I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset.
When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset. And when I find my.
Ball in a brid egg Friday Egg, the dreaded Frida Egg Friday, Frida Egg Egg, fridagg bride egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the up course. All right.
It's the end of twenty twenty three, so it's kind of that time of the year where we're going to do reflections, and I figured it might be fun for Garrett and I, Garrett Morrison, co host of this podcast, to get on and talk about some of the golf courses that we saw. So we're going to kind of break down our favorite new courses, like brand new new
build courses that we saw. There were there're a like really like kind of a historic in the context of the last twenty years of golf course development openings this year, so there was you know, if we had dedicated our entire year just to seeing new golf courses, I think we would have gotten to all of them. But that's just one piece of what we do as a company. We also are going to talk about our favorite remodels. So one of the other trends. On top of new
courses is tons of remodels. It's never been a better time to be a golf course architect than right now. And then we're going to talk a little bit about our favorite new to us course, So it could be an existing course, it could be a Golden Age course that was new to us this year, as well as a final kind of closing discussion around what we're excited for in twenty twenty four, which will prove to be another big year of golf course openings. Garrett, how are you doing?
You know, I'm a little under the weather. I think people will notice that I'm keeping my voice at a very low volume, and that's because every time I speak up, my throat yells at me. And I think that this is hitting a lot of us at this time of year. You know, kids are coming home from school with weird stuff going on in their bodies and passing that to parents. So I'm sure I'm not the only one out there who's struggling a little bit. But that's why I sound,
you know, a little more low volume than usual. There will be quite a contrast between our voices. Andy. I think that people have already noticed that there is quite a contrast between our voices in general, but that will be even more pronounced today. So that's where I'm at. By the way, people should know that this is the Friday Golf Podcast, right, I'm not sure that you said that up off the top.
Well, yeah, I didn't. I did not. I did not. You know, I will say having just got over I got over like a couple week debilitating cold from my daughter, and it's awful. It's just you see it coming. There's nothing you can do about it. You're just counting the days till you get sick. When once they come home with it, you know.
Listen, there are worse things that I could be doing right now than talking about golf and podcasting and writing about golf and staying home while doing it. And so mostly I'm pretty grateful. But I'm going to try to get myself a little bit up in terms of energy here and go into this subject which I am very excited to talk about because it's been a super exciting year, golf architecture.
All Right, before we jump in, let's take a quick minute to talk about our partner club champion. Listen, if you want to get dialed in, you want to if you're if you're looking at, hey, I'm going to play some new golf next year. I want to. I want to not have to worry about your equipment. I think this is the best bet you get a tour level fitting,
you know you. Some would say it might be a better than a tour level fitting because a lot of tour players are bound to one OHM and we see these people be like, oh, Colin Morrikawa switch drivers through the year. You didn't like the new driver, you had to go back to that. Think about this that world class players are dealing with this. If you go to
Club Champion, you don't have to deal with this. It is an outstanding experience and actually, like I think one that you take away a lot from beyond just you know, hey, I'm getting new clubs. I'm spending a bunch of money on new clubs. I think you take away some stuff. You learn stuff about your golf game and the equipment setup needs that you have. So if you go in there, there is I think fifty thousand possible head and shaft
combinations throughout the store. They have stores across the country and right now they have their best offer they have ever given. It's one hundred dollars for a full bag fitting. This is usually I believe about a four hundred dollars value, so about seventy five percent off one hundred dollars for a full bag fitting if you use the promo code fried Egg. The other thing, if you don't need a
full bag of clubs you're looking. If you're in the market for wedges or a putter or a driver or faraway woods, you can get a fifty dollars fitting with a club purchase. Use the promo code Frida Egg. You book it at club champion dot com. This is all All of these bookings to get this deal need to be done by Christmas Eve, which December twenty fourth, and then they need to be completed by January thirty first. So you book it now, you can book it for January.
It just has to be done. You have to complete the fitting by January thirty first. This is the best deal they've ever offered. They've been a spot, they've been a partner of ours for a couple of years. Big thanks to Club Champion and go get fit by the best in the industry at Club Champion. All right, so let's talk about it. Best new golf course that you saw this year.
Okay, Now this answer might annoy people because it's a little bit predictable, But the best new golf course I saw this year was the Leado at Sand Valley. Now, is this a new golf course? That's one question about it. Is this Should this be in a restoration or renovation or something like that category? Is this technically a new build? That's one of the many impossible to answer questions that
this course raises. But the reason this course has stuck with me so much, the reason I've been thinking about the Leado ever since I played it for the first time in the summer, is that it is so intricate that every time you kind of go back through the holes,
you remember one more thing about each hole. You remember one little intricacy that you may have noticed in passing as you were playing the course, but it didn't really like fully stick in your brain, and so it didn't become part of your narrative of the course at the time. But when you go back and remember some of these things,
all these layers keep showing up. There is so much to absorb with this course, and it gives you such a clear picture of what the degree of C. B. MacDonald's brilliance was that I just I have to give it the tip of my hat for this year. That is the most impressive and probably most important course that I saw this year. But I didn't see nearly as much as you did, so I'll put that out there.
Yeah. I think one of the things that the Leado
would definitely be in the running of mine. And one of the reasons why, and it shares this with the course that I'm going to pick, is that every single I like would just love to have the Lido be the golf course that I play all the time because of how many aspects, like just the design of the golf course makes you think so much and presents you so many different ways that you can go about achieving the I want to get the whole ball in the hole as quick as possible, and that golf course, you
know it just you hit the nail on the head. You remember different things when you think about it. You're drawn to different holes and different aspects of the golf course. I just think that, you know, it's it's kind of a shame. I always think about this with resort courses. I think Old McDonald would fall into this bucket too. I think the loop at Forest Dunes falls into this bucket is that we get these like wildly intricate like
puzzles of golf courses. The LIDO is certainly in this, and they're at these like remote resorts that you might go to one time in your life. Right, this is this type of golf course if it was in a municipal or a public daily fee setting in a area of the country that was accessible more accessible, like and I get these these are accessible areas for a lot of the country, but there are long drives and you're not getting like if you're not a member at Liedo,
you have to get a tea time. It's it's hard to do. So the idea of some of these golf courses, some of them courses really when I think about that, I'm enthralled and want to go play time after time after time again and again, are like very difficult places
to get to. So that's like one of my like nippicks of this whole thing is like these golf court like and I think hopefully we're getting we're building public golf and accessible golf is always the last the last frontier of innovation in golf course design and golf course construction. We're just starting to see, and we're going to talk about it a little later, like public short courses, which
have been become a staple in the resort industry. So the fact that this is where resort design and developers are going. Is this type of intricacy. I think it's really good for maybe ten years from now in public design, but who knows where we're going to be in ten years, right.
Yeah, well we'll see. I mean, you know, the when you play the Leado, you can see why it was made to be a private course, right, Why it was made to be a member course. It's because it's a course that really rewards repeat play. But also it's one that if you play it just once in your life as part of a resort experience, you may not like it that much, especially if you play it back to
back with Mammoth Dunes. Now, I don't want to make this like a bash Mammoth Dune's moment in the podcast or a bashed David McLay kidd part of the podcast, because I really think that Mammoth Dunes and Gamble Sands are very smart and intentional in what they do I'm writing about Gamble Sands right now, so I'm for Club TF, So I'm thinking about kind of that kid philosophy of resort golf, And the more you think about it, the more you realize that it's basically, in many ways, the
polar opposite of the lido approach to golf architecture. Whereas the Lido has an extreme amount of detail and intricacy, as you said, Mammoth Dunes, gamble Sands, the David Kit approach is more about simplicity and straightforwardness, presenting risk reward options that are quite easy to see the first time you play the course, and so you can really engage with them the first time that you play the course, whereas at the Lido there's a lot there that you
don't engage with the first time you play the course because you don't see it.
Yet, Or in eightyr wide fairway where you just your ball doesn't go there, so you haven't been there, right.
Yeah, exactly, And there's so much there in each part of the fairwey, I mean, Mammoth Dunes also has eighty two one hundred yard wide fairways, but a lot of them are fairly straightforward, and so you know, and then when it comes to difficulty, totally different as well. The Lido is very difficult to play, especially if you're not familiar with the course, whereas Mammoth Dune's Gamble Sands right way,
you can kind of get aggressive with those courses. The leader makes you feel insecure, uncertain, even fearful at times, and and you eventually get over that as you get more familiar with the course, whereas right away a course like Mammoth Dunes is friendly and outgoing. It's a Golden Retriever right away, it's your best friend.
It's a great, great comparison. I like that bringing the dog in.
Yeah, yeah, I thought that would appeal to appeal to the dog there.
When I'm going for a run, you know, when I'm running and I run past dogs, I'm never worried about a Golden Retriever.
No exactly right, yeah, yeah, you know, unless you think the Golden retriever might might stop you and insist on being petted when you're trying to get a working That's that's the most that you're that's the most you're.
Worrying about that worried about that, right, I'm looking for reasons to stop running when I'm running, so all right, so for me, we'll we'll move this on. For me, I had, you know there are I saw a decent ount of new courses in the last calendar year to date, I've a couple of them open next year. It's like kind of like weird, like where you go and if we go into just different buckets, right, I just think what's going on in Aiken, South Carolina is extraordinarily impressive.
And I got to like just be very open with like, I'm probably pretty conflicted here, right.
I think it's all of Andy's friends who are building golf courses outside of akin what's going on here.
So I've you know, Zach Blair, who's been on this podcast a number of times, was you know somebody that when I started this business I became friends with and you know, it's been amazing to watch him build the tree farm and put that together. Then you know Old Barnwell, which is my pick is was the owner and founder of Old Barnwell. I've known since I was like six years old. He's the same He's friends with my sister
in high school. And so I'm I'm kind of biased in both regards, so I don't feel that bad, you know, picking between the two of them. But I am someone that might carry bias to these courses.
Yeah, if you're going to blame anything, then them blame just the brilliance and success of people who grew up in the North Shore of Chicago Gothic.
So so anyways, Old Barbball is my pick. I was really blown away. I had walked it last year, the seven hole loop that they had set up, or six hole loop that they had set up.
Yeah, as did I. That's what I saw. And then I walked the rest of the course while it was still more or less under construction.
And I had walked that also, but a lot of stuff hadn't been built yet. It was more kind of this is where it's going. I think, like you know, these two courses will forever. And I wrote a Club Tfe piece about this in the Design notebook. These two courses because of their proximity to each other, the time at which they were built, I mean, they were built basically in conjunction. Their timelines are months a couple months apart. It's truly amazing that this happened like in this area.
And both of them are are extraordinarily great additions. To the golf landscape. So with the tree farm, you know, the stars is the land. But with old Barnwall, it's got a really nice piece of land. But I think what stars and this is? You know obviously for me, I think what gets me going most is architectural features. I get really into seeing things built. So like what
I like about the golf courses. It's a good piece of land by now means it's a bad piece of land, but the piece of land is ramped up by some built features and some smart you know, some greens, some hazards and what I love about it, it's similar to
the lido. There's a lot of space, but where you need to be changes a lot, right, and it and I have to imagine that, you know, this golf course was effectively being built by Brian Schneider and Blake Conant at the same time that Brian Schneider was the lead
associate on the lead. Though I don't think that the reason that these golf courses to me feel very you know, somewhat similar is is it's not a It's not a coincidence, right, I think that a lot of things were kind of put into this and I think, like I think Old Barnwell is going to be polarizing. I think people I saw it firsthand. I played with a buddy of mine who who like on the second green. He's a very good player, played in the mid am last year on
the second green. He putted off the green. You know, and we're playing after right, Yeah, we're playing with Brian Schneider, and like, you know, he's like outwardly pretty upset, like a few holes into the ground, and you know, and he's like, you know, these greens are insane.
You know.
It's all you could talk about was how insane the greens were. And you can see how if you if you have this belief that once I hit the green, I should automatically be afforded a two putt, that these greens will rub you the wrong way. But these greens are about being in the right position in the fair way to find the right position on the green. They're about understanding where the right miss is to be. You know, where you want to miss it. If you if you're in a bad position, where do I want to be
to then get up and down. I need to be on this side otherwise, Like and again what you said about Leedo, it really rewards and makes you want to play it more and more because you're decoding this puzzle as you play it every time after time. Really, some cool stuff about it is like there's some twists on some old stuff on some on some like you know modern architecture.
Uh.
There is like a rendition of the first green at National Golf Flinks of America. There's you know, the next hole is kind of their take on the second hole at National Golf Links of America. They have some you know different they they basically took a took a hole, built a hole out of Tom Simpson's book and flipped it right. It's the mirror of of a of a sketch that Tom Simpson never built, but it's a sketch
from his book. And there's just some cool stuff there's it's just some some vertical hazards you definitely see where you know, Brian Schneider's done extensive work in the Walter Travis portfolio, and obviously Blake Conant and him were building this together. They were the co designers. They were kind of you do this green, they were editing each other. But you see that overall aesthetic of of kind of
that that upward vertical hazard. The idea of like small pockets and greens that you have to get to, like a Walter Travis course wood and you know, it's just super fun. I I love it. I can't wait to go back there. I and and the same is said I, you know, and I want to be fair to Tree Farm. You know, I think that one of the amazing things about the Old Barnwell development is the growing that uh that the agronomy team there accomplished. It's I was standingly
mature for being brand new. I haven't seen tree Farm since Master's Week and I saw Old Barnwell in November. I'm very excited to see tree Farm, you know, seven months after you know it was it was very much preview play. So I haven't seen tree Farm in its you know, more realize uh you know form, And I think that's always important, Like you're doing these new courses thing, how of course ages is you know, like what the best course today is might not be the best course.
You know what we think of best course today as might not be the best course in five years. How courses age you know it's different, right.
Oh yeah, I mean how courses settle in is so important and it's something that really it's short shrift in the discussion of new courses. Very rarely do you see someone go back and reevaluate a course that they initially reviewed when it opened. And I think that that should be something that's done more often that you really bring in to your consideration the dynamism and the evolution of
a golf course. You know, much as Michelin reviewers go back to certain restaurants year after year to see if that restaurant has kept up at standards, we should do our best as people who talk about golf courses, to go back and see golf courses after they've been around for a few years to see if they've again kept up their standards or even raised those standards. That's hard to do because it involves a lot of travel and there's always new stuff to see. But you know, it's
something we should talk about. When we get a chance to go see a course that has been around a few years, we should talk about it again.
So one thing that I would love to to just you know, put out there. Also, obviously, this is Brian Schneider. This is a big kind of debut for him on the new build front. With Blake Conitt. It's exciting we're entering this this time. We're gonna have a lot of courses come online in the next couple of years, with
architects building their first couple golf courses. You know, we're finally, like I think everybody's been clamoring for this, like can somebody hire somebody that's not Gil, Tom or Bill and Ben right, you know, and and that's you know, Gil Hands, Tom Doak or Corn Crenshaw, you know, but there haven't been the inventory of projects, the number of projects to
persuade a developer to go outside the box. Right now we're seeing it where like developers are coming well like you know, Bill and Ben can't do this till twenty twenty seven, and Tom's booked till twenty twenty eight, and Gil, you know this is so we have to go in a different direction, right is the discourse. So it's really exciting to see new work from new architects, you know that have been doing restoration work or you know remodels, like small remodels where they might you know, tweak a
whole or two here. The other thing I think that might get like that might not be as as fun of a story but is an important one is that we're watching two of the greatest architects in Corn Crenshaw in terms of new builds, Corn Crenshaw and Tom Doak. You know, if you start to stack up their resumes of courses that they've built, it is extraordinarily impressive. And
they are they are all working. They are working on you know, another litany of courses, and you know, I think you could make an argument that they're only getting better. So like what does the next five years of their golf courses really entail? And you know, and your talking about legacies, right, you look at Alistair McKenzie's legacy. Like what I always think about with Alistair McKenzie's legacy is like he you can make an argument that he built
the best course on four continents. You got you know, Royal Melbourne, you got Cyprus Point, you got Jockey Club down in South America, and you got Meyla Hinch. You could throw in the ring Like.
I was wondering what your fourth one would be, Lahinch. You can I don't know if that's an Alistair McKenzie course through, yeah, but he definitely touched it.
Yeah, So you you start to get to this idea like Alistair McKenzie, like that to me is legacy. So we're getting to the point in these these architects career, and I think Gill's kind of maybe like ten years behind where they are right now in terms of like just career scope. So I don't want to leave them out of this, but you know, they're I think they're in a little bit different spot. But like we're at this like legacy defining moment, especially with how much work
that these architects have coming up. Where it is, it's going to be just really fun and I think, like I think a lot of people would look at like the recent builds that Tom has had and say that that's some of his best work he's ever done.
It's certainly some of his most distinctive work. And he's doing projects that are really interesting for one reason or another, whether it's a new kind of property or a new kind of concept. You know of course that we both saw this year that's new but technically opening fully next year is such Valley and and that's that's an exciting course for for a host of reasons. Gil hants Is is just getting into a part of his career when we're going to see more new build work from him.
We've seen an awful lot of renovation and restoration as well.
It might be the best, he might be the best to ever do the renovation restoration.
Stuff, right, Yeah, And he's certainly has has worked at uh the the most impressive list of clubs by far in America. And you know he's continuing to do that as well as start to do some more new build stuff like his work at Field's Ranch, which you saw this year and is new, So you know, it's very exciting. We have an embarrassment of riches right now for new golf courses, especially as compared to the last ten or fifteen years or so in this industry, and so I
think we'll see a lot of exciting stuff. But like you, I'm really keen to see where Brian Schneider and Blake Conant want to take the craft next, because those are architects, along with Kyle Franz and others who are trying to a little bit younger, a generation younger, and are trying to move things to the next step. So we'll see.
All right, let's talk about renovation candidates. What's on it for you?
Well, I've got what may be a surprising pair here. And I'm going to talk about the Glenn Golf Park and this again is is just kind of turning into a Brian Schneider tongue bath because he was involved in this project as well. But the lead architect on it was Craig Halton, who is a Wisconsin based architect who has served as the contractor for many of the Sand Valley courses, maybe all of the Sand Valley.
Courses found found the land from the Valley Craigs porch for any visitor.
Yeah, so he was. He was kind of exploring the state with his wife and and that's how that property out in the middle of Wisconsin was found. And has also done the work to bring back Masonia Links to it's its former self and and so he's done some really cool work, but.
He's mostly done a lot of work too.
We don't we don't want to short shrift anybody, especially run Force. So in any case, Craig Haltem, we haven't seen a lot of original design work from him. And this Glenn Golf Park project is really interesting because it's not just a nip and tuck renovation. It was really a complete reimagining of this nine hole very affordable public course property, and they did the work for quite cheap. They had some backing from Mike Kaiser and his Michael Kaiser and his wife, and so there was money there,
but it wasn't a massive amount of money. And I think that if you just look at the changes that they made. I'm not arguing that this is Glen Golf Park is now a top one hundred golf course. That's never what it has been intended to be. But if you look at the specific changes that they've made, if you look at the comparison between the old golf course and the new golf course, so much of what they did is so smart and so replicable at other municipal facilities,
especially nine holers. So one thing, they removed a few trees, not a huge amount of trees, but they remove trees and kind of the right spots so that they opened up the property a little bit, and then they just
mowed out a whole lot of fairway. There's basically one cut out there, but it's not a super tight cut, right, It's a little bit longer, and so it doesn't require as many inputs as much attention as a very kind of short fairway would require so really sustainable maintenance, very simple, straightforward, and also provides a lot of room to play, a lot of possibility for angles, et cetera. Okay, second thing they did they didn't overdo it with the bunkers. The
bunkers are really cool looking. They have some kind of like native grass fringe to them, but they're very simple shapes. They're pretty small, and there's very few of them on property. You know, most of the bunkers on the golf course are on a single hole, a par three I think it's six, and they basically there's like four bunkers or three or four bunkers on that whole alone, and that's like more than half of the bunkers on the entire
golf course. So they have kept the maintenance of bunkers, which is such a money pit for so many municipal and affordable daily fee courses, and they have just you know, taken that kind of mostly off the table. It's going to be very straightforward to maintain these bunkers. And then finally they did a lot of really smart, sensitive work on the greens around the greens, coming up with some cool contours that make the game interesting they're just you know,
beautifully contoured and tied in greens. There was some real sophisticated architecture put into that specific part of the course. That's where they put so much of their attention. And so I think that learning those three basic lessons about what the Glen Golf Park did would be enormously helpful for so many municipalities thinking about what to do with their golf courses, how to spend the little bits of money that they give, where to go with capital improvement projects.
When the opportunity comes up to do one of these, I think what you do is you look at a lot of what they did here and try to apply some of those lessons to different specific sites around the country.
I think I've got a similar trend. I think the thing that's most exciting to me. You talked about Glen Golf Park, another new public golf course that it was a renovation, is the park down in West Palm Beach.
Lots of parks out there.
Yeah, but to me, another park and Chaska, So Golden Gate Park and Saska the Loop at Shaska.
Yeah, the Loop Is it Chaska or Shaska?
I think it's Shaskaaska. People saying sure, i'll get I'll get it reminded, I'll get one of us. One of us is somebody's wrong. So those two courses to me stand out. They are I think, you know so many people and I think the first round of golf I played on uh played golf and was at a par thirty one in like Waukegan, Illinois, which was it was like this kind of dumpy, you know, par three course, right. I think that that is the way that so many people play their first round of golf. And like, I
don't really remember much about the golf course. I kind of can kind of like remember a few like the way it want wound around with property. That was a golf course that was the first round of my golf life. Another golf course that was instrumental in my life and golf was a par three course that's now a park in Libertyville, Illinois called Riverside. It was it was right
on the river. It flooded when it was But par three courses are instrumental to people that enter the game like it is, it's got to be a sky high number of percentage of rounds of somebody who's a beginner's first five rounds. So with the Golden Gate Park project, which is in San Francisco. It's in Golden Gate Park. They took a nine hole effectively par three golf course. It was overgrown, it was fine, it was it was a nice golf course and you know, a nice place
to play. It sits on sand dunes. It's like, you know, probably a half a mile from the ocean. It sits on pure sand. And they took that golf course and they renovated and built a brand new nine hole golf course. It's got a partnership with the First te of San Francisco and Jay Blasi did the renovation. It was a twenty acre site and now it is twenty acres of fantastic golf, just really fun greens. Tasca a similar story.
They took a you know, kind of like a par thirty course, so you know, a couple of par fours, and they renovated and they made it a fully accessible golf course so there's no bunkers. Anybody of any you know, with any anybody can go play golf there. And they both share like very similar design characteristics. Like Golden Gates got a few sand bunkers, but like they're more like exposed sand because it's like you're you're on sand dunes. You'd be silly not to expose some sand, right, And.
There's you don't you don't want some revetted pot bunkers or anything like that.
Yeah, So so there's a few, you know, there's some exposed sand. There's a couple bunkers. There's like kind of like a cool little like lines mouth green that's got a bunker that you can play around. So there's very minimal bunkers at Chaska, no bunkers. Both of them have fascinating greens, and both of them were done on a very small budget. I think. I think the Golden Gate Park project was around two million and the Chasca project
was less than one point five. So these projects were done undertaken, funded, you know, locally, and it represents a type of architecture, a type of project that's achievable in a lot of different locales, right because it's not over the top expensive and the end result is an amazing product. It's a you know, we talk about this and I've
used this conversation, this topic, this analogy so often. But if you want to get somebody into coffee, you don't take them to a gas station, you take them to a nice coffee shop, and you give them maybe, like you know, you give them something that's going to appeal to their palate, not you know, and so often with golf, with these par three courses, we've given somebody like the worst form of golf, right, the just the everybody's played the par three course with just the dead flat green.
It's a field, right, And these are you know, these whole These courses spark imagination with their greens and and I'm super excited both of those courses will be kind of big stars, I think of twenty twenty four. I was lucky to see both of them this year, and I can't wait for more of these golf courses to happen. This is the trend that's really needed in public golf, and for both courses, they're going to remain extremely affordable.
I think for city residents. The Golden Gate Park courses twenty two dollars.
So right, And I think, you know, part of the hope here is that local government officials and residents can look at the projects that have been done on a small scale at these courts and then look at some of the other golf assets that they have locally and think, well,
this little course looks a lot better than this big course. Now, maybe if we set aside a little more money, we could do something cool with a big course too, Because San Francisco has some places that could use a little bit of love, some eighteen whole courses that could be really cool with a bit of work, And I think probably the same is true in a lot of cities throughout the country. And so you know, starting small is a really great idea for introducing cool architecture into a
municipal golf system. And so I'm really glad to see that that's happening at these courses. Now, both of these open in twenty twenty four, right.
Yeah, yeah, or early twenty twenty four. So I think I think Golden Gate Park's plan is January, right, so you know, a month away.
Yeah, it's so you can play in January. Obviously, can't do the same in Minnesota.
Minnesota, Minnesota. It should be a big story with the USAM at Hazeltem because it's you know, it's basically it shares the lake that hazel Teine's on. It's just on another extension of the lake.
Yeah. Now, two things that I want to mention about these projects quickly. One is that I believe there's a common link in terms of shapers at Golden Gate Park and at Shaska. I believe Brett Hochstein worked on both projects.
And Ben Warren. Ben Warren was the lead architect, another you know, very talented young shaper.
Ben work at a Golden Gate Park too.
No, no, he did not, so in Jay Blasi, I did. I failed to mention Ben's name on the Chaska project, so you know, it's a It's another example of exciting to see young names getting chances.
Absolutely. And the other thing people should know about the about the Chaska project is that the the whole idea of the facility is that it's going to be radically accessible to adaptive golfers. So they're really trying to do everything they can to accommodate adaptive play and disability access. And in fact, that's one of the reasons that the project has taken a little while, because they need to build some on site facilities to really fulfill that mission.
So the golf course has been shaped and more or less finished for a while, but basically it's kind of waiting on the clubhouse and other things to come in to make sure that the course can really right away serve its mission, which is to enhance the experience of adaptive golfers. So that's something that's very important there that
you know. Again, it's one of those things that different places in the world, who you know, where people want to improve their golf, they can look at that as an option and to communicate to people that golf is not this kind of elitist, cloistered sport, that there can be a real effort to reach out to the community and make golf an experience that everybody can enjoy. So those are those courses. Now, there were some glossier renovations that we didn't mention that, you know, I think that
maybe just quickly mention them. There's the country club near Cleveland. Gil Hans restored that golf course. I know you liked what you saw there. Yeah, I've I played that course pre renovation or pre restoration and was really impressed with the land and some of the boldness of the way that the holes use the landforms on that property. So super excited to see.
That maybe Flynn's best work outside of Shinnecock.
Yeah, I mean, I don't know, I haven't seen an awful lot of Flynn, but I would leave it like that's a really well designed golf course. The lake course at the Olympic Club has opened back up after again a gil Hant's restoration. Lookout Mountain has gotten some attention for some of the really bold restoration work that Tyler Ray's team did there. So there's still a lot of action in the restoration and renovation category of the golf
course industry. But one overall shift that I'm noticing that I think I'm excited about is that a lot of the obvious restorations like straightforward, we want to bring this course back to what it was because it was a great course in the first place and we couldn't possibly do anything better. A lot of those projects have been done basically, and now what we're looking at totore time to restore again. So yeah, yeah, there's two paths here.
We can try to convince green committees that they didn't restore it properly the first time and that we need to try it again, except with a bigger budget, which I hope we don't see a lot of. There's the other direction we could go with this opportunity or that it could go. I'm not sure that we can have any influence on it is. These are just economic forces
that are out of our control. But I'd like to see more courses that maybe don't have very good golf courses realize that they don't have very good golf courses that weren't particularly well designed in the first place, that have worn out their welcome, that look dated at this point.
I would like to see some of those golf courses higher talented architects trained in this neoclassical mode that Corn Crenshaw and Tom Doak and Gil Hants have popularized, and see what can be done with golf courses that have kind of seen their day and need to become something new. So I'd like to see more creative, aggressive, out of the box renovations. I'm hoping to see some of that work. We've seen a few projects like that, but I'd like to see more.
Yeah, I agree with that. I think that's kind of the next frontier right is, and I think we're going to see a lot of that coming do with irrigation systems needing to be replaced and a lot of courses that were built in nineteen eighty and nineteen ninety thinking about what does the next thirty years look like for us now that we're here with our irrigation.
Yeah, so all right, we wanted to talk about one more topic, right, we wanted to talk about for.
That Before that, Oh, I want to talk about a little personal experience.
Let's do it.
You know, over the last I travel a lot from work, and you know, I noticed that, like seven years of starting a business and traveling a bunch was taking a toll on me. I felt kind of sluggish. I didn't you know, I was stressed out constantly. And if you're a long time listener, you might know that I've been drinking ag one for about a year. So when I started to drink ag one, I could feel a real difference and just on every day. It helped me get going every day. It got me into a most importantly,
a healthy routine. I feel like if you do one healthy routine, you're way more likely to do a couple healthy routines, and that's what you can kind of build on and build on health over the course of the year. So that's because ag one is a foundational nutrition supplement that supports your body's universal needs like gut optimization, stress
management and immune support. Since twenty ten, ag one has led the future of foundational nutrition, continuously refining their formula to create a smarter, better way to elevate your baseline health. Not only did I replace my multivitamin with AG one, but I love that every scoop also includes prebiotics, probiotics, and digestive enzymes for gut support. I wouldn't be doing this, you know. I wouldn't be doing prebiotics, probiotics if it wasn't in AG one. So I get the multi vitamin,
I just scoop it in there. I get all this in one spot. So AG one is the supplement I trust to provide the support my body needs daily, and that's why they've been a partner for so long. If you want to take ownership of your health, it starts with ag one. Try ag one and get a free one year supply of Vitamin D three, K two, and five free AG one travel packs with your first purchase. For any traveler that wants to do this, the travel
packs or a necessity. They're awesome, They're super easy. Go to drinkag one dot com slash the fried egg that's drinkag one dot com. Slash the fried egg and check it out. All right, let's get to new courses that might be old courses, new courses to us.
Yes, new to us. So we wanted to talk about each. Each of us wanted to talk about a course that we saw for the first time this past year that it's not newly renovated, that's not newly built, but that we enjoyed and had never seen before. So this is just a little reflection on the year I saw. I saw a lot of these courses that there are some to choose from that I really want to talk about. But if I had to choose one, I think I'd choose Winchester Country Club near Boston, Massachusetts. I like it.
It's not a course that gets talked about a whole lot, and my understanding is that it's pretty private, and that's probably why this is not a public course like the William J. Divine Golf Course at Franklin Park that I played during the same trip and really enjoyed. You know, that's another Donald Ross course that I think people should
should check out on the public side. But the reason Winchester stuck with me so much is that I don't know that I've seen any course from its era it was originally kind of it was, it took its more or less its modern form and kind of the late teens is my understanding, and it kind of evolved from there through the twenties. I don't know that I've seen a course from that era, aside from Yale, that has
so much massive earth moving. I mean, like usually at older courses, if you're talking about like maximalist courses from the golden age of golf architecture, courses that you know, don't don't make any secret of the fact that the architects made some alterations to the landscape or sit on pieces of land that needed to be changed in order to be you know, formed into a golf course. Usually with courses like that from this era, you see the lion's share of the shaping, almost all of it around
the greens, right. You see the green pads built up in order to make them flat enough to be puttable, and you see some shaping of hazards around the greens. But usually the fairways kind of sit naturally. At Winchester, the thing that really struck me was that it sits on such a severe hillside that you really wouldn't be able to play golf on it if they hadn't basically lifted up about half of the fairways. So these are entire fairways that were built up from the hillside, like
propped on these ledges. Ross's team just had to go and do this without modern machinery. And I think the shaping is really cool looking. It's pretty overt, like you can see where they made changes, but it looks kind of rugged and gnarly, maybe because the course is just older at this point and it's kind of settled into itself. But looking at that course made me think about how little we understand the golden age of golfer chitecture and how many generalizations we make about it that are not
entirely accurate. I think people would be shocked at how much earth moving went into making this golf course playable and how kind of interestingly it's pulled off and so really enjoyed Winchester. It's going to get worked on soon, I think, maybe even coming up this next year by Andrew Green, and you know, Andrew Green's a talented restoration specialist. One thing I do hope about Winchester. One thing that I like about it right now, and that I hope kind of stays with it a bit is how old
it feels right? It really, you know, and there are ways in which it's old that are probably not appealing to members. You can see bunker liners sticking out. You can see that some stuff needs attention. But right now this course definitely feels like it's era. It feels like it comes straight to us from the nineteen teens. And one thing I really hope is that greens team finds various ways to maintain that sense even as they do some necessary updates across the golf.
Cold and what you're talking about there is bunker sand color.
Yeah, if it's bright white, bunker sand like right now, the bunker sand there is basically like looks like it was carted in from a lake beach, you know, and so it looks like it's right, It looks right for the site.
You're talking about bunker sand. You're talking about the grass. You know, when you go to a lot of renovation renovations, the grass will be like, you know, brand new mona stand grass like. The idea of keeping some of the greens like patchy like some of the best, some of the best greens, I feel I have a lot of different coloration. It's an amalgamation of grasses, right, That's what gives it this old feel. And I do feel like that's probably my least favorite trend with renovations, is just
the the way things look brand new. It's like, wait, you just you you lost some of the you know, the essence of it. I you know, it's it's part of the cool thing about seeing an old building is that it's old, right. You know. It's the same thing about the old golf course. Right, there's just a feel to it when it when it has those those grasses that just don't look brand new, they're almost jarring, right. Yeah, So I will I'll go. You know, I've got a tough, tough selection here.
You did a lot of travel in twenty twenty three.
A decent amount, But I would say, I I'm gonna I'm gonna pick you know, just generally with this this topic, it's a place that I find that exceeds my expectations is where I generally fall on this. Right, It's not necessarily the best course that I saw, but it's the one that I always that stick. The ones particularly that stick with me are the ones that exceed what I think they are going into it. So like, for example, I had really high expectations of Hollywood Golf Club and
they met those expectations. That was an amazing golf course, and I was, I cannot wait to see it again. It is so cool. Right. I played Augusta National this year. I had extraordinarily high expectations and it met those expectations. A lot of that, like I struggle with that course with like nostalgia. Right, I would say the courses, the two courses that stand out to me as exceeding the expectations I had going into them are Midland Hills in Minnesota.
I had always been very interested in this golf course because from the beginning of the Frida Egg one of the early kind of pieces that had us stood out a little bit was the were these template pieces. And I've been talking to Mike Mantheini, the superintendent there, for years about pictures and stuff, and they just didn't have very good pictures of the place. So I'd never really seen the golf course outside of a Google Earth straight down.
Jim Urbina just did some renovation work there, restoration work there, and it's really wonderful. The back nine is extraordinary like the back nine is is great. It is like perfectly scaled golf ground, and it's got some really cool templates, some unique templates. Like one of the things that's super cool there is their Burrits hole. The the trough in the middle of the Burritz kind of goes on a
diagonal right as opposed to a straight line. I've never seen a rainer Burrits look that way right where it's kind of like diagonal. The alpshole is unbelievable. You get over and then you're and then when you're coming out of the Alps hole, if you look back, you see the minut Apolis skyline. It's really cool.
Uh.
The Radan hole is kind of like a Radan punch bowl. It's a really unique variety. And then on the front nine, and the front nine is no slouch. It's got a really neat Alps or a really neat no hole. Like that course is wildly under talked about. Nobody talks about that golf course like in the in the Twin Cities area. And I think it's really good. I think it's a lot better than some courses that are talked about a much much more the other one. And I think like
a lot of it. It's like nobody's seen it, like the photos. Like we live in this culture with Instagram right where you see these courses and people are all I want to play there. I don't think anybody has really seen Midland Hills until this year, you know. So. Uh. The other one that I that stood out as like blowing away expectations with Saint George's in in uh on
Long Island. It's right next to Port Jefferson. Uh. It's an easy fair from like Connecticut and stuff, and it's just like one of those like it just a constant reminder when you go to Long Island is like how much of the oxygen National Golf Links and Shinnecock like suck up?
Yeah, And the Saint George's is a Devereux Emmett golf course, and Devereux Emmett is a you know, one of the most significant designers in Connecticut and New York from the early Golden Age to the mid Golden Age. He did a lot of work in that region, but not much outside of it, and so he's probably not as well known as a lot of equally gifted architects who traveled a bit more fun fact about Devereux. Emmett is that he he was very much on site and helping during
the construction of National Golf Links. He was one of the original funders of that project and was friends with C. B. MacDonald And so yeah, he's he's very entwined with that whole area and its golf architecture.
Yeah, so he he is his course, like his family course, right. They wanted he wanted to build his what Charles what CB McDonald had at Nashville. He wanted his own. And he scoured like the area where he's from for a long time trying to find land. Like he looked at a lot of different sites. He said, ale, on this one, it's it's awesome, awesome land. And I think the reason it doesn't get talked about at all is because it's like sixty three hundred yards, but you wouldn't know it's
sixty three hundred yards. It's like just like you're playing up and over. There's a bunch of blind t shots up and you know you're playing significant elevation. It is so fun. It is so fun. It's got like the right amount of like dramatic long island scale where you're like, wow, like this is why there's great golf here is like look at this, Look at what the way this hole
traverses this land. But then it's got like some really like playful humorous quirk to it right some above ground, uh you know hazards, some like really deep trench bunkers.
Crazy crazy bunkering, like just like splatters splatters of bunkering.
Yeah. So it's a cool rest restoration story too. The club's kind of been at it the old Superintendent Adam Jesse and Gil Hants have been kind of working at this since like the nineties, and it is if they do a little by little and the course keeps getting better, it's almost all the way back to like when you look at the old arial to what it is today, it's like so close to being all the way back. It is an awesome place. We're having an event there
in August. I like I'm jacked about it. I'm like so excited.
Cool, Okay, I think we're at the point when we can talk briefly about stuff that we're looking forward to seeing in twenty twenty four. I really just want to hit this very quickly. But you know, a lot of course openings coming up, a lot of renovations are going to you know, open up as well. But something I'm particularly excited to see is some work from Kyle France
some original designs from Kyle Franz. Kyle is maybe best known for his restorations of the ross courses just outside of the Pinehurst Resort, so Mid Pines, Pine Needles and Southern Pines. Kyle Frans did the work at all those courses that you know, has really made them just as impressive as most of what the Pinehurst Resort itself has to offer. And recently Kyle has started to get more new build jobs and one of those is outside of Austin, Texas at Luling. There's more work that he's doing at
Cabot Cabot Citrus Farms. There's a project and I think, you know, I don't have an exact date. And also there are so many different courses at Cabot Citrus Farms. I think care Yeah, there's there's some names to these courses Career Squeeze Edge.
The Karuka or cab Itt Citrust. I believe it's a fall opening.
Yes, which it's basically what used to be the Fasio course there right, the.
Which was it's an amazing property. It's an amazing property.
So they regarded as one of one of the faz's best designs and probably his best publicly accessible design. But they've made the bold decision to just kind of let cal Frans go crazy on it, and so, you know, I'm just curious to see what he produces.
He is he's also building Broomsedge, which is outside of Columbia, and that I think the plan is to have some preview play by the fall four And one of the cool things about that golf course is that it plans to have some some very accessible aspects to it for the public. While it's a private club, it will be accessible.
Yeah. Yeah, So he's working on some interesting new build projects. And just as we talked about with Brian Schneider and Blake Conan, there is this new generation of architects coming up who have worked for years, made it through the recession by doing jobs for Corn Crenshaw, Tom Doak, Gil Hants, David McLay, kid Right, Ron Force, you know any number of architects who are getting more more jobs than the
younger generation. These new newly emerging architects worked for them, and now they're getting some opportunities to go crazy on their own pieces of land. And I know from talking to Kyle Franz that he has a lot of ideas about where he wants to take the craft next. And so do I know whether I'm going to love everything
he does at these courses? No, I don't know that because I haven't seen them, but I can almost be certain that it's going to be really interesting, really bold, and it's going to push in some new directions that we haven't seen golf architecture push recently. So looking forward to that.
All right, you talked about this. One thing I'm super excited about is the renovation of Madina. Just being somebody from Chicago, it is. It is our real hope for major championship.
The last hope of Chicago for the only major championship. Olympia Fields might have something to say.
I don't think. I don't think the USA has gone back. Okay, all right, all right, Uh, Madina has a lot of things working as benefit obviously Chicago, but massive infrastructure to host any type of tournament, you know, Ryder Cup to US Open, and there are very few golf properties with as much space. And I am super excited to see O. C. M. Ogilvy, Kaking and Mead Uh they're you know, they're getting they're kind of similar to France Kyle Franz. They're getting. We're
gonna see some of their first work come online. They've had the Shady Oaks project that's been really kind of quiet what people have said about it. They're building thirty
six holes at fall Line. They have the Madina renovation that's coming online and it is, and then they have a project up in Minneapolis, and I think, you know, from from that perspective, it's super exciting to see what a you know, a died in the Wool Championship course that has like, you know, a big history of like we're just gonna like, we're going all in on what nineteen eighties Championship golf is, right hard hard like narrow fairways,
bunkers around the greens, and it's going to be completely different. And hopefully there's a PGA Tour and a President's Cup around when they're supposed to host in twenty twenty six, hopefully, and we'll get to see a new architects groups idea of what champ Pachhip golf is. And I think that's super exciting. So that that one, to me is kind of a Homer pick, and uh I'm excited about that.
All right. My homer pick is the shortiest course at at Bandon. I don't know if that's exactly homer since it's.
Like a specific Northwestern right stick together?
Yeah, am I in central California? It's Portland, Oregon in central California. No, no, no, oh well that oh no, that would be ridiculous to say that. That's right. Yeah, we're we're only only reasonable takes about geography here. Yeah.
Yeah, so us two Pacific northwesterns got to stick together, us Cascadiens.
All right. I think I think that's it. From my end, we've kind of we kind of covered it.
Yeah, this, Uh well, we'll talk soon and uh and thanks for coming on and we can't wait for twenty twenty four and fresh golf courses. Thanks to everybody for a great year.
Thank you, Thank you for.
Listening to another edition of the Frida Egg Golf Podcast. Today's episode was edited and produced by Matt Russ's Thank you Matt. A quick reminder, I'm a procrastinator. I have done no holiday shopping as of right now. It's not a good situation. This is the curse that I put myself in every year. A great last minute gift for any golf lover and especially if you've been a part of it and you've enjoyed it, give somebody the gift
of Club TFE. You can add a there's a gifting option on the website, so if you visit the fridagg dot com slash membership you can see all the details there. You can give it as a gift is one hundred and twenty dollars for the year. It gives you loads of benefit, but mostly, like I think the biggest benefit in what we're trying to build is like you're going to get a lot of content and a lot more
from us, detailed course profiles, conversations about golf courses. I assume if you're here, that's something you're interested in at this point in the podcast, so this is where you can get more. Garrett does an awesome job with Design Notebook. I'm in and out of that, but he does an awesome job Quarterback in that that's a weekly feature that just kind of dives into all the trends and news
and different happenings around golf courses across the world. So thank you guys for the support for those that have joined Club TFF and if you're looking for a golf lover gift, give the gift to you Club TFF. Thanks and we will be back next week with a new episode of the Friday Golf Podcast