an American, there's no
more iconic golf course than BAMF Springs. But it has been known for a while that it's in need of some nips and tucks, some TLC, some return to the past, and so let's hope that they're able to get there while keeping in balance their relationship with the surrounding environment, which is obviously very important as well, but obviously one of the most gorgeous golf courses in the world, and so let's hope that they can improve the bed.
So BAMF is the highest expression of his bunkering, there is no I mean, unfortunately, I work with Saint George's, which is a really good one too, and Caps incredible, but BAMF Springs is sort of that watershed moment where he expressed himself as flamboyantly as he possibly could. And I just I think when we've got things like that, you really want to present it. You know, he's better than most of us, so shouldn't his architecture be completely expressed.
And then that's a great example for other architects to go and see, our players, to go and enjoy, just to get a real true feel of how good he was. And so that's why I think the restoration of Vams critical for Canadian golf.
Well Ian, let's wrap up here with some discussion of late career Thompson or later career Stanley Thompson. Two courses. I wanted to get to where Capilano and Cape Breton
Highland's links, both of which you're very familiar with. And I don't know if there's a way to discuss these courses together, but as a way of setting this up, we've touched on this earlier, but there's a way that Stanley Thompson's career kind of tracks the arcs of golf architecture in the Golden Age and after he became increasingly bold, flamboyant, baroque, even toward the late twenties as he was unleashed and exposed to different and exciting forms of golf architecture, and
perhaps Bamf Springs Saint George's which you mentioned, represent that period in Thompson's career and that period in Golden Age architecture. We see Alistair Mackenzie moving in much the same direction in California around the same time, getting to the point at Pasatiempo where the visuals are quite over the top even in places. But then as the depression was approaching, there was some pullback, maybe some return to more minimal approaches.
Augusta National famously didn't have many bunkers when it opened, so those bunkers were very bold and the greens were very bold, but there was less aggression, I guess, in the style of that course than what you see in Pasatiempo. And so Stanley Thompson we can follow through the thirties
because he kept doing work. He kept doing important projects during that period, so he's one of the few architects we can talk about as kind of continuing some threads from the Golden Age and exploring where that was going to go next. Perry Maxwell, same deal, continued to work in the thirties. We saw what his work was like
Langford and Moreau to an extent the same thing. Stanley Thompson is one of those interesting architects where we can see the evolution of his style continue even after the depression, and we can't say that about many golf architects of his period. So when you look at Capitalano and you look at Cape Britton, Hiland's links, what do you see? How do you place those courses in the evolution of his career and style.
So there were five courses that sort of came one after the other, and that was Jasper Led to bam Fled to Saint George's and then interestingly enough, right when he finished Saint George's he got hired to do Caplano. Cap Plano actually took a long time, took a lot longer because it's a six thousand acre development as well,
and it was owned by the Guinness family. So the one reason he had money and the ability to build Capilano and had the financial wherewithal was the fact that the Guinness family was actually the financial backstop to that project. So when he was building Cap Cap Capilano, he got
to pick the routing. So he picked the property off of six thousand acres and the rooting actually drops three hundred and eighty feet, so it drops through the first six holes and then it sort of benches its way back up and then you finished the final holes at the bowl above. The interesting I'm going to go slightly sideways on it. The interesting thing about Cap is he didn't walk you straight down six holes. He walked you
down then walked you across. And the reason is is your legs would wear out if you walk six holes straight down, and just like your legs would wear out if you walk six straight holes. And the brilliance in that rooting is that actually works its way down by going sidehill for a while and then drops, and then when it goes up, it goes up, and then side hill and goes up, and then goes side hill and goes up.
And like the hiking path, sorry, it's like a hiking path, like a good hiking path, or is.
Bill Corraways like to say, if you ever want to know how to get up a hill, look for the cattle trail. It's usually diagonally across the hill. The and the one of the interesting decisions he made about the golf course was rather than building an enormous amount of bunkering, you know, you get to the second green site, there's no bunkers. And he mixed it up. He had a bit of bunkering on the first, not too much on two,
a lot on three. Four was a part three there was a lot more, and he just kind of flexed back and he just didn't really turn to bunkering as much. And because it was a really interesting piece of land, because it was severe, he often just kind of leaned into the landforms or the way the holes benched in, and so there was much less use of bunkering, and he allowed sort of the whole larger setting to take
a larger role in the architecture. So you know, he would choose a plateau green site and then rather than bunkering living daylights out of it, it would be a plateau green site. And what was fascinating is when he got to Caperton Highlands, it was the same thing. He was actually chasing topsoil. In the routing. There are five holes without any bunkers at all, which sounds like a lot, but you don't notice it when you play it.
You have to be told that to notice it.
But the interesting thing about that was he took an even greater step back from the land and he let the land dictate the strategies and play, and then he bunkered to reinforce. That felt like being elaborate. So some of the green sites, like fifteen, there's an enormous round
of bunkers. On other holes, like the thirteenth hole, which just happens to be my favorite, there's a big knoll in the middle of the fairway and the green sits behind it, and the knoll is you have to figure out, am I going to hit the top of the knoll? Am I going to try to play right of it? Left of it? What am I going to do? But the shot in is not in the air, it's on
the ground. You've got to either play really left off the tee and try to play up the valley, or try to use the feeder or try to bounce it. I'd like to try to bounce it off the top because if you can hit the crown of it. It actually always feeds dead center of the green. But there are so many holes where there may be bunkering on the holes, but the bunkering is a framework, and it's a visual framework. But what matters is the steep slope, and often those are cut short.
And everything there was cut short. He was like a gusty.
He mowed out to the forest lines and it was just a uniform cut. It was greens, a uniform cut and teas, And even then I would argue that when I played it in eighty one, when I was a kid, I would argue that teas were the same height as the fairways, that it was a uniform cut until you got to the greens. But he allowed the land to
He didn't need to impose himself in the architecture. As time went on, he took he had a lighter and lighter hand, He took a less aggressive approach, and in many ways, Cape Breton Highlands is my favorite because it's just a really interesting mix of whole types and architecture. And Saint George's is harder, but it was meant for a Canadian open At Highlands, there are easy holes. There's lots of drivable stuff. There's he kind of backed off.
He kind of said, you got to see this proper, and God, you're going to have fun seeing this property. And the super cool thing about the rooting at Highlands is one of my favorite things in all of his work. Is you play along the headlands and you end up down at the ocean, so you slowly make your way
to the ocean. You actually play ocean side holes, and then there's an enormous walk and you find yourself in this massive mountain valley and you play over the kind of over the pass, and then you've got this long walk, and then you play into the Clybourne Brook, this beautiful pastoral valley, and then you've got probably the greatest walk in golf that's not a golf hole is from twelve to thirteen, you actually walk up the brook on a it's cliff on the right of you, it's rushing river
on the left of you, and you're literally you feel like you're hanging in the balance half the time. And then you play over this rumply crazy land for the next set, and then you get to the church on fifteen. Most people usually stop. I always like to stop it's a Catholic church. I'm not Catholic, and I'm not that religious either, but it's a charming thing to just look in smile. I always find there's something. I'd get out
of that and then walk to the next tee. But again, and now you're back in the uplands where you started the first couple of holes, or the headlands. But it reads like a book, and the interesting thing is it shows you actually every landscape that's in Cape Bretton Island, but in a golf course, in a series of chapters, and it I don't know if he meant to do it or again, if it's happenstance. Let's choose to say
that he was a genius if he could. If he actually figured that out, then he is on an elite level genius for choosing to actually space things out.
I kind of know that he was chasing.
Topsail, so I think it was actually there was a long walk between the next section of topsail, because he was going from sort of old farmstead to old farmstead up at the Headlands was land. The interesting thing was where the park who hired him to do the he talked to the Canadian government into funding it and believe it or not, had a one almed moment the Prime Minister of the.
Day and got it approved.
And so it tells you he was a larger in life character. He was supposed to actually do the whole golf course on the headland, and he figured out he couldn't do it with the money he had because there was no soil.
And he turned around.
And the sad note that goes with this is they actually expropriated twenty seven families for their land to build the best course. So I got admit, But when I started to learn the whole history of it and understood it well. And the interesting thing is when I'm working on the renovation for the people on the crew, their families were expropriated. Wow. So I actually had a with
Parks Canada. They had me actually talk about the importance and I did choose to address the expropriation and how inappropriate it was and how it's actually something while it the golf course is important to the town that it was inappropriate. And I'm actually semi disappointed right that that took place. I felt that they deserved an apology because it never should have happened.
Yeah, but yeah, I mean, it's one of those things where you need to talk about both. You can talk about the genius of the design of the course, but you must also talk about the human cost if there is a human cost.
Yeah, and it's one of those rare moments where there was a human cost for the golf course.
Yeah, that's a shame. Well, I mean to take it back to a philosophical question about about golf architecture. Often it is said that long green to tea walks are not ideal for a golf course, and that the architect should endeavor to bring the greens and teas closer together on a walking course especially. But from what I've heard of Highland's Links, and it's not a course I've been to, I'd very much like to go there. It's on It's
near the top of my bucket list. In fact, from what I've heard, the walks are part of the round and that's what makes them work. And I think it's the same deal at Bandoned Trails, Corn Crenshaw's first bandoned course, where there are some long walks between greens and teas.
But the walks themselves are so inherently beautiful. First of all, they're great little hikes, and also they're well timed in the round, where they represent some kind of interlude or breakage between narrative components of the routing different pieces of land, and so the round gets broken into these phases. And this is you we're using the metaphor of a novel.
This is where it starts to feel like that, where there's a kind of pacing, there's an individual chapter, and then you put the bookmark in for a bit and go off somewhere else, and then you return and there's something different, but it's still part of the same story. It works that way abandoned trails, and I wouldn't want to get rid of those walks. I think Highland's length sounds like there is a similar dynamic, and there has
to be at least some intention behind that. It can't just be accidental.
I'd like to believe it's not, but put it this way, it does actually seem to break it up into logical sections, and I do think it becomes part of the experience. The only thing I wish is I got to walk over the old swinging bridge that went from the Tenth Green to the eleventh Tea, and that was part of the experience. Too, and I kind of I rwe the loss of that for what it meant because there was a little bit of a walk there. But the swinging bridge, I got my dad actually yelling at me that I
got it bouncing so high. It was part of the joy of the whole place because he had built barbecue pit. He had built all these wooden structures as part of the project, and so they're there. They did the same at Jasper, and Jasper obviously had the fire recently, and I'm really sad to say that all the structures are actually burnt, so that kind of that was trying to see.
So golf course will be back.
It'll take time, but it's a shame, although I think you can. All you need is good photos and a good carpenter. Put it this way, if I retire that actually I'm handy, so that would be something i'd love to do. If that's the case, maybe.
You build some houses and some shops and.
I don't need to rebuilt houses. I don't need to ever do that again.
But I did that with friends when I was in my early twenties. But I would, Yeah, building building those structures would actually be kind of fun. I think I could enjoy that. I could. I love Jasper Town.
Yeah. If people don't know, they suffered a terrifying wildfire earlier earlier this year, and it was very threatening to the golf course. But it seems as though the town suffered more than the golf course. But the hope is eventually both will bounce back.
Both will, no question about that. They're already.
I think they're trying to fast track all the construction for the town. The golf course is going to take a bit of work to get it back up and going. They everything that's stand, all the ground features, there's nothing affected whatsoever. There's a lot of tree loss, and they'll have to address that. Actually they've started to address that. I exchanged emails with the the the assistant super just today. But they've got a lot of work to sort of
get up and going. The fire affected their irrigation system, so they've got a lot to deal with.
Are you working with them or just kind of casually advising them.
I am casually advising them. If they would like something formal, then I would work with them and then donate my time back to the town. My wife and I the first day we were married was we were in Jasper So just a special place to you, Jasper holds and it's I've always said, if I had one round to play, I've said this five or six different times in different
media places. If I had won round to play, I'd actually choose Jasper Park, even though I've had the glorious opportunity to play some courses that I think other people would choose wish to play. It is the place that moves me the most. And part of it is just I actually like the valley, Jasper Valley. So to go there and see that the valley is, you know, there's
thirty or forty thousand square miles of burnt forest. It's quite something to see, considering I had only been hiking there the previous fall with my wife, and i'd actually played golf there a month before it happened.
Right, So a sad trend in many wild places these days. Well, dealing with fires.
I'm trying to remember the golf course just outside of La done by Jeff Shackelford and Gil.
Rest of Kenna.
Thank you Rest of Cannon. As I said, I'm terrible at names.
You remember the architects though, Yeah.
Well it's funny. I can always gravitate to something. But it's like the yeah, the whole William Flynn thing and Dick Wilson.
But I remember seeing it.
I saw it after it got burned, and I saw it in more recent times and it's amazing what a recovery nature will do given it.
So you can barely tell yeah, yeah, yeah, it's it's remarkable.
By the way, super cool place. If anybody's is amazing, find themselves near La looking for a round of golf. That is a must play, absolutely must play.
One of my favorite public golf courses. We've talked about it a good bit on the podcast before, and I grew up about an hour and a half away, so at a special course. But for sure, you know, subject to the wildfires that many Californian courses are. So to wrap up here, Ian, you've mentioned a couple of times
your your plans for your retirement. Another thing that you mentioned off off the podcast that you might tackle during your retirement is your book about Stanley Thompson, which you've written quite a bit of to the point where you were able to distribute a few copies of it earlier this year on a limited basis. But what are your plans for that book, and what will it eventually look like.
Actually, at the moment there are no plans.
You're pretty busy with golfers.
But it should be.
Said, it's written, it could use it could use a professional editor, it could look it could use somebody. Looking at the collection of photos I've got in there, I think stand on their own. They're they're terrific. So I think what you'd like to see visually? I could use some advice, probably from a couple of writers on whether the narrative that I'm sharing is interesting or whether I need to actually go somewhere else with it. I've done one of the paintings for it. I was going to
do a watercolor of all five courses. I have a great one of Saint George's that I'm really proud of. It's probably the best golf course painting I've ever done. That one I'll use. I've tried to do a couple of the others, but without success. But my skills are improving, so I'll get back to that. As weird as it sounds, I'm way better at cats than birds. So I took lessons in twenty twenty with a wildlife artist and I'm very comfortable with birds. Golf is hard comparatively because it's
tones right, But yeah, I probably will finish it. My son's in the middle of writing a novel and we were talking about his and he's going to put his online.
And it's shockingly.
Good too, So I really I use halfway through, and I'm actually frustrated that I can't read the remainder. And I'm not trying to sell sort of my son or give you the father thing. I'm actually surprised at how good it is. And he was talking about putting it online. And I actually think nowadays, rather than publishing it, I think I would digitally publish it and just make it available. And I think what I would probably do if I get interested, so I may pivot.
Every winter.
I've got lots of time. I could put it online and then just link it to PayPal for donations. If I got so incentivized to actually do something this fall. If that was what sort of all of a sudden caught me, because I kind of every winner, I kind of go in a direction. And if I did that, then I could actually do something where you could donate to something like food Bank or Jasper if they need something to sort of get them going. Or we have six nations beside us here that would be a good
place to donate as well. There's programs that they could use it.
All right, well, Ian, we have a lot more to talk about, certainly, and I'd love to have you back sometime to explore more. But let's wrap up there. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast and talking about Stanley Thompson as well as other subjects.
Apologizing for all the sideways diversions, but I really appreciate the opportunity to talk with you, and I hope some people get more interested in playing his work. I would encourage anybody loves golf to go and play Stanley's work.
This episode of the Frida Egg Golf Podcast was produced by PJ Clark. Thank you PJ again. If you'd like to check out Club TFE, the url is the Frida Egg dot com slash membership. We're really excited about what's going on in there, so come join us. Thank you for listening, and we'll be back again soon with another episode.