Welcome back to another edition of the Frida Egg Podcast. Today's episode is brought to you by Toro. For more than a century with cutting edge turf equipment and irrigation solutions, Toro has had your front nine covered and your back nine two. In fact, Toro's always had your back period. Toro is has committed to your long term success as
tour pros are committed to their shot. That's down to top notch customer support from Toro and has dedicated local distributors, both of whom are passionate about delivering turf equipment and irrigation solutions that solve real world problems. Follow at Toro Golf on Twitter and reach out to your local Toro distributor. Today, I am excited to release today's episode of the Superintendent series. Today we have Roger Noll on the podcast. Roger is a legend in Saint Louis. He is a retired golf
course superintendent. He now does golf architecture work in the area, but he has worked at about twenty Saint Louis area clubs in total, worked about five of them as a superintendent, and then he has been a consulting architect at a bunch. As well as being a superintendent. He is a great player in his own right. He won the Superintendent championship a few times. You know, a few other times he he had chances to win, but he chose to do
other things. It's a great story. Roger's got tons of tons of information, wealth of information, knowledge on many subjects in golf, and all around great guy. Here is our episode with Roger Noll. I miss the green, for example, I'm already upset. When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
And when I find my ball in.
A brid egg Friday egg the dread and Frida egg Frida egg Frida egggg fridagg bride egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the hup here you've been. I started that when I was at one of my wife's family's weddings and I asked everybody all night long what your favorite fruit was. People got so into it, you know, people were you know, everybody's got an opinion on that.
Sure.
Why is peach the best?
Ah? I don't know. It's sweet, juicy, it's hard to peel. That's the only downside.
You peel the peach. You don't just eat the bus.
No, I'm not a fuzzy eater. So I peeled the peach and it's awesome on ice cream.
It's good about ice cream, vanilla ice cream, all ice cream peach. That's Uh. How do you get started here?
I couldn't.
I've obviously known you now for a while. Uh. And then I'm at the g I S Show and I'm looking at this wall of all the all the champions of the Superintendent Golf Tournament, and I just see Roger and Noll, Roger and Roger and Noll, Roger and all. You say you only wanted three times. I saw your name up there at least six.
Not really, but I did win three.
They might be they might be giving you more titles than you think you want.
I'll take them, you know. So win's a win, right.
How did you start playing golf?
I started back? Well, my big brother played, I haven't. I had an older brother that was a good player, good junior player, and you know, you always want to do what your older brother does. We were a big sports family. My dad was a football coach and my brother went on to be actually an Iowa Hall of Fame football coach. And so I think it was twelve years old, just finished Little league baseball and I wasn't sure what I was going to do for the summer, and my dad said, you can either play golf or
go to the next league in baseball. And I said, I'm going to play golf this summer. And that's what I ended up doing. A little nine hole course in Iowa and Lamars, Iowa, a WPA course that they built back then. Cool little nine and folks would just drop me off there in the morning and picked me up late at night. I'd help around the pro shop or I used to change cups once in a while, stuff like that, shag balls for the basketball coach who was
the pro would give lessons, and that was it. Just kept playing golf.
Golf course still around.
It is. Actually two years ago. I went back from my brother's funeral and went up with my nephew, Mike Nall, who's also a superintendent at Norwoodale's Country Club here in Saint Louis. We drove up. I hadn't been back, oh, I don't know, for years and years, and it's still there. But they built another eighteen I couldn't tell you what year, but they kept the old nine and it still looked the same.
Is the old Knight is a good nine?
Yeah it is. It was. Really it was a fun nine. The first three holes. The first hole is a short part four that when you got older you could drive. You could drive the green. Second hole was the bottom of kind of a triangle, a part three, and then the third hole would come back to the clubhouse pretty good slight dog leg left part four. And when we were kids, there would always be an argument on the third green. The guys that played good wanted to keep going.
The guys that had a bad start, they want to all go start over, you know, so you could fight over what you were going to do.
It's a perfect way to settle a match that was tied too. You play the three holes absolutely like a little late night loop.
Yeah. Right.
So then, so you played, you played football, You got a football scholarship right.
When after my sophomore year, my dad was out of the coaching business and bought a feed store in early Iowa, which was just a very small town about seventy miles east of Lamars and Sioux City. My graduate a R. L E. Y.
Right, Yeah, I've seen the sign.
Yeah. My graduating class was twenty four boys and four girls. But we had a hell of a football team.
Slim peckens, you know, on the dating scene.
We were undefeated, number one in our division in the state. And yeah, I got a football scholarship at a small school back at Lamars where I played played a year and a half I got there was about four of us. It was kind of a strict church school, a religious school. Uh, and the athletic director and coach caught us drinking beer the night before a game. So I lost my scholarship for that year, and so didn't have a lot of money.
So I quit at the end of the semester. And the summer before i'd been working at Sioux City Country Club. I don't know who did it, but it's an old, old golf course, and so I went back there and worked and didn't really know what I was going to do. And the superintendent said, you ought to go to Iowa State and get into turf. And I was kind of what they calls turf. I really didn't know, but I took a chance, and that's how it all got started. Really.
So wait, year was that, Well, let's see, I graduated from high school sixty two, sixty four, yeah, been sixty four, right, Yeah, because I went there for three years, kind of ran out of money, needed a job. My advisor. I'd had all my turf, my soil classes, agonomic classes and horticulture, all this stuff just had, you know, some other junk
I had to take. So my advisor got me an assistant job at the Rocket kind of an arsenal golf club in sixty seven, and halfway through the year, the older superintendent's wife passed away and he really didn't want to keep doing it, so they gave me the job as superintendent or back then it was greenskeeper. We weren't superintendents in those days.
When did that change?
Oh man, good question. Sixty seven, Probably not too long after, probably around the seventy be my guess. That's a good question. Though I can't remember. All I remember is I can't figure out why because and I don't know why we're superintendents or director of agronomy or whatever. We're just caretakers of the of the golf course. You know.
It's so you're like twenty three and you got your running a golf course.
Yep. I had no idea what the hell I was doing.
Anything. You look back on now, and I think, OK, I mean, I'm sure there's a lot of things, anything just egregious or is there anything also on the flip side that you did really well that you don't have no clue why you did that?
Right? No, And I think it was my golf background because I was playing until we moved to Early. I played high school golf and then Early didn't have any But Iowa has a tremendous tournament schedule. On all these little nine hole courses you could play. You could play one tournament on Saturday and go to another town and play another one on Sunday. They'd be nine whole course, you'd play twenty seven holes. You'd go around at three
times and that was the tournament. Then they had, you know, their majors, the State Am and the Northwest Am and the Lake forget what the name of it, but several bigger tournaments that were fifty four holes. And so I played a lot of competitive golf, and I think that's what held it together in my first few years as a greenskeeper, that I knew what it should look like and I knew how I wanted it to play, and
it had to help you with membership too. Absolutely. You know, I was single in so you know, after work, I would you know, go home, clean up and then come back in the evening and play. And I used to play in the evening. There was this dentist that used to come out in the evening, was a real good player,
played in a USAM once. His name was doctor Paul Barton, and he was close friends with Jack Fleck and actually came edi'd for Jack Fleck when he when Fleck beat Ben Hogan in the opening Olympic Club unbelievable, pretty cool. And he kind of mentored me. He would. I'd go over and have dinner with he and his wife every now and and you know, he kind of refined my golf. You know, I was, you know, growing up in a
little town and Iowa, you just play. You didn't know much about the game, so he taught me quite a bit.
Yeah, it's amazing. I even look now like when I see kids playing, how much like little things they just don't know about the game of golf. And it's just it's crazy how I feel like everybody had, every good player has like a player, an older you know, person in their life that helped them learn how to play. Golf, you know, because there's so many things you just don't learn.
And the other, you know, that first year, the other neat thing that happened when they gave me the job. Obviously, I was scared, didn't know what the hell was going on, and that I don't know whether it was the first day that I was soup or greens keeper head greenskeeper, or that week. I know it was the first week they had one of their big member guests, and or maybe as a member member tournament. I don't really recall. But afterwards I happened to be walking through the locker
room and the first guy ran into it. I still remember his name, Whitey Barnard. He was the club champion at the time, and he just lit into me, telling me that it was the worst golf course he'd ever seen it, He's never seen it in worse shape. I mean, I wanted to crawl the locker and he went on through, and then the next guy came through named Donalndah. He was a higher handicap and he went on and on how great the golf course was, how perfect, and I'm like,
what the hill. So I go down to the pro shop and talk to the fro and I'm tell him, he says, all that's per simply said White. He just shot eighty and Don Loundell just shot his best score ever seventy six and beat him out of X amount of dollars. And it was a good lesson right there that you know, you just put your head down and do what you think is right.
And so what was different about it that that forced those reactions were created?
And do you know, well the one played Club Champions shoots eight. He played terrible, so he's pissed off. And Don Londell, who was I think like a twelve or fourteen? I would guess it was just.
Anny thing with the golf course. No, just think it's just the perception is how they played.
The perception how they played.
It's an amazing thing in America. How how golfers so much of their golf experience and what they think of a golf course or an experience at a golf course revolves around how they personally play right.
And you got to realize that, you know, in nineteen sixty seven, you know, what was considered good is a lot different than the day. I mean, you know, golf courses were rougher back then green speeds were slower. You know, there's no irrigation in the in the roughs, which you know my opinion there shouldn't be anyway.
So yeah, talk about talk about all the changes we can get, kind of go along the career path more. But I'm curious about, you know, what would have been the biggest changes that you've seen in the turf over over your time in it. Obviously you know technology is a big thing.
But yeah, I mean probably five ten years ago, I would have said equipment. You know, the tools we have, but you know, they kind of the demands they evolved the same as the golf course has evolved as far as conden conditioning and demands that the public wants, what the golfer wants. But I would say the biggest difference
right now is access to information technology. I mean, these guys here in Saint Louis, I don't know how many are on their group text, but you know, if they if something's going on on the green that they don't know, I mean, they'll just text it out everybody in town. You know, somebody knows, or going to the GCSA website finding answers or just googling answers. I mean it's you know, in my day, you'd have to pick up a phone and call some superintendent that you know, and he's probably
not there. Then you might get in your car and drive him try to find him. Then he wouldn't know what the hell anyway, so then you try.
To You wouldn't have like a phone to show him a picture unless.
You absolutely But again, turf stress wasn't as bad then either. You know. We we make our own problems with the stress that we're putting on the turf at the low heights of cut, the rolling, the everything we're doing. But yet technology has helped and equipment has helped to combat.
That with the obviously there's never the way golf courses are presented have been never been more intricate, and as looking at it through the lens of a golfer, do you think it's gotten easier? Has it gotten tougher because of the agronomics as the game the game?
Yeah, boy, I don't. I don't see it. I don't see it that has changed that much scoring wise, Uh, I mean with the equipment today's equipment and the big debates and everything. Yeah, it's probably easier for the average guy to hit it, but yet conditions weren't as you know, maybe as difficult back then. I don't know, Uh, I don't know. The game was. The game's just as much fun today as it was back then. I can tell you that for me.
For me anyway, yeah, I always wonder. I feel like some of the things could make it easier, like fairways, running more, but then it could also make it more tough because it's tougher to keep the ball in the fairway, right, and then the same thing goes for the green where you know, they're smoother and faster, but that speed can make them a lot more tough, you know, right.
You know, if you asked me, would I sooner play today or back in the sixties. I enjoyed it more in the sixties.
Why is that?
I don't know. It was just you know, maybe I was younger and it just was a lot more fun, you know, it was more creative. The expectations, I guess, maybe more as strong then. I don't know.
That's a So you went to seed the Rapids then after Rock Island, after.
The rock on Arsenal. Yeah, I was at the Arsenal from sixty seven to seventy four. And then I went to Cedar Rapids Country Club until nineteen eighty.
And at the time, you didn't know that it was, you know, this Donald Ross golf course. You weren't into architecture of this.
I wasn't. I knew it was a Donald Ross. I mean i'd heard that. I really didn't. I hadn't done a lot of reading of the history.
You hadn't traveled a ton either, and I hadn't.
No, I hadn't. I mean I hadn't been out of Iowa that I recall.
Not even across the Illinois border.
Well, obviously I was because I was in the Quad Cities. Actually I spent too much time across the border, but that's all right. But yeah, I didn't. I didn't know a lot about it. I knew it was a cool golf course. There was a lot of cool things there, and it was pretty. Yeah, it was really hadn't changed, you know. I'm sure the green size is probably a trunk even before I got there, but you know, they
hadn't done much to it. Now. The bottom holes, the lower holes flooded a lot, and while I was there, they had an engineering firm come in and put these small lakes in that really didn't fit the property very well. But you know, from what I've seen of the restoration, and hopefully I can get up there this year and see Tom Feller and see it with my own eyes, it really looks like they've done a magnificent job.
It's a neat pace, it's really neat. And obviously Tom was on earlier on this pot. Right, you assured me that you were not the one that planted all the trees.
I did not plant all the trees.
Did you plant a lot of trees anywhere?
Uh? Not really? When I I came to Old Warson, I planted a feud Old Warson. But they had done this huge planning program. In fact, I remember the one. He wasn't the Greens chairman, but he had been, and he was so proud of all this tree planning that he had done. And now hopefully they're taking most of them down.
Talk about just at that time, I think a lot of like our listeners, they look at the trees and they don't understand how they got there. But you know, at the time, trees were almost a thing of prestige.
Right, absolutely, yeah, it was you know, like I say, I was at a Donald Roscoff, of course. But when I had the opportunity to come to Old Warson, I was ecstatic because I was going to go to a Robert Trent Jones golf course. So nineteen eighty Robert Trent Jones was still known as the man, and fortunately I think this is one of his better golf courses. Old Warson has really been good to me and is a great golf course. But the tree thing, you know, I mean they used to have memorial trees and it was
just the thing to do that. You know, the architects took the landscape that didn't have much trees and fit their golf course to it. But when they left, I don't think there's the knowledge that we have today of what they were trying to do and what their vision was. And so committees saw I don't know what courses that they saw that made them think that they needed to tree line all of them. And instead of just doing
groups here and there that would have been okay. You know, most of courses, they would tree line it from Teeta Green, which you know ruin a lot of turf.
A lot of people tie it to Ben Hogan.
I feel like, boy, that's really hurting me, he's my man.
Well, they tie it because he hit it so straight.
They know.
It's the funny thing with golf. It's always counterintuitive, you know, by just making it narrower, and it just played more into the best the guy who hit the straightest hands right.
Right. But if you but if they would look at how he took apart Carnoustie when he won there, they would think different on how he could use strategy to his advantage.
YEA, yeah, it's uh so, how did you decide, you know, you had barely left Iowa, you're going to move to Saint Louis. Why why the sudden, you know, getting out of Iowa.
Well, back then, probably the two best golf courses in Iowa was Wakanda at in Des Moines, which was a Langford Moro golf course, and Cedar Rapids Country Club. So I really felt I was still fairly young and still felt and I had felt what I'd probably reached the pinnacle in Iowa. There was no place for me to move, and I was still young enough and restless enough that I just that isn't what I wanted. I wanted to go on, and I thought, man, I'm going to the
big City. And when I was in the when I was in the Quad Cities, we used to go up to a lot of several of the Superintendent's talks and conventions or whatever in Chicago. So I used to see the really cool Gough courses in Chicago, and I'm thinking, you know, I'm going to Saint Louis. It's the same thing, and man, it's a totally different world down here. Saint Louis probably is the hardest place to grow grass in the country.
Yeah, talk about that shock as somebody who didn't. It almost sounds like you didn't really know what you were getting in there.
I did not know what I was getting into. The day I was going to interview, I got there early and I took a drive around the golf course. There's a road Trent Drive that goes around the property and it goes right by the tenth Green and I'm early in the morning and there's nobody playing. So I stopped the car and I thought, well, I'll just jump out and my soil probe and see what I got here.
And I stuck the probe in the ground and it went in about six to eight inches and hit solid rock, hard clay, and I could not get the probe any farther down must have been about eight inches because they could at least get a cup in the ground. And I thought, oh shit, what the hell am I doing? But and then that first year eighty was one of the really hottest years on history. I think they had twenty some days in a row or twenty one out
of twenty five days over one hundred. I still remember going to a fourth of July evening fireworks and I couldn't even see because my glasses would keep fogging up. There was so much humidity so between you know, everybody blames the climate, which with the two rivers the humidity gets so strong, but it's the soil also. Between the soil and the humidity and heat, it's a tough place to grow. But Zoisia has done wonders for the place. It was just getting started when I came here in eighty.
So everybody in the before eighty was using bat, trying to grow bat.
Most of it was bermuda, okay uh, that would just and you know, there wasn't very many hybrid bermudas back then. The main one was was either common bermuda or you three bermuda and you know they would have winter keel every year, and before it was worth the darn it was August.
Yeah, wet Bermuda. Wet darm in Bermuda is about the least least enjoyable thing to play GoF on and right in the world.
Yeah so uh so, Yeah, everybody was getting into zoide conversions and it's it's done a great thing there. We still have one, two, three in the in the area, we've got four bent grass golf courses, one one daily fee on the Illinois side that has a little better soil, and three on three country clubs golf clubs on the Saint Louis on the Missouri side.
So you crossed the river, it's just way better soil.
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure there's areas, but where this golf course is Gateway National is a lower area. And I mean I can't tell you for sure, but just from being told that the soils are better, and I do know Illinois has better, much better soil.
How how do you you told me a good story earlier today? You should retell about how you got the job down at Old Warson.
Oh at Old Warson. Well, my good friend from the Quad Cities, Jack Litvey was superintendent of Crow Valley in the Quad Cities, and he had come down to Saint Louis and got the job at Saint Louis Country Club. So he told me about it. And back then in the in the seventies, a Mana always sponsored some of the older people will remember this, but a man of sponsored all these tour players, and they would wear these a man of advisors and caps. And one of the
and the main spokesperson for him was Bob Golby. And a Mana is right, A Mana's factory is right near Cedar Rapids, and their CEO, his name slips my mind Uh, was a member at Cedar Rapids Country Club and he used to bring Bob over and play from time to time.
I hadn't met him, but anyhow, he was friends with somebody that was on the either board or Greens committee at Old Warson and my name happened to get thrown out there, and he heard, and he told him that if you have a chance to get ahold of that guy, you ought to. You ought to get him.
So Bob the master masters champion's uh word to carry some weight.
Huh master's champion word, carry some weight? And his friend. Once I got the job that summer, asked if I wanted to go over to Saint Clair Country Club where Bob was uh plays at to play. And so we went over there and I was fortunate enough to uh to beat him. And he's never asked me back over there, but he's been a good friend. He's uh, he's a he's quite a gentleman. He would do he would be a great pod for you someday on Friday pod.
Yeah, we do that.
Yeah, and you know, and I've been fortunate to know his son, Kay Goby, who has most of the listeners of this know that because one of the really great shapers in the country. Yeah.
So you uh, you worked at Old Worse and and then you managed How did you get you know, the you did you became a GM, but you also have gotten into golf architecture where you've been you've worked that, you've been a golf architect on projects. How did you kind of build and grow, you know, from superintendent look at these other opportunities to say I'm going to get out of the you know, superintendent space, but not really
out of it, You're still adjacent. How did you start to have these opportunities come your way.
Well, well, I was at Old Wars, and I started looking at golf courses and going around playing them. And some of it was through my amateur golf career, you know. I was fortunate playing some U s Ams and some State or some mid Ams, and so saw some of the really cool golf courses. Took a trip out to Long Island and saw Shinnecock the nash No Maidstone left a big impression.
So is that when you kind of had like the high moment that some some places were different. Was it that trip or was he playing uh in the US M or No?
That was kind of in a huh moment to a degree. And I and I read, uh, what was it Golf Club Atlas? No, oh, it was an old book.
Is it the one that witt and one that golf courses?
Oh? No, no, no, that was No, that's the book before. But Jeffrey Cornish. I went to one of his uh two day seminars and got to know Jeffrey.
Real well what were the seminars? He?
Uh he there was a period of time where he was putting on these architecture seminars. He and uh, I think Robert Gravesmere was the other one that would do it with him, and they were two days.
I went up to for superintendents or for anybody.
Anybody, anybody. It was up in the Chicago area. Saint Charles up there, is there Sat Charles, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
St Charles Country Clubs there.
Yeah. The seminar was there. That taught me a lot. I still have his stuff and obviously read his books. And then when I won the first Superintendent's tournament in eighty three, Ransom Company from England every two years put on a turf symposium, worldwide symposium. He'd bring they'd bring people from all the different countries over and the GCSA would send over a group of people and they would always send the winner of the championship for the last
two years over. So eighty three was my first trip over there and that was really the big ahamoment. And since I was going over there, I was going to stay for a while. Passed and there was about a and they had arranged for after the symposium which was down in England, we went up to Saint Andrew's and twelve superintendents from America played twelve superintendents from Scotland in a Ryder Cup, just a one day singles match and
we got to play a practice around. Obviously, the day before well, there was at Old Warson there happened to be this charity event that was going on with a bunch of the tour players. And one of the guys that would bring the tour players in was a former walker cupper from England and I was telling him that I was going for the first time and he said, well, when you get there Sat Andrews, make sure you go to the caddy house and get Tip Anderson as your caddy.
Do you know who Tip Anderson is? Uh? Tip Anderson was Arnold Palmer's caddy and every British Open ever played that Arnie ever played in, and there was one that he couldn't make it. So he called Tip and it was going to be at Saint Andrews. He called Tip and said, I've got this good friend that's going to be up there to play in the Open and he can't play a practice round. He's just flying in and his name was Tony Lima, and Tony a Lima wins
the tournament dedicates at the Tip. So the night we drove into Saint Andrews, I just ran to the caddy shack and the caddy master. He's like, ah, Tip doesn't caddy for just anybody anymore, and so I figured, well, I just tot my own bag. So that morning the practice round, I'm on the first tee getting ready to go. Oh, and this guy walks by and he says, somebody here
looking for Tip Anderson. I said, that's me. So I had two days with Tip Anderson and two nights and a lot of beer with Tip and that was cool.
I bet he has some stories.
He had some great stories. I wish I could remember them all. I wish that would have been the day of a iPhone and you could have recorded him. But that was cool. And then I drove around, played Nairn. A couple went up, I met one of it, got to be friends with one of the superintendent's Duncan Gray and his wife Greta, and he at the time he was superintendent at Prestwick Saint Nichols, and I played Prestwick, which you talk about quirky and cool. That's probably the best.
And then I made some more trips over there, and in the meantime he got to be superintendent to look hinch in Ireland and when over and stayed in his house on lanch for three days and played courses all around Ireland. So those things, you know, really stick in your mind.
What was what was your reaction to the way golf was presented in the UK?
Oh?
From like especially from an agronomic standpoint.
Well, from an first of all, how it's presented, I'll give you that first. Then i'll give you a good example of agronomically, how it's presented is really easy. I mean, you go over there and their priorities is the game is number one, golf course is number two, and the golfer's number three. You come to America and it's absolutely flipped. You know, the golfers number one priority here, golf courses too, in the game's number three. It's black and white. It's
that simple. And I hope it's still that way over there. I haven't been over there for years. But agronomically, I mean, it's scruffier, it's rougher, it's play the ball as it lies. But the example I will give you is after that, right, a cup format at Saint Andrews. We drove to Prestwick and I wanted to and I was gonna play Duncan with Duncan at his course Pressedwick Saint Nicholas that afternoon, and then the next day we were going to play
Prestwick and Turnbury. So I go over there. You know, Superintendent, it's always up early in the morning. So I get my coffee and I go over to see Duncan. See what he's doing in the morning. We're not going to play the afternoon, and its maintenance buildings just as little shit. I mean, I don't know how big it is. It wasn't very big. And he's just happens to be walking out the door with the cup cutter over his shoulder,
and I said, where are you going? He says, oh, I'm going to cut cups this morning, and I'm looking around for the Cushman or the truck sturn. I said, well, where's your vehicle and he says, oh, no, we don't. We walk. So he walks all eighteen cutting cups. Now, I'm sure it's changed a lot since that would have been what did I say, eighty three? Yeah, so it's changed a lot since then.
See, you had this where you started to kind of appreciate golf in a different.
Way, absolutely totally different.
Way, and how did your how did your day to day maintenance? Did it change at all because.
Of that, uh, you know, not to a great deal, because of the demands of American golf. But I always and I always kept this in mind, and I always told I've got a lot of guys that have come up under me that are superintendents now, and I always told them the same thing that whenever you have tough questions, something you're not sure about, first thing you do is ask how it affects the game, you know, and if it affects the game in an adverse way, then you
shouldn't be doing it now. Obviously, particularly in country clubs and single ownership clubs, you know, you've got to answer to people and you have to compromise to some but boy, if you can keep those compromises as small as possible, it makes a hell of a difference, you know. And then you ask me how I got into the architecture, and well, by then I was, you know, I was
well into it when I was all were seas. I'd bought Alistair McKenzie's book Golf Course Architecture, you know, practically memorized it, and Old Warson at that period was not in any way wanting to do a lot of projects, and I felt like I'd had it in as good
a condition as it could be at that point. And at the time, Norwood Hills had all the good players were there, so I knew them all from tournaments, and their golf course was really a mess at the time, and they had come to me, or a couple of them had come to me and asked if I would had any interest, and I said, only if I could do a total master plan for a not a restoration,
but a renovation of the golf course. And so I put together a master plan for all thirty six holes, doing a big time renovation, building some new greens, and not ever taking out, not ever having less than thirty six holes. And we had a part of the property that we were able to build two new holes which fit in with the west course very well. And at times some of the holes were part threes, but there was always thirty six holes.
It's interesting the way you talk about that, And I feel like when I talked to a superintendent about a project versus an architect about a project, the architect's always like, we got to just shut it down, shut it down, do all at once. And then the way, you know, the pride in which you just said we had never had a hole shut. We always had thirty six holes open. It's almost like a complete shift of a mentality coming
from your slant as a golfer and a superintendent. You didn't want to shut down the course, you know, put it together.
Yeah, And part of that was that I knew financial I wouldn't yeah, I wouldn't never be able to pass the master plan if they could shut it down, because it's the club wasn't a Belle Reeve or of Saint Louis Country Club or an All Wars, And they needed the revenue, and they had a lot of outings to do the revenue because they had thirty six holes.
But it was a.
Challenge and it was really cool put together a really neat business plan. Brought in a couple of guys. I mean, my Tim Birch was my West Court superintendent. He's now superintendent Saint Louis Country Club. Mike Noll, my nephew, was my East Court superintendent. He's now overseas all of Norwood. The head superintendent my irrigation tech is now superintendent that Fox run golf club. So, you know, it was pretty
neat to see all this. And then then I had a young boy that worked for me at all worse and just out of high school that really got good with equipment, and he's was my project manager during this whole period and he still is there doing projects now. They just they're going to have a Champions Tour tournament this fall and the Tours wanted them to rebuild all the bunkers. So he's busy rebuilding all the bunkers on the golf course. Now that's that.
What are they doing to the bunkers to get ready? Just giving them all face left?
Yeah, pretty much. You know, most of them are still from when I did him, so obviously that was in the mid eight of the late eighties, so some of them are some of them are too short. Yeah, you know, they've got to be moved some if they work now, Mike has got my nephew has got a great eye. Uh so he's not gonna screw him up, but probably some of them. Actually, I need to get over there. I just talked to him yesterday on the phone and they've started, so I want to go over there and
see how he's doing. But they're still the bunkers that I put in, so I'm sure the drainage is not good anymore.
It's you. It seems like project work was where you really started as a superintendent. That's where you found the thing that you love doing the most.
Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, I mean since then when I went to when I finally left Norwood and went out as gym for a few years at Boone Valley because they were they were a new club. I can sold it on the building of the golf course, and then they asked me to come in and be GM. It was more to get things organized and started. And after oh, I can't remember how many years, I asked if I could similarly retire because I wanted to do more design work. And I've worked on practically every club in town. I've
worked on at least sixteen seventeen different golf courses. I've done three daily fee routings that I've sold to some people that have been built. Didn't you know. I was still working at the time, so I really didn't oversee those closely, But all the other stuff I oversee that on a daily basis. I mean, when I start a project, if it's of any size, I prettymum much put up my clubs, and I'm there from the day they break ground until seed goes in the ground.
With just having to talk a little bit about the rewarding aspect of having guys that work for you, that you kind of come up through the industry and then go on to have success.
It's fantastic. It keeps I mean, I know I'm getting old, but it keeps me young inside, keeps me young mentally. And you know, to be honest, I learn as much from them as they learn from me, because I don't stay up on all the new stuff like you know I was when as when I was working, So you know, they're like, yeah, we're gonna we're gonna spray this for this and you gotta do it. What the hell are you talking about? I've never heard of that, you know.
So so it's pretty cool. But just seeing them growing mature, you know you've met a couple of them today, it's neat.
Yeah, it is so cool. It's almost like I always compare it to like, you know, college basketball coach Kse guys like coaching Tree. Yeah, it's like you start to see it with Superintendent's where there's these distinct trees where you know, one superintendent will have all this, you know, kind of like a family.
Yeah, and similar to Pete Dye in his Architects tree. You know, I can imagine some of the conversations between Pete Die and Tom Doak. They had to be classic.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's so many of them. What was it like working with PB?
Uh, you didn't work with PB. Pb was his own guy, if if, if, if you happen to I just went along. You know. My role was more organizing stuff when he was finished, But I was I was out there with him. And uh, you know he would if you said, you know, wouldn't this be cool if you put this bunker over here, or the fairway came in from this angle. I'll guarantee you it was going to come in from the other angle because he wasn't going to do what you were going to do. You know.
It's interesting.
Yeah, but uh, he was a pretty neat guy. Uh, he was a guys guy. You know. We would we would go to the local tavern, juke pool and stuff like that. Good man.
Yeah, he built some wild stuff.
He's built some wild stuff. He he was.
Not afraid, he was not bashful when it comes to no.
No. Rick Hanson, who's the superintendent of Boone Valley, was Pebe's construction foreman for I don't know how many years, but he was. He when he was at Boone, he wanted to stay as superintendent and so he did and he's still there. But Rick has some pretty good stories about OLE PV.
Yeah. That's why I've heard some stories too about PV because that might need to be a hold of separate five.
Yeah, right, right.
So you get into the construction aspect of it and the golf architecture of the consulting, and in a way you kind of took on a more of a design build philosophy than you know, the golf courses you worked at were mostly a design contractor.
Right, absolutely, And yeah it's definitely designed, Bill. But the only downside that I have is that I didn't grow up on a bulldozer. I wished I had. I mean, seeing working with Kai last year and working with the shapers that did Bogie Log where we're at right now, well, you know, I just I get jealous of their talents, but being there and you know, giving them a sketch to start and then just let let them go and then as Tom Doak calls it, editing as they go is a lot of fun.
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Toro distributor to schedule a demo. Now back to Roger Know, So the Bogie Log Club. This has gotta be the most one of the five most unique places in the States.
Yeah, it really is.
H So you told me to meet you here, and I bolt in and I called you there's one golf course and uh and I pull in and I'm like, where are you at? And you say, oh, you must be at the Log Club. You had come to the Bogie Club.
Yeah, it's it's really interesting. It's two nine hole golf courses that were built by Robert Follows, I mean James Follows. I'm sorry. Log nine was built in nineteen o nine and Bogie was built in nineteen ten. Yeah, put the butt up against each other. And Log Club is on the west side of the property and Bogie clubs on the east side of the property.
So number one, separate clubhouses, separate.
Clubhouses, both have about seventy members. Is all seventy seventy five members, probably only forty play golf. I mean, I don't know if they have three thousand rounds a year here. It's it's really cool. The golf courtse is only it doesn't quite reach six thousand yards from the tips. I'm going to be seventy six in a few days, and I'm probably the average age of the people, the members. They might not like me saying that, so hopefully they don't listen to your potet.
They might not know what a podcast is.
But like number one at Bogie is number four at Log or they can just play their own nine you know.
So I mean there's never enough play that it ever gets in trouble.
No, No, now they do have. I mean the clubs are more we're more socially oriented. And that's one reason the place really got ran down Rundown excuse me, and let go for years and years and years because there wasn't much pressure. But finally there got to be a little more pressure. And there's a gentleman named rich Nman whose spearheaded of wanting to upgrade this place. And he came to me. It started in two thousand and seven, was it?
Do he come to you from Bogie or Locke?
He's a Bogey member and he had Bogey convinced to rebuild the greens, and but Log didn't want to do it because each convinced two committees, right, because each club has their separate business, but when it comes to the grounds its split fifty to fifty, so anything done to the grounds has to be approved by both. So Log really wasn't ready to commit to that yet. So he talked them into building one green, which is the ninth green for Bogie. So we built that in two thousand
and seven and Man everybody loved it. New green got so much better and smoother, and you know, the other greens are trunk and they were old push up greens that were soggy and wet, and so they loved it, but they still didn't want to put out the money. So for a couple of years we did somebody you had me meet bout so we did some major drainage problems that they had around that they knew they had
to get done. And in the meantime, you know, they had old Bermuda that was always dead and scrappy, and so he said, Rich said, well how about if we get started on a zoyser program. So we started. I told Rich, I said, you're doing a bast awkwards because you know, you need to build the greens. And at the same body said there's no way we can get it done. So that gave me time to do to
really study the place and do a master plan. And I told Rich that, I said, when we start doing these fairaways, we're going to redo all the bunkers and stuff. And because the type of clubs, nobody was out there's watch and see what we did. So I was just on my own. I did whatever I wanted to do there, so we just did two pharaoahs first and then we got escalating the project and anyway finally came to where, wow, this is really cool what you're doing. We need to
do greens now. So there's a corner of the property that you can't do the fairways without doing the greens or you just tear it up getting back there. So they let us do three greens back there. That made four that were done, and all the fairways were done with zoiage and they're just going nuts now and they said,
let's do it all. So two thousand, that was twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen, we did the other fourteen greens, finished up some faaraway areas that we couldn't get to, and some I guess a few te's and some greenside bunkers and stuff greens for rounds opening fifteen and it's just been a smash hit ever since.
Did was it? Rounds go up after that?
Rounds did go up. Not just much more guest play, you know guys, you know a lot of them were probably embarrassed to bring their I mean, all these people were members at other clubs and played golf other clubs and They probably really were a little bit embarrassed to bring people over here because it wasn't much. I mean there was trees and honeysuckle. You couldn't see from the bogie side. You could not see the log side of the golf course.
May they liked it that way?
No, they didn't, but they were worried when I started clearing all this honeysuckle and clearing all this underbrush. And once they saw the vistas that were created, they just it really got cool.
Yeah, the property is stunning.
It is I mean Saint Louis. I mean the properties in Saint Louis are great. It's just the soils. I mean, Saint Louis country Club's got great rolling property. Uh there's a club called Westwood Country Club that I was fortunate to do, uh rebuild twelve greens over there. Wonderful piece of property. Really neat.
So what has your philosophy on maintenance changed at all when since you've been doing these projects? Do you do you do you think of of superintendents different like the the way super and the superintendent job. I guess per se differently.
Mmmm. You know, I would like to I would like to see more native areas but the hard fescues where they're still playable, so you get so you can still have a groom golf course with natural looking areas where I guess the only the only thing that's changed a lot is that I would like to see more textures on the golf course, uh than just the one dimensional greenh So that's something I know. Tim Burch over at Saint Louis Country Club is trying to do some hard fescues.
All the native areas that people do around here, they do look cool at certain times when they when their colors change and the textures change, but you have to make them out of play areas because it just slows play down. You can't find your ball, and it's you know, not much fun.
Yeah, nobody likes looking for golf ball. No, that's natives the hardest. I feel like it's supposed to be low maintenance, but so many it's a lot of work.
It is a lot of work. That's the other thing is people say, oh, just grow native area. You know, committee will say see it somewhere and it looks cool, just you don't realize. I mean, especially in cities where you can't burn, you know, now like Moon Valley, they're nadise areas. They're out in the country where they can burn, and that makes a huge difference, keeps out the you know, the stuff that you don't want grown, the sucker trees
and soccer plants and stuff. So and the other thing when you did mention as my philosophy changed short grass, yes, because when I grew up in the sixties, seventies and eighties, you know, it was fairway rough approach, rough, green collar then rough. There was there was no short grass. Chipping areas,
pitching areas, areas that repelled your off ball. My philosophy's definitely changed on that, and the work that we've been doing over it all worse and over time we're starting to integrate that, which was kind of tough for me at first because I didn't see that as a Trent Jones feature. But if you do it right, it just looks like it evolves and really doesn't take away from what people perceive as a Trent Jones design feature.
In Saint Louis, you've got a wide range of architects where you worked here on a course designed in the nineteen times by Fullest's, you've got Robert Trent Jones you've got Rhys Jones, You've got Keith Foster's stuff. How is it you worked at sixteen different clubs around here, working on such a wide range of different architectural style and trying to make it fit in.
It's really not that. It's not that tough. You just you see what it is, who the architect was, see what damage has been done by other architects or other greens committees over the years, and then you just use your best judgment and try to stay within that style.
Like Norwood Hills was Wayne Styles golf course, and I had Jeffrey Corny Sho come in and validate my master plan, and he walked all thirty six with us and talked about because Wayne Style did most of his work in the East Coast and he knew Wayne's style of bunkers, So we stayed with that. Put as far as placement and strategy, you know, I used my own judgment. The same aim here was a foulss. My bunkers here aren't deep bunkers, but they're deeper than what he had them.
It gives more accent to the green complexes. I only had to change one green complex.
I had a little bit different technology for those bunkers now in that right.
Absolutely and and money and you know what they did, you know, Old Orson being Robert Trent Jones in two thousand and seven, I did a complete green side bunker renovation. And you know I kept that in his more his style of architecture that I had seen and saw on his conceptual drawings. But I might have moved him in tighter than green or when I could, things like that. So you know, you just have to be you have to use your own judge, but still be somewhat sympathetic to their style.
Talk about dealing with Greens committees as a superintendent or committees at a club as a superintendent versus a GM versus a architect.
I mean I've been I've been really fortunate when I was at Old Wars and we never had a Greens committee meeting. Ever, we never had a Greens committee. And one Greens chairman that he would stop down every couple of days about two o'clock and see how things go on. And I'd say great, and he said, okay, I'm going up to the locker room take my shower. And he'd go up and have his shower and his glass of whiskey and go home, you know. And but that's changed
over time. Tim that's over there now deals with him. And because I've done I've been their consultants for quite a few years now, I deal with them. But as an architect and being retired and the fortunate reputation that I have in Saint Louis, working at all these clubs, I can kind of I can kind of block everything from the superintendent and that's and a lot of the projects.
That's part of my job is that I kind of I kind of take the blunt of I listen to all their comments and let the superintendent be able to go do his own work rather than having to go to the office and explain everything on emails and stuff like that. So it helps the superintendent.
A lot, like emails and communicating with a committee versus being out on the gulf of course doing project work, doing you know, managing a team. There's two different, completely different skill sets, absolutely, and one of them takes completely away from the other, right, I mean, that's the thing that's one of the tough things with jobs, is when you have things that pull against each other, right.
Right, But committees, you know, committees are the toughest thing at clubs. The only place I really had a lot of committee interaction with cedar rapids, and that was in fact, it was so tough that it was easy because the Greens Committee and the Golf Committee were would have joint meetings. So now you got whatever it was, twelve from each or eight from each, and I mean there's ideas all over the place. So basically you walk out of there with nothing and you just go do your own things.
But you know, the one the one pod that you did with I think it was the uh, the guy from cal club.
One, Al Jamison.
That was absolutely that was the best advice I've ever heard for any club president or whatever is that if the guy's raising his hand wants to be on the committee, he's not the one you want, yeah, because he's going to come with his own agenda.
The guy that you don't want to, you don't that doesn't want to be on the committee you want on.
That's the one you want on the committee.
Absolutely, it was pretty incredible.
Yeah, that was an absolutely fabulous pod.
My a buddies. It was a superintendent said. We were walking around of course and got talking to somebody and you know, we're gonna leave names and locations out of this. But this guy was you know, he's really really excited guy. He didn't really he knew a lot, but not that much. And he as he left, my buddy, he's super intended. That's the guy, Yeah go what he goes. That's the guy that knows just enough to fuck everything up.
Yeah. Well, you know, as far as committees and being a superintendent, the one thing I always just told myself is, you know, you you just got to go do your own thing. If they like it, they'll give you a raise. If they don't, you probably don't want to be there anyway.
See that's a good point. And you it seems like you were always one step ahead in your career of where you You knew you pretty early when you wanted to go do something else, because it was it was always a new challenge, right, And I think that's where people get stuck in. It's like sometimes the best thing is Yeah.
I mean when I went from when I went from Cedar Rabbits Country Club, told Warson, I took a pay cut just and I wasn't getting paid much anyway. I would tell you what they paid me. An all worson, but the members probably wouldn't appreciate it because things have changed so much. That club has changed so much. It's a great club, let me tell you. But I took a pay cut just because this was the new challenge.
It was my chance to see how I could do against a different group of people than where I was before, and it was you know, it's turned out to be the best thing I ever did. But you know, sometimes you have to be lucky to.
Yeah. I mean it's an intersection of opportunity and hard work usually and a little bit of luck. I always feel like I think about that stuff a lot. So you put you you're a big traveler. You love going seeing golf courses, your regular fride egg events. Well, I know, you know, I appreciate the the uh you coming out to them. But what's on the list for twenty twenty twenty twenty one?
Well, I want to get up. I think we talked a little bit. I've I've still got some in in uh Wisconsin that I want to go see that I missed. Uh And as I told you, I'm going to have to miss the the Steam Shovel this year, So that just means I'm going to have to go back to Lasnia maybe this fall or something and see Mike Lions up there.
That's the best time to go.
Yeah, and uh, I've never done Michigan. I want to do the Mike Devrees. I want to go up to the Upper Peninsula, which I've never been in, Marquette Gray Walls. And then my favorite person to read and listen to is Tom Doak. I love the stuff, I like what he says, and I've never played one of his golf courses, so I want to see some of his there.
Go play the Loop.
Yeah, I want to play the Loop for sure.
Key though, you got to spend you got the Loop, you gotta spend a couple of days at Okay. I think that's the mistake everybody makes, is they play it once one way, once the other way and they're out. Or they play it once one way. If you play the second time, you play it each way, you're you just like everything because you're you know when you play some golf courses, how you just are sensory overloaded, right,
and it's everything's like whoa, whoa? And and at that place, especially the more time you walk around, the more time you really are just like whoa. This is unbelievable.
Yeah, and I I mean it's going the opposite direction. But sometime before it's too late for me. I want to play bally Neil good Spot. I mean Kai you know said it's one of the most fun golf courses you'll ever want to play. Yeah, And one of the problems I have is, you know, I've been a member of Palmetto for a lot of years.
And.
That's so into my heart that I go down there and spend time. And I've got friends down there. Tommy Moore, the old pro, it's one of my best friends. And I just go around and round and around on that golf course.
That's one that is Uh, if you can go play there, there's not very better places than Palmetto.
You haven't played it, have you?
You?
I have played it, Okay.
I played it. Uh. It was funny. It was I was coming out of a Chicago winner and I was playing with somebody from down there and it was, you know, last winter in Chicago. It's just her redness and I was refreshed out of winter and it was like fifty five and mistic and He's like, I don't want to this is pretty awful. I don't want to play, and he's like, you want to play in this? I'm like, this is nice. That place is unbelievable.
Yeah, and you got to You gotta play it when.
It's had its best two bouncy.
Right right before the pulmetto am, which is right in midsummer. It varies, but it's around the end of June or into July. I mean, it's hot down there, but then the humidity isn't terrible there. And let me tell you, the ball bounces. The greens are just I mean, that's it's just like what you said about the loop. All of a sudden, you start seeing nuances that you didn't know was there when it was soft or green. Oh God, what if.
They didn't overseed there and it was I if they let that that Bermuda go dormant.
I don't know whether it would withstand the traffic. And one of the things, one of the things that keeps them alive and keeps them being a true, true golf club and not do these stupid things at other places liable to do is Master's Week.
Yeah.
They that's really important to them, and they really need I mean, they need it to shine, they need it to look good. I mean, they need these corporate people to come in. They need to see green. They don't need to see you know. And if they get a bunch of rain and it's dormant, that corporate group might not come back the next year.
It's funny. I went to Pinehurst last year. It was around this time and it was still dormant, and god, it was so fun to play number two with the ball just flying and like, you know, the the thing that it brought back was it brought so many more shots into play around the green because you didn't get the grabby first bounce and it just you know, just
skidded along. And I mean that was and then it just makes me think about because I played Palmetto right before that, and it was overseeded, and you played Midpies was overseeded. And then you go and you play and you read what Ross talked about. Ross loved Pinehurst because it was the first place when it went dormant that he found that played like Scotland in the States.
Sure, but the oversea of Palmetto is a perfect example of the compromise I talked about. When you ask what's best for the game, what's best for the game would be not to oversee, but what will due to the rest of the year, the rest of the season, the club will they you know, will they have to do other things to make up that money. So that's a compromise that I'm sure it's hard to swallow for some people, but maybe that is the best one.
They tied it back perfectly. You know. Palmetto is like the most non American club of any place I've been to in America.
Yeah. Yeah, I remember reading an old book. I think it was by Charles Price. You know how you can tell the difference between a country club and a golf club. When you walk into a country club, the nice wood floors are nice and polished and beautiful. When you walk into the golf club there's spike marks all over it. I loved it.
That place. That is a fun place.
Yeah.
I got to get back down.
There, you know. And talking to Tom dok about Tom dolk out. I hope to meet him someday because you know, I was over there with Tip Anderson in eighty three and in our foursome we played individual matches. I didn't play walder Woods, but walder Woods was playing the other person in our forsum and I got to know Walder pretty well, who was caretaking, and I know Tom got to be good friends of Walder and I have a hunch Tom was caddying that year that I was there.
Probably makes sense, yeah, because he he was soccer at he was at that first that was the first year of the TPC.
Right eighty three, Well, I couldn't tell you you're better, You're better dates?
I think that. I think that would match up because I think eighty three was when he was started to work with Die, but he was on he was in school still because he was doing the internship and then he won the Dream Award. Right the dates, I'll have to go back and listen to because he lays out that in one of the podcasts.
I know it, and I don't remember which one.
It might have been the first one ever could have been. Yeah, this is a rough audio. Don't go back as those are the early audio days for the right Eck.
I'd love to sit down at a round table with a couple of cases of beer with Tom Doak, yourself, Michael Clayton, and maybe Derek Duncan to throw in a little controversy. That would be a blast.
Guy set it up on if you gotta get Clay's over here.
He is he he is so much fun to listen to Michael Clayton.
He's brilliant, he is he really is. The best is when you meet him, he's the same person that he is on like when you hear him.
That's good, that's what he should be.
I mean the first time I met him, first time, I have never met him, you know, I obviously had talked to him and I had known him through the internet and had interviewed him on the podcast. First time, you know, like the first words out of his mouth, Andy, that place is complete shit. I just laughed out. I mean, it was just like it was like we were just messaging. It would have about exactly what he said to me.
I can believe it too.
Good guy. So Roger, thanks for the time. We'll have to do this again. We'll set up that roundtable.
Oh god, you know, count me in. I mean, I don't even have to be part of it. I can just sit in the corner and listen.
We'll just put a microphone right in the middle of the table. See what happens.
Yeah, So thanks, and uh, and people can email you.
I don't know how else sare you're not social media guy.
I mean I've got you know, I follow people on Twitter, but I don't even know how to use it. I just read.
So what do you know what your Twitter handle is?
I think just my name.
I'll find it, I'll tweet it out.
God.
No, you're gonna have followers.
I have no idea how it works. But uh, yeah, I know. Anybody wants to email me, they can, all right, Oh, I need to give you the email. It's Oh, the email is niblic Farm, which niblic is spelled n I b l I c k f A r M at century tail dot net. Century is ce n t U r y t em. Yeah. Feel free. Yeah, I love to talk about golf, any kind of golf.
Awesome, Thanks so much, and uh, we'll talk to you soon.
Thanks.
Under an ability of alder