Welcome back to the Friday Podcast. I am excited for today's podcast with Joe Bousch and Mike Serba. Think you guys are going to really enjoy it. We discuss these two guys that are just regular Joe's restoration efforts at Philadelphia Municipal Course Cobbs Creek. They set out eleven plus years ago to restore Philadelphia this course to its original glory, which was considered one of the best municipal courses in the country at this point. Now they're finalizing.
A long term land lease with the city which would be up to seventy years, and they would have the intention to have a restoration led by Gil Hans. So this is really an exciting project and just a great project for the public golfer and golf in general, and could be an awesome template for other communities to follow. A couple of quick housekeeping things. Brendan Pora and I who's a regular on this podcast, start a new podcast
called The Shotgun Start. This podcast will be a much quicker, shorter format podcast and it will be on a regular schedule of every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning. This podcast will be geared towards more quick updates and commentary on the latest happenings in golf. There will be short interviews. Just last Friday, we had Gil Hands on the podcast for about twelve minutes to talk about around them ink and a couple other things, you know, golf course architecture, base,
as well as giving an update on the tournament. So it's definitely worth giving it a try, give it a listen, and subscribe on iTunes. It's called The Shotgun Start and it's up on every other podcast platform.
That I know of.
Now.
As a note, I got a lot of people asking, well, does this mean the Friday podcast is gone? Nothing will change with this podcast. We will continue to do dive interviews and discussions on all sorts of different golf topics. So, without further ado, here is Joe Bousch and Mike Serba talking about their restoration efforts at Cobbs Creek.
Enjoy the Frida egg requires a different technique. What you need to do is actually square the face, so they'll dig down underneath that bad lie and propel that ball right out onto the green.
Here's the thing. Playing out of a buried lion of bunker is completely different than playing out of a nice clean lion of Greenside Bunker. You need to be aggressive on any show, whether it's sitting cleanly or its Friday Egg.
Well, we've all faced it, the dreaded Frida egg. It's not to be feared though. It's actually a pretty easy shot to hit.
Joe and Mike, welcome on, Thanks Andy, good to be here and having us.
So, Mike, I think jumping off. I think the place we should start is kind of the history of Cobbs Creek and it's significance in Philadelphia golf. So how did Cobbs Creek get started?
Sure, so, for about ten years, the Golf Association of Philadelphia had been trying to work with the City of Philadelphia to allocate somewhere in the public park system for a public golf course. And it was well behind other cities like New York and Chicago in terms of adapting to a public golf course for a variety of reasons.
And eventually the city acquired land in the northwest corner of the city that became the Cops Creek Park, and I guess the Golf Association of Philadelphia folks found an opportunity seeing the property and there was actually a scouting group of Golf Association of Philadelphia folks who included Hugh Wilson of Maryon Fame, and they identified this property as something that they thought would be, in their words, ideal
for a golf course. That was about nineteen thirteen. It took another three years or two years actually of wrangling to get the city to agree to utilize this property. So Robert Leslie, who was the president of the Golf Association of Philadelphia at the time, appointed a committee of a number of luminaries from the Philadelphia area. That included Hugh Wilson, that included George Crump of Pine Valley, that included ab Smith, who was at that time a two
time Philadelphia Amateur champion, and two others. These were all men who had experience in designing and construction and maintenance of golf courses at their own clubs. They set to
work in early nineteen fifteen, had multiple layouts. They were confined with the fact that the city Philadelphia would not let them remove any trees, so they had to route the golf course in an exceptionally creative way to derive what, at the time it was opened in nineteen sixteen was generally accepted as probably the best public golf course in the country. That was evidenced as well very quickly by nineteen twenty eight when the US PUBLNX tournament was held here.
Cops Creek was an exceptionally difficult golf course from the start. It was built by the same men who designed Marion East and Pine Valley, and they built it with the idea that Philadelphia was really getting their butts kicked in inner city championships both at Chicago and Boston and New York.
There was that Leslie Cup which was named after mister Leslie that was involved in what was it? It was Boston versus New York versus Philadelphia, and that was with Tilling played in it and not Flynn, but Hugh Wilson played in it.
That's correct, right, And so the general idea in Philadelphia spurred by men like Killing Hast writing about it and others. It was one of the major reasons Philadelphia did not compete well is they had no great golf course to develop great players. So the idea became when they built Cops Creek to build an exceptionally challenging golf course, and because of the natural advantages of the property itself, that was really not a very difficult thing to do. It's this place.
Having we just walked it and walked around the original routing, it really embodied. It has a lot of the characteristics of the great Philadelphia country clubs. This you know, rolling dramatic brawnie topography and some natural creeks and natural land movement that's used so well, and it's it's something that you know, in terms of public and municipal golf across the country, there aren't many places that have a great piece of property like this one.
Yeah, and it's so well utilized. And one of the things that is nice to know, given the original intent of the founders, is that it really did develop champions here over time. So in an Italian immigrant by the name of Joe Coble, this is the true Rocky story, only it happened in golf. He came and took a job down by the sixty ninth Street station adjacent here in a restaurant and would work all night long so that he could come here first thing in the morning
and practice. Cobol developed over time to become the US Publics champion in nineteen twenty four and then become a professional and won the Philadelphia the Philadelphia PGA basically a
couple of years later. Also, one of the things that's very noteworthy about the golf course is, unlike most cities in the country, Cub's Creek was inclusive from the very beginning for all races, all genders, and that led to the development of people like Charlie Sifford, who, when he came here in the nineteen forties to live with his uncle from North Carolina, was just shocked to find whites
and blacks playing together out here. So he naturally gravitated here and really learned the game here in his own words, and eventually became the Charlie Sifford, you know, we all know who went on to be a successful tour player. So there's that kind of history here associated with the property. The golf course itself hosted three or four what was known National Negro opens because there were very limited places for them to play, but Cobs Creek was always a place for that kind of inclusivity.
The proximity to the metro area, to the city, and it was wildly popular upon opening, correct and I imagine it had a profound effect on expanding the game and the public game in the city. I mean, this is one of the greatest golf cities in the country and the world. Did you know, beyond just the inclusivity, how popular was it.
Absolutely what we've both found with this project when we go around and we meet particularly older people that are members of private clubs here, a number of them that have come to us and said, we learned to play golf at Cobbs Creek. If we had a dollar for everyone that told us that, we'd have a couple thousand dollars easily.
That's great. At its peak, this golf course was hosting eighty five thousand people rounds a year. It was similar to what you hear the stories of bed Page of people parking their cars at three o'clock in the morning. People would begin lining up their bags here at three o'clock in the morning to play on weekends. And just the amazing amount of traffic that came through this place over the years was pretty astounding as we learned about it.
So the project, I mean, so the golf course is this great golf course, and obviously a lot of golf courses had troubles when you know, the Great Depression hit and then later the World War two, was a really tough time for all types of golf courses.
The big change here happened, and Mike is I've dug up most of these facts. He's better at remembering all the details. But the big change happened in the early fifties when, and we don't know exactly why this happened, but the city of Philadelphia allowed one of these US Army anti aircraft bases to move from the Upper Derby
area and they moved it onto the golf course. And by moving that onto the golf course, it changed one of the golf holes dramatically, and they basically had to reconfigure the golf course as a result, and that changed the golf course. It's still a very good golf course as it is, but as you've seen by walking it today, and we've only the way it used to be, the original routing was superior.
Yeah. It basically the Army ended up taking about fifteen percent of the property of the original golf course that today and they occupied that land for about six years between nineteen fifty three and by nineteen fifty eight had moved out. But I think the city by that time had other priorities than restoring the original golf course, and you know, it was cleverly reconfigured at the time, but
it was significantly narrowed. So as you saw today, there's areas that were a single wide bold fairway that became two holes and got the course kind of got squeezed in over time, and six of the most dramatic holes
were negatively affected. And as we started looking at this a few years ago, what really, what really triggered some of our interests in this was we had always known that or heard that Hugh Wilson was involved in the design here, and given that his you know, being famous Philadelphians, the designer of Marion, and have designed very few golf courses in his life, the idea that understanding what the original routing may have been was always a curiosity to me.
So at one point I sent a query to the Hagley Museum in Delaware, and they have the Dalln Aerial collection of photographs from the nineteen twenties and nineteen thirties, and I asked that this is back in the fall of two thousand and seven, I asked them if they had anything on Cobbs Creek, and I didn't get a reply for about six weeks and I thought, well, you know, maybe they're busy, or maybe there's another way I should
maybe go down there. And one day my email pops up eight aerial photos from nineteen twenty seven, I think to nineteen thirty nine, and what was indicative in those photographs was that all of the greens that exist today were in existence back then, even in nineteen twenty eight, but it was obvious that the holes were configured differently, and today what is a driving range on CityLine Avenue
looked to be part of the original golf course. So at the time I started a thread on golf club at lists just saying, hey, I have these photographs and this thing looks restorable if anybody ever wanted to do it, And we were kind of young and naive about what that would require or what that would take, and why wouldn't they do it? Because it makes sense it would be a better golf course, and a lot of people like Joe started jumping in and actually doing the legwork
and the research associated. So Joe, maybe you want to talk about some of what you were able to dig up over that time.
Yes, I think it would also be great. You guys are just you know two normal guys with regular jobs that love golf.
Right, yes, yeah, it was that fall of two thousand and seven on golf Club at Lists. I had joined that site maybe a few months prior, and when I got onto the site and I said, yoh, I played Cops Creek and that's how a bunch of people from that I then reach out to me and said we love that place. And this led to Mike ordering these dollar areials and when he got those and we were
still wondering how did the course really run well? I walked over to our library at Villanova spoke to one of the research people and said, helped me out here. I want to know when Cops Creak open and where can I learn more about it? Were at that time this America's Historical's new Papers had come on board, so they had select newspapers, particularly the Philadelphia Inquirer all the way up to nineteen twenty two that I could search electronically.
And one night I start searching and there it is like nineteen fifteen Philadelphia Enquirer has got a picture showing you what the original routing was. And we were able to connect the dots and then further research when I started doing it and learning who all these important people were that made this project happen.
Yeah, and it was. It was really a very neat iterative process because we watched this thing unfold in real time kind of as the research was done and it got posted to goth Clabalis, so one fact and overturning one stone, would you know, five other lizards would scurry out. That would be other trails to dig up, and you know the people involved. So really it was a design by committee is what we learned. And the committee was just so we kind of lay it out. It was
Hugh Wilson, It was George Crump at Pine Valley. It was Ab Smith, who was a two time Philadelphia amateur champion. It was George Clotter, who had done a lot of work with Tilling Has to ironom Ink. It was Franklin Mehan, whose family really was responsible for the Fairmount Park system in the city of Philadelphia and who was an agronomy expert.
Tilling has kind of spurring this on in the newspaper, and then while the course was being built, people like George Thomas later wrote that he learned a lot as an architect from Hugh Wilson. Watching him build the city course at Philadelphia. People like Walter Travis came here because they were working with George Crump over at Pine Valley
and come here and offer suggestions. So it was really this melting pot of ideas of all these people we now know as kind of giants in the architectural history of the game in Philadelphia.
I think that's one of the most fascinating things about This is something in America that has often complained about with you know, the majority of golfers, is how inaccessible so much of the great architecture and how hard it is to see the great work from a Tilling hast of Flynn or a you know Cromp or Hugh Wilson or Walter Travis. Most of their great golf courses are
are exclusive and not available. And here at at Cobbs Creek is an example of a golf course where you can come see you know, the great architecture of the of that time and some of the greatest architecture architects I've ever lived.
Sure, Andy, and you've referred to you know, William Flynn later and at the time Flynn was the superintendent at Mary And under you know Hugh Wilson is the green as the green chairman, and you will Joe's research also indicated that, you know, William Flynn is the one who built out all the greens here. And you know you had noted as we walked the golf course that his use of landforms in directing angles and creating interesting predicaments is really an evidence out there.
So you guys have done all this fact finding. You know, you're uncovering all this information about the golf course. How did the restoration process work with starting to begin a conversation with the city, What did you know kind of what were the first steps and the different things that went into that portion of the project.
Oh, maybe begin this and then Mike can take it from there. Basically not just doing some electronic searches from a database, but also at the Villanova Library they showed me all these microfilm reels for the Philadelphia Public Ledger, which was one of the biggest newspapers in the country, and I spent many weekends just going through issue after issue, finding anything I could on Cobbs Creek and learning about this.
This then learn turned to going down to the Free Library of Philadelphia and spending many weekends there to where I gathered so much data on cobbs and little tentacles that came from that sharing these with Mike and others. Mike then basically said, we need to put this together just in something that's organized and who knows what comes of it, and I'll let him go from there.
Yeah. So my background is in journalism originally, and so I just looked at this, all these stories Joe was uncovering, and I thought, this really needs to be put together in some kind of narrative form that tells chronologically the history, even going back to the late eighteen nineties at the first attempts of Golf Association Philadelphia to get the city
to create or allocate land for a golf course. So there was all this The story really told itself through this series of articles going from say eighteen nineties to the frustration of the early nineteen tens, where people like tilling Has would say wrote, you know, let us let us be uh, I forget what the exact term was, but let us build of course for men of slender purses. I think was his analogy, right, so that they can be men. Indeed was you know, he was a very florid writer and.
Some great way with words.
Right, So I thought, if I can just put a narrative around all this stuff that Joe has found, and we can get this into the hands of some people, why wouldn't they do this? Was our somewhat naive thought, right, because there's all of this is recoverable and it really shouldn't be a lot of money, and what year about is this? So when we started putting the book together, it was two thousand and seven, and then in two
thousand and eight. In early two thousand and eight, a local sports writer here, Joe Logan, was able to get us an audience with the Fairmount Park Commission at the time, who was running the golf course, and we went and we presented our ideas to them at that time, and Joe thought we'd be thrown out of the meeting room in about five minutes. And when that didn't happen, it led to some encouragement of We were basically told, if you guys raised the money to do it, we don't
really have any specific objections to it at this time. Well, that was encouraging, but Joe and I are both public golfers. We're both public gofers forever. We both have day jobs. This is not what we do, and we don't run in the circles of people who have the investment money
to do that kind of thing. So that's when I started putting together this book over that time period, and we ended up presenting to the golf course management company at that time our idea shortly after that, and we also at the time I got I had Jim Wagner and Gil Hans both come out here, Jim first, because Jim, Jim I've known for a number of years in gill as well, and Jim is definitely a guy who will tell you if you're full of it, and and I had no qualm. I thought, all right, we all think
we see the value here. Maybe I can have him meet us out here and we'll walk around and see what he thinks. And you know, Jim was real. He was a little hesitant off for an opinion as we're going and I'm get a little more nervous, and then we start walking up this hill of the original sixth hole and he utters kind of the first valuation of what he's seeing and he says it's a little like eighteen at Riviera. So I'm thinking at that point well, maybe you know we're okay.
In eighteen at Riviera at Riviera designed by George Thomas, a guy that was involved with this project, which is fascinating, right.
So we you know, we continue on through the course and later on I said we were walking up the original eleventh hole which is today fifteen or the latter half of the hole is, and I said, Jim, are we are we nuts? And he said, nah, you guys aren't nuts. So I thought that was that was as good as it was going to get right with Jim. And we later brought Gill out here and he Gil had done work pro bono. You know, the courses had a historic problem with some the Cops Creek running through here.
It's led to some flooding issues over time, and parts of the third and fourth greens had washed away, and Gil would come out here on his tractor and just rebuild them without just simply for the good of the game. So from our perspective, Gil and Jim always had write a first refusal on anything that was ever done here.
We we went to the management company and some of the executives of that company and presented this great history and did a point slide in the old Cops Creek clubhouse that sadly burned down about two winters ago, and and we thought, wow, we really nailed it. And we got kind of from them like, well, if you want to maybe kind of try to build the TPC of Cops Creek out here, you know, maybe we'd be interested in doing something like that. That's not what our intent was, right, So, so.
Yeah, that wouldn't be the letters. I would choose poor Cops Creak.
Right right. So, so I remember being in the parking lot afterward, and Jim Wagner comes up to me and I'm very discouraged. I'm thinking that's it, this is dead. And he says, basically, screw these guys. He says, you know, like find somebody who shares your vision and has money and is willing to fund it. Well, little do we know at the time there was some under things going on where that winner, or maybe it was the next winner.
But our book got in the hands of the CEO of the manage company, and he was a longtime friend of a fellow named Chris Lang, who's a longtime great amateur player, probably, along with Jay Siegel, the two best amateurs to come out of Philadelphia. In the last fifty years, he's played in multiple Senior opens, won the Travis Cup. And we didn't know Chris, but Chris ran in circles that we don't run in, right, So so that was
a good thing. Well. Anyway, Peter Hill was playing golf with with Chris Lang in Florida at a place called the Hideout and they had been roommates at Georgetown, and Peter Hill mentioned to Chris, hey, if you ever do you ever know those guys who were trying to do something at Cops Creek and gave Chris a copy of
our book. We met Chris a couple of weeks later in the in the old Clubhouse and Chris said, he said, so I got this book and I started reading it and I read the whole thing over two nights, and I think we got to do this. So he got inspired at that time, and you know, we sat down and started talking talking about potential funding. This is again now nine ten years ago, and so we're thinking, Okay, if we get funding, the rest of this should be
very easy to do. Not so much so, I think I think we've had multiple ups and downs through multiple administrations in Philadelphia. Even those administrations who were all proponents of it. Somehow we never had any ability to grease the skids of progress or or know how to operate the mechanisms. So even Chris and his and his group, you know, I think it's it was hard to penetrate what the politics are in the city of Philadelphia and how to make that happen.
I imagine with it crossing over. So you know, just for a timeline sense, how many years ago was it from when you had kind of everything kind of in place to.
Where we are today, eight or nine probably eight or nine years.
Yes, is there any moments that stick out where like you were really just gutted at the most gutted or was it after that deep at the meeting where they suggested maybe if it was the TPC.
Yeah, So I think I think this has been an emotional roller coaster at all kinds of various times. We thought at times that wow, if the city doesn't do this in conjunction with the twenty thirteen US open at Marion and see the value in that convergence of activity, then we're probably never going to happen. But at that time, I mean the Golf channel Macanela did a feature on US during that US open and we thought that could spur people will see this and get excited about doing it. And then it.
Just we just found that there is a long process that you have to go through to make a change like this in the city of Philadelphia, and that's understandable. And it took quite a while, and we got more people on board and particular one person that has really
made this happen. And yeah, we we don't we maybe you know he's he's sort of staying under the radar right now, but we we got a very key person in place that had the doggedness, the persistence and the knowledge to know how to work the dealings in the city of Philadelphia.
Okay, so you.
Know, it's a great news. Was about a month and a half ago or two months ago, I'm losing track in June June, June, two three months ago. Now time is flying. What are the future plans and the kind of the timeline around them.
So so Gill and Jim years ago had had put together a master plan pro bono. They also worked with a group who does waterway restoration and called Land Studies and designing basically a one down to the one foot level plan detailed plan of how to converge the creek restoration plan with the golf course restoration plan, and again have done all of that work pro bono. So that was great and we've had that plan in place for
a number of years. They also looked at the second eighteen hole golf course on the property and there's some great land forms up on the other end, and Jim was I remember, I was so surprised because that golf course is not of any great repute, right, And when we first took Jim up there, he was just eyes wide open and saying, this is amazing out here, and he was as excited for that part of the property
as this. So, but there's also low lying holes on that that really are best probably turned back to wetlands. And they came up with what was, you know, a restoration in the original eighteen hole golf course as well as taking that great land and utilizing that in an original nine hole design, but then letting some of the rest of it go back to nature or or help with the water mitigation issues around the property. So that plan has been in place and largely unchanged for a while.
I'm sure as we get into the detailed permitting there. You know, there may be some revisions to that, but really the next steps now are I think, you know, there's the group who are and we're not part of, thankfully because we just smuck it up. But there's the you know, the group that's negotiating those final details of the least with the city that that they're getting the finalize and tees done and and then the really the permitting process would begin. You know, we would like to
see this today. I joke with people, have you know, just hit my sixtieth birthday that I'm hoping to play those original golf holds while I can still hit the ball one hundred and fifty yards. But you know, I think that I think things are now on the on the progress side, right. I think I think this lease will get done shortly. I think that the permitting process, there's already been a lot of groundwork happening to get
that completed. You know, I don't know what the construction timetable would look like from Gill and Jim's perspective, whether they do it in stages, whether they do it all at once. Again, that's going to be, you know, their call. I'm hoping. I'm hoping to be able to play here in I don't know two years, but that's just my feel of it. Things play here under the you know, revision of the golf course. You have, what's your thought.
On that, Joe, We've waited eleven years, So if it's two three, four years to make this happen and to get it done properly, I'm willing to wait.
Yeah with it. You know, going into this plan, did you guys put together you know, financials, you guys formed a nonprofit, Friends of cop Crete Cops create. Did you go into the financials to really and did you have help to figure out how you could make everything work after the you know, the money spent, the restorations done, you have you know, the fee structure? How did that all work?
So so there's two different entities, right. The first entity was just our informal group called Friends of Cops Creek, and we basically put up a website just to share information about the project. Joe. Joe created that website with help from Matt Frey and and that that site was really just to keep the public informed into and to continue to generate interest and potentially you know, financial help
or any any of those type of things. There's also a foundation though that's been put together, uh five oh one three or five oh three c whatever the terminology is by the lawyers, right and and the lawyers are are friends of Chris and the other fellow who we mentioned who has a lot of in with the city. And you know that was to structure this in a way that took you know, Gill and Jim's construction budget, figured out what it would take to maintain that imperpetuity.
And the deal is structured in such a way where it was a long term lease, with the idea that if we didn't have control of the monies that are generated to go back into the golf course, if they were just going back to the city to the general fund, this would not be a workable situation. So the city basically agreed to lease the property to the to the foundation, which was created for a dollar with no money coming
back in. So the city still retains ownership of the almost four hundred acres that are out here, with the idea that the group is on the hook to put in twenty million dollars in capital investments, also on the hook for educational opportunities, for golf opportunities, for inner city residents, but also the first T programs. There's some discussion in the Golf Association Philadelphia move their headquarters here. That could
create a synergy for other youth programs. We've talked to some of the universities, you know, Joe's at Villanova there seems to be interested in mentoring programs and other things that could be done out of the facility. And so I think, I think the opportunities for those kind of things, walking trails, greater integration with the community are really would
benefit the city. And we eventually, after an hour and a half grilling in one subcommittee meeting, we eventually convinced them of that vision in a way that they saw the opportunities for more of a regional revival kind of stemming from this in an organic way than any direct payback to the city in terms of dollars from the golf operation.
I mean, bringing it back, making it a hub for the community, which was it seems like, you know, from all the writings of the original intent really for the city of Philadelphia, for the residents, and making it just a great place to spend time, whether you're playing or not. It sounds like right. So in terms of you. You've referenced the book a little bit. Is there a way that people can get the book? Is it going to the website.
Or the book is available online electronically they can read it at Pete Trenham's website. So I think we can put a link. So an early version of the Tome as we call it, because it's nearly four hundred pages now you can read online. But if someone wants a more recent version of that, they can go to the Friends of Covscreet Golf Course website. Contact me and I can make it happen.
Right, And and you know, my wife is long suffering. And when I wrote that book, put that tog over the winter, it kept growing. I told Joe he has to stop doing researcher. I'm going to need like a marital attorney because I have. I had to keep adding to it. I think we're in like the twelfth revision now, and like I say, up to about four hundred pages of it's all great stuff. And you know, when when it's uncovered, it's like, oh man, we got to put this back in. I need another revision. But we we
did it. We also created the book without a sale price. Yeah, and I couldn't sell it anyway because all these articles, I never sourced them properly from a you know, from a uh term, you know, trademark or what the source was, because I just put together one of the USGA archive is when he was showing the book, said, oh my god, this is awesome, but it's like a trademark attorney's nightmare.
So we never sold We never sold it. We just we just get our own copies made out of our own pocket and and and give it out.
So, you know, the struggles of municipal golfer around the country, you know, there's struggles, there's success stories. This is a success story in the making. And I get a lot of emails from people that are asking, you know, and laying out situations at their municipal level, their golf course that might be closing in terms of you know, guys, to guys that have been through, you know, the whole process.
What would be your advice to somebody that's looking at, you know, their municipal or public course and knowing that it might be something special from another time or could be something more how to go about the process, Where to start really and how to get to a stage where you're at now.
Well, I think the history part is important, right, If you have to sell this to some people, you need to have something good to tell them, and we've had that in this project. There's so many good stories associated with this, and I think that's important. And I've had many people contact me about having similar ideas that they have in various cities, and you know, I try to tell them, Wow, are you are you ready for a long haul?
Right? I think that's I think that's true, and I think there may be some things that are that were unique to this facility here in terms of how good the golf course was originally and how great the history was originally that helped this project along. But what I would say on a practical level is the cities aren't going to do it because they don't have the money
and they have bigger priorities. So the only way effectively to do this, in my mind, is a model where there is an interested group from a public who can create a nonprofit who can get funding from you know, benefactors and donors who are interested in you know, either creating a legacy or preserving the golf course in a good way in perpetuity and then working with the city in a kind of arrangement that we have where where you know there is that it's a public private partnership
is really what it comes down to. And I think moreover, if we talk about the future of golf, you know, over the last twenty years, there's been all these great resort places built out in the middle of nowhere, kind of in private clubs and resorts, right starting with like a sand Hills model out in the middle of Nebraska, somewhere abandoned dunes up on the coastline of Oregon. That's not what's going to save golf in the long term.
If golf is to thrive, it has to reach where the population centers are and where the groups that have historically not had access to golf live. Right, I'm talking ethnic groups, I'm talking nationalities, I'm talking racial groups and cities. So golf needs to exist where the population centers are. And you know, it's had that history of the creation
of municipal golf courses. It's had that history of so many of them being created during the Great Depression by w p A, labor and civilian conservation core work and other things. And those those still by and large exist. I kind of pride myself on when I go to a new city finding the oldest public golf course around or Muni Uni around and playing them. And I've played some pretty interesting places. But that that is really where I think golf needs to regenerate.
Again, I completely agree, and I think the founding of this with it centered around this competitive golf landscape and the you know, wanting to create championship golfers. I talk about this all the time, is you know, the GAP is a is an example of an organization that really gets it when they play championships. They play the greatest courses in the city and the courses it's in their DNA to allow these championships to happen. And for kids,
it's so important in developing the young golfers. If you you know, the great golfers come like, having exposure to grit golf is a great is a way for them to to get better and improve because it forces them to hit shots. You know, you walk around here and you see shots that you really know how have to know how to play the game well to pull off. And it teaches these kids and then when they get into their you know, these first USGA championships or whatever
it may be. They're better prepared for what they might see at that next level. And then even just from the interest level, how interesting this golf is for a beginner, and the different challenges and the heroic things they have to come overcome, the decisions of whether to play the safe line or take the advantage, and whether they know it, you know, or not they consciously that they have to make these decisions. It creates better golfers that understand and appreciate the game more.
Yeah, I would. I would say two things in that regard. First, you know, growing up as a lower middle income person myself, if I didn't have exposure to reasonable public golf, I hesitate to know where my life would have been if all the time I spent on golf courses over my life was spent in other endeavors, right, I don't think it would have been a good outcome. The second thing, though, is that I first had the opportunity to play here
in nineteen eighty one. I was living across the street with my roommate from college, and I was parking cars at the General Wayne Inn as a valet parker, and I came out here to play and immediately, even though you could tell it had been lost something over the years. You could kind of just feel the ghosts out here, right.
So this place has so much aura in history, and I tell people when I come out here for a walk, I take twenty years off my life instantly, because I never get tired of walking around here and showing people things. It's just such an amazing place to know.
This morning, it's about fifty seven degrees and it was a steady to rainfall, and I I didn't feel cold at all. I didn't I don't even have pants. The weather changed dramatically from the week. But I can testament like I've been tired because I've been walking all these golf courses and I felt like a kid out there today. I was running. I felt like I was running up the hills. You guys are both very well documented travelers, and you see a lot of golf courses at many
different levels of conditioning. What if you were going to put together five gems, whether they're in Philly or outside of Philly, that are available to the public that people should go see when they're in a city or in the area. You know, what are your kind of five hidden gems?
Each of you, Well, we want to stay sort of in the Philadelphia area of public courses.
What do you want to do? I'm going to go further out because I maybe.
Do three in Philly or two in Philly area outside of Cobbs, and then three anywhere.
Okay. Wow.
We get asked this a lot, and I usually don't answer this because I don't want to offend people by what I choose. What do we I would maybe I say this to say some people say how did you get into golf course architecture? Because I wasn't into it. It was in two thousand and seven I went out and played in a Scrone, which is about an hour way outside of Philly, Gil Hanson's first golf course, I think, and it was private and then things went sour and it became public and I played in a Scrown and
that was when I had this aha moment. I'm like, Wow, this has some really edgy architecture. So one of my two courses in this area of public I would choose in a Scrown.
Sure, and you know, there's some really good public courses, but I and some built in more modern times, but I'm always liked the traditional stuff, right, So I like Jeffersonville, which had a restoration a few years ago. I think it's just a great place to play where you know, everybody from a you know, little old lady can can roll the ball along the holes of old Donald Ross Course to to uh, you know, and it can. Yet the greens are so uniquely interesting that they can challenge,
you know, the best players. There's a piece of property out in Berks County that you were at. Galen Hall is another just just fascinating golf course to play. Berkeley maybe doesn't have the the fine finish, but just the use of the land out there is terrific.
Manor out there Andy which you visited, which doesn't really reach anybody's radar around here, but it's an old course designed by an architect that probably is underappreciated, Alex Finlay, and and you saw it. It's it's pretty darn good that.
That place has stuff that you can't see anywhere else. And that's that's what I think is so fascinating about these golf courses is in particularly you know, you see it a little bit more with the older courses than the courses that were built you know during the mass production time. These courses like Galen Hall is a perfect example. Manor is another example. Like Galen Hall has stuff that you can't see anywhere else. Manor has stuff that you
can't see anywhere else. I mean the start of manner, it's gonna uphill par four to like a punch full green with this big mountain. You're like, oh, this is a pretty cool, but like that's the right way to start, you know, Galen Hall's second hole I and cascades down this like one hundred foot drop to part five. I mean, it's just something that would never get.
Built in plane across a public road, yes.
Yes, both multiple times you play across roads out there.
It's so even just tying that back to here, right. So I think the architects have then had the advantage and disadvantage of they didn't have large earth moving equipment, so if you were going to do a routing, you had to confront what was there. So today's you know, as we walked the golf course today, the first you know, five holes up along the creek and then we figure out, well, we're at the low point of the property. We probably
need to get up on that hill somewhere. So what do they do they built what was the audacious at the time sixth hole, which had an eighty foot climb from the driving from the tea area up to the fairway, and that was the whole that you know. Interestingly, Jim Wagner tied back to the eighteenth at Riviera as we did the initial walk around here. So those guys weren't afraid to be audacious, and they weren't afraid to be bold, and they weren't afraid to call on the golfer to
create to have a difficult shot. Fairness was not in their vocabulary right, and when you think back to the fact that they were playing golf with hickory shafted clubs at that time when this course was built, it's just an unimaginable challenge's I.
Mean, fairness is one of the worst terms in golf. I think it just it's the beauty. Why golf is so great is for Tiger Woods as maddeningly as frustrated about golf as the person that just learned how to play yesterday, Like that is the beauty and the and essentially the ethos of golf and what makes everybody come back and come back If everything was fair and it was easy. Nobody would play the game like the game.
The mystique of the game is that you always feel like you left shots out there or you're thinking about that one time, that one shot that you you know, if I could just do over this, Like how many times if somebody told you, you know, I shot seventy eight, but it should have been seventy four, could have easily been that, or could have you know, I shot ninety one, but it should have been eighty five.
I even said that about Tiger watching him on television yesterday, I said he should have had thirty on that front, exactly thirty five.
That is the beauty of golf. There's micro moments and this this place is it's just full of that drama and that you know, if you're a first time player walking around it. I mean, I was so excited to climb the hill and see what was over that hill and that you know, the you know, the opposition of blind shots. You know, in the modern era of architecture, that happened is like you know that that climbing, that unknowing of where it is is like one of the best feelings in golf.
Yeah, golf, golf at its best should be about adventure and discovery, right, and discovery is is really oh, I didn't realize if I hit it over here and maybe challenge that even though it's a little more dangerous, then my next shot is is so much more. I have
such a more advantageous angle. But the adventure part of it is still you know, this is still a game where guys were shepherds taking their you know, going down to the water and hitting the rock or whatever they hit originally along the way and trying to get it, you know, trying to defeat nature in whatever nature was that day, right, whether it was wind or rain or
or whatever. And I think we've I think we've over homogenized golf in the effort to create purely sol you know, purely beautiful vistas and pure maintenance conditions wherever you blade of grass is uniform and even the roughs are uniform. I think the unpredictability and venture of golf is what is part of the natural, inherent attraction of the game. And I think in as golf progresses, I'm sensing a trend maybe back toward a more natural way of maintaining
golf courses. Water restrictions and other things are going to force some of those issues over time. And I think, you know, I know Gill and Jim are very cognizant of those things. And I think what I'd like to see here over time is really gravity golf, you know, using all these interesting landforms in a way that the ball will roll the balls around for a reason. Right, And and so I think there's such opportunity out here. I get excited all the time I think about it.
So I'm not going to to let you guys off the hook. Alright, we need we need three more, three more gems non Philly gems, okay, and public public, Yeah, of course.
I'll start Mount Pleasant in Baltimore, Audubon Park in New Orleans. Oh good, there's a lot. There's a lot hard. Yeah. Those jump out a place called Bonneville in the hills foothills outside of Salt Lake City. They're all places that I would, you know, walk on and sling a bag with my shoulder and want to come off eighteen green. Go back to the first TA.
Tough question. I haven't played as many courses as Mike, although I'm getting there. Mike's over eleven hundred now I'm probably about eight hundred. I grew up in Indiana and didn't get to play this course until about five years ago. But Donald Ross Course at French Lick is a resort. But the price tag actually isn't all that bad. It's
probably eighty ninety bucks. It's absolutely outstanding. So if anyone's really wanting to see Donald Ross, I think at his best, which is taking a small piece of property and making it work, it's just excellent. Then maybe go modern and give some love to Gil Hans. The Black course at Streams Song is very aggressive. It's just hard to explain what's going on there. But I have a somewhat unusual way of judging golf courses in that I really love a golf course when after you hit the ball, it's
rolling on the ground a long time. And the way that course is presented and designed, it really you can take advantage of the ground game. That's outstanding. What are we going to do here? Oh, my friend Matt Frye is sitting by here. Matt, you're gonna go to give me a third? What should it be? Let's let Matt put one in.
The third course outside of Philly?
Can I pick a defunct course? Uh?
Tall grass out on long Island public golf course by Gil Hans was wonderful and I'm still very bummed that that place has since been shuttered in the past year or so. That's like Joe was saying when we played, it was firm and fast and you could let that ball run and roll out and uh, it's just a blast.
Yeah, I mean, I mean, I was up in Boston this summer. I'm going to give a shout out to two places that had just fantastic restorations of two public golf courses. Right, So there's George Wright, which is the real Brownie Donald Ross golf course, But equally interesting is Franklin Park, which is just about six thousand yards maybe and just it has some of the neatest, most original golf holes you've ever seen. And recent efforts to get both of those golf courses back in a very good
presentations has just made them joyful to play. I joke to people and I'm probably the only person in history to ever play in Myopia Hunt Club and George Wright on the same day. But I also joke to people and I said, and I also joke with people and I say, I'm probably the only person that ever played my Opia Hunt Club while staying at the Super eight in Brockton.
But the I read a really good brag. Cline just wrote an article about Franklin Park and George Wright on Golf Advisor, and Mark Mundrum did the work there. Yeah, heard nothing but really great things about those two places.
Terrific.
So I gotta ask us thinking about this is you guys go at this for eleven years. You know, you get the news that has passed, you finally cleared the hump. What did you do to celebrate?
Oh, we got on the school kill and set in traffic for about an hour and a half.
Strangely enough, I mean did you get in the car and like was there just like like you know, like is there any kind of celebratory reaction?
Yes, yes, it was probably somewhat reserved because it's just been a long process and just getting it through the city council. You know, more stuff had to happen. It has. But yeah, we've we've celebrated. We hope to have a sort of a bigger event here sometimes, so.
I've been I have a neat picture Joe found, which is Hugh Wilson and a few of the other luminaries. Ab Smith and looking at properties for the City of Philadelphia to fight a golf course, and they're all wearing these bowler hats. So my deal is I want to got a bowler hat. And at the time the actual construction starts, and I watched them start moving bulldozers down through where the driving range is. Today, the bowler is going on, and I think some champagne will be open
at that time. Until that moment, I'm still in that reserve of pinch me when it happens.
That's great. So we'll put in the I know there's an exhaustive thread on golf club battlests, so and a couple probably I'll put those links in there, and then you know, you got your website that people can find more about. Is there any other resources, anything else that you suggest for people that might want to learn more about everything that's happened outside of the book.
So one of the things that's going to get created is a is a website particular to the project, and it's really going to be driven to people who want to help contribute financially and other things, but also being the i'll say it more controlled source of information of what you know, what the foundation wants to be able to share with the public around the around the project, but for anything on the history or how we got to this point, or the or the golf course itself,
the architecture. Uh, you know, our friends at Cops Creek site still exists and we certainly want to link out to that and we enjoy the interchange with folks there too.
And I would have to give a plug, but there's no advertising nothing. But in the process of doing on this research on Cobbs Creek, and I started talking to various people that I got to know. They started asking me about, well, did you find anything, Like I was talking to Tom Paul, a legend around this area. Ever see anything on you know, golf mills And it's like, I think I have. And then so ten years ago, basically anything on a Philadelphia golf on microfilm, I would
scan it. So I have tens and thousands. Now I'm beginning to organize that and put it out into what's known as the Bouch Archives, which is on the Myphillygolf dot com site. And I think that is an exceptional site for anyone that wants to learn more about history of golf in the city of Philadelphia.
I will definitely link out to that. Your archives are unbelievable and I personally have looked through hundreds of courses on his photo arch Joe's got photo archives and tours of what's hundreds of archives.
Yeah, And what's been great actually is that Joe's research around clubs like even the private clubs like Marion and Pine Valley have really solidified what the history of those clubs actually was from an architectural standpoint and really provided
the documentation of the real time. Im Tilling has wrote this series of articles that Joe found during the construction of Pine Valley originally that really just lay out so much information that sometimes I think what happened in a lot of these clubs is versus information just got lost over time or word of mouth kind of legends just sprung up that may or may not have been true. But to actually read the story in real time, Joe's site is invaluable for that type of information.
That's great. So we got to do overrated under eight and then we're out of here, all right, all right, Philadelphia Golf, it's gonna be a.
Layup underrated, underrated.
Professional golf.
Like the PGA Tour. It's about where it is. I don't think it's underrated or overrated. I think it's necessary to generate interest in the game. I don't like where some of it has gone in terms of technology and other things.
But yeah, yeah, I will echo those thoughts. I don't I'd love professional golf. My wife knows. If I could have a cable channel and I really watch as a golf channel, that's just about it. I'll watch any event on there. So, yeah, there's issues with professional golf. I don't know if anyone's gonna finally tackle sort of the ball and maybe roll back the ball or have a have a professional golf ball.
Yeah.
Right, And then I think you could not have to worry about maybe modifying some of these grand old courses, maybe even one around here that you know, you might say has been you know modified to you know, deal with professional golf. And I'm not so certain that that is the best for members.
Yeah, that's the one that they're playing this week, is you know, was restored four members, you know, and very faithful to what originally was there, and and we're seeing that it's just you know, it's one of the great championship courses of all time. You know, falling by the wayside, and it's it's a it's a fascinating topic. And obviously, when I think we're all, we're all sitting on one side of the fence, very far over here. So it's important to note that we're probably about as far on
one end of the spectrum as we could get. But something the final, we're gonna go final, overrated, underrated. I've I've I've developed a massive affinity for this design feature. And it's kind of my flavor of the month where I just get obsessed with something. What do you guys think overrated? Underrated? Ditches on a golf course?
Oh?
I think ditches underrated? Some don't. Maybe just look think the word maybe kind of sounds elementary, but look look at look at Oakmont. Look well, Oakmont uses ditches right.
And and I grew up on a lot of public courses where there wasn't a lot of effort meant to hide how they got water off of the golf course property. So ditches, right, they would be, they would be out there in evidence and you'd get the you know, you get your local rule and your scorecard that would either define them as a hazard or something else. But yeah, ditches are are necessary for water and and they're cool for a golf course feature properly done.
Yeah, yeah, I think they got. We gotta change the name, come up with a new name that sounds very consequent, and yeah, you know, I like the wash idea, but we got I'm gonna think I'm going to think about a name. We can change the name too, because like, oh, come on, less us open they had, but they got like five inches of rain and they played the next day and I don't I don't remember. I can't remember
if the ball was played up or down. It might have been played up in just the fairway, but I mean, five those ditches just went to work when that rain came down, right, And it's any place that's got some major drainage problems, you got to be looking at ditches because they can be really cool too. The strategy that
got a strategic aspect of it. But guys, I thank you so much for coming on the podcast, sharing the story, but more importantly the eleven years of like blood, sweat and tears into hopefully getting the you know, getting one of America's greatest public municipal golf courses back to its stature as maybe the best in the in the country and and one of the best in the world.
Thank you so much. It's it's our pleasure and we've we've really enjoyed talking with you today.
Thank you, Andy, you've.
Been listening to the Fried Egg podcast.
We do the digging for you.