The Evolution of Modern Golf Architecture with Bruce Hepner

golf course design. Bruce was there for all of it. He served as the vice president of Tom Doakes's Renaissance Golf Design from nineteen ninety three to twenty ten, which was the period when Renaissance kind of went from an outsider band to one of the busiest and most influential firms in the industry. Bruce worked on courses like Pacific Dunes, Old MacDonald, Rock Creek Cattle Company, the Renaissance Club, and he was the lead associate at Ballyneial, Cape Kidnappers and

stream Song Blue So Pretty sturdy resume. He also handled a lot of Renaissance golf designs, consulting and restoration commissions, and when he left Renaissance thirteen years ago, he continued working with many of those courses. A few of his most significant restorations have been at Essex County Club in Massachusetts, tim Iquana in Florida, Piping Rock and New York, Blue

Mound and Wisconsin, and Cape Arundle in Maine. One reason I'm talking to Bruce right now is that he just fit a renovation at Percy Warner, which is a municipal nine hole course in Nashville, and that job is a great example of how much can be done at an affordable public course with a relatively low budget. You know, so much of what I've been thinking about lately when

it comes to golf architecture, Bruce represents. You know, I've been thinking about affordability, sustainability, the virtues of being patient with a golf course as opposed to trying to get

everything done all at once. You know, in Bruce's career he really pursued so much of that, and so I'm excited to hear his perspective on how the industry has changed since he entered it thirty five years ago, what he makes of the current state of golf architecture, and what some of his key experiences have been along the way. So all that is coming up. But before we get to my conversation with Bruce Hepner, a quick word from our sponsor for this episode, Fat Cork is all about champagne.

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with that, here is Bruce happening. All right, Bruce, I hear you like music. So do you ever listen to music when you're on a construction site?

And I don't mind if there's music and it kind of keeps It keeps my mind occupied a little bit, but I'm obviously focusing on what I do. But yeah, it definitely helps me. It gets me in a good mood. You know, happy shaper. You know, I always learned just running projects, happy shapers are great shapers. If they're they're they're irritated because their internet is down at the house or something like that. Uh, you know, they're not doing

great work. So you know, my job a lot of times running project for Tom was keep the keep the happy people happy. And you wouldn't believe how much great work comes out of that.

or three for five bucks. That isn't available nowadays, so you have to get your music online, which is really hard. So streaming has really opened up a new world for me.

whatever your friends had. You could you could burn the CD and and start building up a pretty big physical music collection. That way folks, and that's kind of gone away. You know, people don't curate their music collections as much anymore because it is all streaming.

was you always talk about bally Neil. When I ran bally Neil, I was just rolling the rock stars through that. There was so much talent coming through, and I have him come in through a couple of weeks. Some of the court you know, Dan Proctor was there for the.

give him a few cues. All right. I need you to go work on those two holes because I don't need to worry about him because I'm worried about this, and just go do it. You think it's cool, and Tom will come through and uh, you edit it. That's why Thomas the great editor and uh he just let it, let it, let us flow, give us our best, our best work without any in ambitions, and he come through and edit it, and it's it's it's it's a great

It's that that has great parallels with music. I guess you're right.

that's an interesting role. I have all sorts of things I want to talk to you about, Bruce, but maybe we should start with one of your recent projects, which was a renovation of a nine hole municipal course in Nashville, Tennessee called Percy Warner. There was a ribbon cutting ceremony for the new course last month. My understanding is that it's sort of official public opening for play is going to be next year. Yeah, So how did you get

involved in this project? You live in Traverse City. Nashville is a long way from Traverse City. What was the connection there.

He goes, let's go over and I want to show you the golf course I grew up playing as a kid, and we went over this little nine holders just down the road from Bellmead Country Club. It's in bell Mead and Percy Warner Park, so nine to ole. He was really beat up. They had winter in summer greens, you know, two sets of greens went for the winter one of the summer, hardly any grass on the place. Just built a new clubhouse and it's like within the confines of

a beautiful park, just this man. You know, I don't know how many thousand acre park this is. And he was We started walking and I'm like, I'm walking and I'm walking. I'm like, the routing is really good, the

green sites are really good. I go, man, this has a lot of potential and it had fallen on the wayside because, you know, in the Nashville park system that was owned by the Metro Parks, they had kind of lost their way in maintaining they you know, they didn't think off was that important at the time that you know now they're they're starting to realize it. So they didn't really sink a lot of resources into these golf courses and they're they're playing the hell out of these

golf courses. You know that I always I always tell the stories, like when we were there, I'm on the first tee and there was two kids with their hats on backwards and their shirts untucked, one guy with a bud Light t shirt and an old guy with Cyprus point shirt and was it pulling a trolley? And that's the clientele they have, and it's very diverse, and it

was just a cool facility. And he goes, well, they've they'd been trying to rebuild this for years, but you know, the money, you know, the wrong people got involved, and the price tag was up to five million to rebuild it, and it just died. And it was like his vision. It was prior guized to him, but he was the impetus behind it, and he's a trustee on the Tennessee Golf Foundation. I go, I could see this. It was like I always tell people, I saw it in slow motion.

How cool this place could be. It's a hub for all these walkers, you know, they park in the parking lot and go up and hike in the mountains there. The Mountain Biking group is out of that parking lot in clubhouse too, and then there's this cute little nine hole golf course. I think it was part thirty four, and I could just see it. You know, I grew up playing public nine hole, public golf courses in Detroit, okadd eat and all that stuff, so I could see

how this could be. The more people I talked to that was the first golf ball they had ever hit was on that place, especially all the people there in Belle Meat, which is a pretty steep neighborhood. So I said, yeah, this is doable. Let me do a drawing while I'm here. So on the side, you know, on the side at night, I was doing little design plans for it, and that kind of got the ball rolling.

the park doing these great allays and masonry work. So the mechanisms in there, and then the Tennessee Golf Foundation got involved, you know, through Stuart, So we had turned by the president of that and then Jim Seaberry, two very powerful guys in the uh you know, Tennessee Golf got involved and we and I think Stuart what he did is he played golf. He heard the Mayor Cooper was a golfer. It was like a like a closet golfer.

After a long day, he'd been seen on Harborth Hills, which is around the corner, playing golf at six o'clock at night, pulling his own you know, carrying his own bag. And Stuart goes, we need to get a hold of that guy. Stewart invited him to some kind of an outing and befriended him and said, hey, listen, you know this would be pretty cool. You know, the park system is not really funding these you know, these golf courses as well. Prissy Warner had two guys maintaining that golf course.

That's all it was. So we got into the Mayor Cooper John Cooper's ear, and that kind of got the

ball rolling. So then between Mayor Cooper, the Tennessee Golf Foundation and the friends at Warner Park, they put it all together and we started having fund raising events so they'd fly me in and we'd have a cocktail party at somebody pretty famous as a house, you know, and just bringing people in and started raising fun We wanted to raise two and a half million dollars and so it was it was a grassroots movement and all I would go to these meetings and you know, Sarah, Sarah Ingram,

like kirs Cut captain, you know, she was at these meetings, you know, and she was all on board. So we had people like that in the month. Once the money, once we got raised over a million bucks, we knew we could pull this off. So they pulled me in officially. I brought in Mcurret Golf out of Florida because I have such a good relationship with them. The contractor, I said, we're just going to come in as a package deal.

I think the budget my budget was one point seven million dollars, twelve new greens, you know, nine new greens, and then I built a big short game practice facility for the PJ junior program, a big putting course. So we had twelve new greens, twelve brand new bunkers, used bunker solutions, you know, the latest technology, all new tea's in a brand new single row irrigation system. So what we did was, I knew this still had to be maintainable,

sustainable and playable. So you know, we didn't go hogwhile like some of these projects, whether it's and and you know one point there are two point five million dollars is a lot easier to raise than twenty million.

So we squeezed the bureaucracy and you know, between us and Mayor Cooper on the top, we squeezed down into him and they started believing it and it was just a project of passion for everybody. Jim Nance got involved because Jim lives seven doors down the road, and so he'd come out and walk the golf course with me and uh, you know a lot of people involved, so it was, you know, a great pleasure for all of us.

It's turned out really good. We got a little bit of a late start, you know, hooking up a water line to the city water line. Didn't didn't realize how much red tape that would be. We thought we'd just tap into the waterline, would be good. But you know, you got to go through all kinds of agencies. But we so we had a little late starting grass and

the greens. So that's why we had the formal ribbon cutting last month with you know, Jim and I were Jim nance was there to speak and I gave a speech too, and all the donors got to be there and hand out all these cool hats and stuff like that. And we're going to open up sometime early summer when it's it's perfect.

Because you made some fairly dramatic changes out there, How do you make good golf course design happen on a budget that small? What do you kind of extract from the usual process. What do you say, Okay, we don't need that, and then what do you focus on?

and that's what I did. I concentrated on building really cool greens that were accessible. So there, you know, say the first first hall, we have a bunker on the left hand side that you could tuck the pin behind, but have open approach and fair way all the way around, even to the backside of the green, so it's chipping, chipping all the way around, and that's sustainable because the mainans crew, you know, we're hoping to have four people

maintain this golf course when we open up. We've asked for that, and he just takes the fairwaym over and rams it, you know, goes right around the green and the backside. So building all these cool short grass areas, which I love in the first place, are easier to maintain for them. So we rolled that short grass right into the second te so you're just constantly walking on short grass. So it's it is sustainable and it's maintainable and it's very playable. You know, I didn't. I didn't

pull any punches on the greens. They're cool greens. There's some contour them, but they're accessible because at least half of the approach is open, so you know, high handiciffers can run the ball in. And there's always you know a couple of really tasty hull locations for for really good players. You know, we plan and have some cool events, amateur events there just because the places you know, place rocks. So you know, I didn't, I didn't. I would say

I didn't dumb me down the design. I just figured out how to maintain it with least amount of money. And the tea's are just top soil tees, you know, it's fine. Single row irrigation was huge.

of the fittest. These great fairways were pure. You know, last winter most of the country clubs had winter kill in their bermuda, and we had no winter kill, you know, because it's just old school, unrrigated. You know, the irrigation system they had before we got there were quick couplers. You know, that's that's somebody walking around night watering and they hadn't done it a long time. So but the grass, so the grass knew how to grow without all the nutrients.

All the high profile stuff, so it was laying there, and to me, it's just, you know, it's kind of going back to you know, all the great courses that I've studied, and you know, we all studied as kids, and everything built before nineteen twenty was just like I built now. So you know, that's how you do it. You just build old school and just be fine. You know, we're not going to have the greens thirteen on the

stint meter. You know, we're going to mower a tease at a half inch as the same as the airways because you're using the tea, and we're gonna mow the greens, you know, obviously an eighth inch or lower. But you know they all surface drained, we have good soils under them, and we have you know, we did do ins and out irrigation heads around the greens so we can control the water and the greens versus the outside. But it

wasn't that hard. It was just kind of going back to your roots and going you know a lot of this, these fifteen million dollars renovations. I just pulled my hair out. I'm like, where are you is spending the money I'm used to If you look at my projects. You know, I just just came from Weathersfield Country Club in Hartford.

They used to have the Sammy Davis, the g h O was there before they moved over the and we we rebuilt all the bunkers and I regrassed, you know, all the short gas around the greens, expanded the fairways, built, built a handful of tea's for well under a million dollars. And that's just as that's just as good as anybody else's, right, you know, the fifteen million dollars. So I don't know where the extra zero is going. Hopefully it's in their pockets,

somebody's podcasts. But I think, you know, some of the some of the modern construction is a bit excessive, and so that's how we did it.

Their bunkers are sort of money pits, so to speak. Right, and and and you know, some end up getting rid of them or not maintaining them very well, or you know, finding solutions that are maybe not ideal for the quality of the golf course. You built a new set of bunkers at Percy Warner. There aren't many of them, as you mentioned, you don't need many. But when it comes to shaping a bunker for a facility like this, what does an easily maintainable bunker look like?

And third I took that right off their their plate because Kevin Ford, who's the golf pro over it over this in Harbeth Hills, he has one of the great a great PGI junior program, you know, Jim Nantz's kids in it. He has a hundred and some odd kids in his programs. So I built that facility for him. The first lesson of the program is go learn how to fix ballmarks and go to learn how to rake bunkers. So the kids are going to rake the Bunkers's how I did that. And they're gonna fix ball marks first

before they ever hit a ball. So I took that off them. But to build them, you know, they're not high flashes, but we use bunker solutions, which is that kind of carpeting you put on the floors. So if I did flare and he sand I flared to stand up, it'll it'll it'll stay up in the face to keep it, you know, keep the bunkers from being contaminated and the rule is, and I do this at all my courses. What I've realized is bunker maintenance wears up bunkers, not golfers,

you know. And the only reason we have to maintain bunkers because golfers do a crap be job breaking their own bunkers. So my motto is, you know, hand rake, but only spot rake. Only rake the area where that it was disturbed, where somebody did a bad job of raking yesterday, or if nobody was in it, stay out of it and keep those sandpros out of there. You know, they're the ones that chew things up. They think it's easy to do, and they just destroy bunkers. And they're small,

they're thousand square foot bunkers or less. They're not huge, and they're perfectly located, and uh, you know, I also build them, you know, properly build bunkers, don't allow water to run into them from the outside. So you know, I know how to build bunkers. So you'll see that there's some art to them, but they're very maintainable.

in of a budget. He gifted us are granted us the Tennessee Golf Foundation two million dollars out of the city funds to go over and take on Shelby Golf Club golf course, which is over in East Nashville, which is kind of the hipster area. A lot of people are moving there. You know, a lot of guys walking around jeans rolled up and work boots and.

we're capping at two million bucks. So we're going to rebuild all the greens because they have the winter and summer greens. They are also push them together, build like five to six thousand square foot greens, same kind of technology we OpEd up Percy re irrigate the green sites. They have a relatively new irrigation system throughout the whole place. And then move some cart pass. You know, they've never had an architect working in natural public golf course. Hey

we need a car pass. So they send some guy out there and need paints them and half of them like down the middle of a fairway.

and Vince Gill was involved in that. So it's a little nine hole part three course for kids and anybody. Very cool facility run by the Tennessee Golf Foundation. Just these cool little short holes. You go over there and you take two clubs with the endplay. There's a great kids program there too. But they when they built them, the greens are great. They're going to have like four bunkers and they're starting to maintain those well. But the teas are small. They have a little strip of AstroTurf

and the tea's are like a thousand square feet. So I did a plan to triple the size of the t so you can off of grass all year round, and we're hoping to raise some private money to do that while we're in town, and I m Cure Golf is still going to be the contractor. They love them, I do. I've worked with all them Cure for years, and they get how cool of a project these are. So we're going there. And then at the last at the ribbon cutting, Jim Nance talked about The next golf

course we'd like to do is Ted Rhoads. Ted Rhads obviously the famous you know African American golfer, you know, teacher and Tiger mentioned him when he won Augusta. It was one of his heroes. And so Jim Nance kind of looked at the new the new mayor of Freddie O'Connell and looked at him and said, after we do Shelby, I want to be involved, and we want to go to Ted Rhods. He goes, I want to be part of that. So mister mayor, hold on your hats, you know.

So I'm I've already done a plan for that place too. It's it's actually not bad shape. We just have to do a few things and potentially build a range. So that's down the road, and then all our eyes are on Harbor Hills, which is the golf course on the other side of the park from Percy Warrener, which is the great golf course of Nashville. It's just unfortunate it's

run by the city, but it's uh. They always have the open qualifiers there and it's I've told people, if you let you let me get my mits on that it could be the best course in Tennessee. It's that if the greens are great, the routing is great. I just have to get the car pass out of the way, got a bunch of trees down, and then you know, rebuild it, you know, reconfigure the bunkers so be a little more interesting strategic. So we have three or four more years of working in Nashville, which is.

shape the direction of all of this. Right, you were working for a firm that was right at the center of it, even though you know it sort of started as this kind of outsider band. Now it's the very center of what's happening in golf course construction, I think. So I'm excited to get your perspective on how that's

all unfolded. So if we go back to the beginning of your career in golf architecture about thirty five years ago or so, as I understand it, it was somewhat unusual at this time to be interested in restoring golf courses. It's true, it wasn't obvious to many people or to many clubs that restoration as opposed to redesign or modernization, was the way to go. So what got you interested in golf course restoration?

thing or something. And I walked in. I'm like, how come you're always checking out the how come here you stealing my book? And he looked at me and we became fast friends. He ended up being the green chairman of vent Tanna Canyon out and when he retired out in Tucson, but we sat He's like I was a breath of fresh air. But you know, I studied that book, forward him back and then you know, sent out three hundred resumes. You know, that was the boom period right

nineteen ninety golf. That's when National Golf Foundation was proclaiming we had to build a golf course for every day of the year, you know, to keep up to the man. So I saw these resumes out and had a bunch of job offers and Mike, luckily Mike Kurdson, had sent my resume to Ron Force, who had just started a year before that, like maybe six months in the business. And I thought that, you know, I was thirty at

the time. I was an older student and I was I was a golf I was an auto designer before that. So I was late coming in the into the business and my age wise, and Ron gave me the best opportunity to start jump in right away. And Ron was Ron was a big reason, you know. He was into the old architecture and h Granted we were struggling just trying to get any job. We could rebuild a green here there. But the first course we worked, I was Lancaster Country Club in in Lancaster, Ohio.

because he wrote that the one article about Ross. We were the only ones doing this kind of stuff actually going around, you know, and you know, part of Ron's in my studies were going to see as many courses we could, you know, we go consult somewhere and then go see ten Gough courses. So the more we went around, we realized, I think the collective group of us, Tom and Gill and Ron and I and Brian that you know, most of these courses have been modernized, you know, in

the fifties, sixties, seventies and eighties. You know, modern architects were better than the old masters. Nobody knew these guys, you know, until Frank Hannagin wrote that. Hannagin wrote that wrote that article about Albert, telling us nobody knew who

he was. So we were going around and I was co calling all these clubs and going wow, you know, and just kind of peeling through the layers and seeing these old drawings that maybe these original architects were pretty good and then they were onto something originally, and so that's kind of how we started getting work. And you know, so Ron and I we built a few a handful of golf courses. But that was you know, that sparked

my fire. This was fascinating the history, doing the archaeology and kind of how easy it was to see how things had changed. And I remember my courage and told Ron, he goes the best way to learn, you know, asked about me, like, the best way he can learn is to go remodel or consultant clubs and learn how people, learn from people's mistakes and learn from people's successes, how to be against consultants. So I earned my chops with Ron. And then three years later I was I was kind

of getting either homesick. I wanted to get back to Michigan. You know, Uniontown, Pennsylvania wasn't where it was happening for me and my wife. So I had a few architects interested in bringing me on because I started to make a reputation for myself. And then Gil had left Tom at the time, and I'd call Tom like once a month and asked him some stupid questions. It was like, Chris Farley, you know, hey, man, it was really cool you did that.

interfere with new projects. So when I was running bally Neil or stream Song or something like that, when the Shapers would go home for two weeks, I would go build bunkers somewhere else, and I built in. I had a built in business when I left Tom.

Try and you know, drum up some work and luckily my consulting business so as his was doing fine, paying the bills but not much. And then I think the first job we got was either Evansville coil crossing, I think of that, and that's where I didn't necessarily want to run. I wanted to learn how to shape. You know, Jim was a good shaper coming from the die and Tom was an adequate shaper too, and so I wanted to That's what I wanted to learn how to do. And so those early days where it was all hands

on deck, we brought Tom Meat on board. He was an ex superintendent. So it's kind of the four of us. And you know those early jobs in h if Jim would run a job, I'd help shape or vice versa. And then we started bringing on young talent. You know, when we were building Beach Tree in Baltimore, that was my first job to run on my own, and so Jim was shaping, I was doing some shaping. Tom Mead

would come into a little shaping. And then we had Brian Slank was my intern from Michigan State and he lived with me, and uh, you know that that that I've told people that was a game changer bringing him on board because he was all about the finish work and uh, but we'd all be on site work all day, set up to sundown, just having a ball and then going out at night, going to the bars a night drinking, hanging out. Just the camaraderie is insane. And then you know,

he kept building. Don Placer got on board, you know, we got brought in. He started running the office that so that got me out completely out in the field of shape and run projects. Then Eric Iverson came on, then Brian Schneider and I remember when we were building, uh we finished Cape Cape Kidnappers, we had the Renaissance Cup and I was in the cart with John Ashworth. Here's a dear friend of all of ours who runs

lank Saul. Now he goes, man, you guys are like you guys are like the Stones because you guys having so much fun. You guys are rock stars and like, no, not really, but we do have fun. But you know, those early days were just you know, having that much talent on one job and just doing that, having fun, building great golf courses that we knew we were building great stuff. You know, we were working for Tom. Yeah, you know, the the energy was huge.

How did sand Hills affect you back then?

back from there. They were traveling around in a helicopter with Ron Witten, Doug Peterson, and Dick Young's cap looking at sites. And he was telling me, he goes, Bruce, you know you know, Bill, he's so humble. He goes, Bruce, you're not going to understand how great this land is. You know, it's in the middle of nowhere, so we

don't know how this is going to work. And we had all we'd all heard the stories, you know, Dave Excellent and Dan were the great Finnish guys, and we always heard these stories about them handwraking the entire golf course or whatever. It was all about finish work in the details, and that's what you know, got Brian Slok and all of us like really interested in that, you know, sand pro work, handwork, hand edging bunkers not bulldozers, and you know, and that kind of turned us on where like,

that's what we all want to do. That sounds cool. And I did. I saw it just at you know should. I spent five days there playing golf with these guys you know there, and it was just mind boggling, like this is this is what should be done. And luckily Mike Kaiser became a member so that could be done. And then Mike started searching the world for great Land and ended up in Oregon, and you know, we got involved in that, but that it it was the game changer.

You know. We had a we had an architectural event that you know Thomas so self, he wanted to get all these architects together, you know, and not dictate the future, but talk about the future. So we had this event gathering architects and we came called it Archipelaza for a stupid name, and that's what we called it. The first one was we invited everybody in the business to come and let's get all this architect get architects together somewhere

very cool and hash things out. Where's the future of architecture? Where are we going? And that's how cool Tom is. He's forward thinking. So we had it at the sand Hills. We figured, if only the places, this is the future of golf. None of the main architects showed up. They sent all their associates, which are all dear friends of mine now and they're all good architects now. They didn't want to come because they put their nose up to Tom.

They didn't known them like Tom at the time. So Bill Courr's there, and Ron Forrest, you know, Ian Andrews. There a lot of people, you know, a lot of cool All the cool people in the business showed up. To that thing, and we played golf, and at night we sat here and talked to about things, and we all introduce each other. And I got up in front of everybody a little nervous, and I said, you know, what you saw today is the benchmark we will all be judged at from this point on. This is how

epic this place is. And some people are like rolling their eyes, but I knew that that was that would be the most important modern course for the next hundred years because it sets the tone of minimalism, finding great land, finding golf on the land, and obviously having Bill and Ben do at the same time. It's pretty cool. And it's true that was the benchmark, and we're always going

to be judged on that. Granted, you know, I think bally Neils could go toe to toe Pacific Students has an ocean, but you'll never It's like Muhammad Ali, it's give me the raining champion forever. You're never going to knock them out, so don't try. But you're going to be real close seconds, you know. So I you know, working for Tom all those years, that was our stride.

We were, you know, bally Neil. I spent a lot of time at sand Hills, learning from it, mistakes, good things, bad things, whatever, wherever we could peel from that to make Bally Meal different. I didn't want to make Saniels two point zero, so I wanted to be completely different, and we did. You know, we on the mowing lines, the native edges, the positioning of the bunkers, things like that. I learned a ton from that golf course.

Don Plask was there, Brian Slog came into his own and we banded dudes existed, So we knew that, but we didn't want to build that. That was more you know, it was David Kidd's first project was more of a modern golf course on an epic site. But we knew ours was going to be that good because the routing was brilliant, the landforms were there, and we just we all had I'll never forget the first day we were there,

the hair and I Becker next. It's still up right now thinking about it, walking that site and look at each other. It's just porn rain. We're all walking on trudging around this property, and uh, you know, and Tom and I visited the site probably two years before that, just before David was building. Bandon Bill she and one of Tom's great friends from Chicago told it, you know, kind of hooked up Tom with Mike Kaiser. Mike says, well, come out and look at it. You know, David's my guy.

But if he fails, you're on deck and then maybe you can maybe, you know, look at the second course. So, uh, Tom and I went out there before we went to San Francisco Turf Show. Spent a few days walking with Shorty down Now they're just opening Shorty's the nineteen hole golf course. But Shorty that was the caretaker and that

was a great day. We you know, we were walking on our walking around what we thought would have been our property, and we peeked over the hill and looked at this and oh my, you know, David, go ahead and go ahead and build that golf course. We want to build that. And Mike hadn't known the property yet, but Tom told him, if you ever have a chance, open that, you know, by that land north of abandoned dunes.

And it came up for sale a couple of years later and got Tom involved, and and you know, Tom and Jim worked on it hard on the routings, and we all came out and but it was just the vibe we all and for some reason, you know, don if you go in the maintenance building, Ken Nice, the superintendent was hitting his stride. But if you go in the maintenance building, there's still a drawing the Don Placic Don Placic. You know, he's a brilliant artist. And he did it on a whiteboard with a black pan, drew

all the planets in line like this. All the plants were up in a row. And that's what we all said, the plants are in a row. Movie built Pacific Dunes, And it's true.

taught in an excavator. You know, we had so much good talent on bulldozers and bulldoze beat that beat the crap audio. You know, I was, I was the older guy, and like, you know, I'd be okay getting out of one of those things. And that's when we started using excavators, and I'm like, I think I'm gonna getting get in one of those because you're just sitting there and the only thing you can get is Carple Tunnel Center basically.

And so I got really good in that. Well, everybody else, you know, the rock Stars are still the great great Shapers are still bulldozer operators who can jump into excavators too, but they're still They built the landforms, they built the greens, and I got really good at excavator because then I could be I like on the bunkers. But Eric is is still He's brilliant, brilliantly elegant. You know, I call

him the Binkie. When Tom, Tom needs the go to guy, brings in Eric, you know, and both other Brian's and kais a great Shaper he'd brings. He'd bring Schneider in when he wanted something wild hair, you know, some crazy has grain he'd bring him. And same with with Kai, he know, something really crazy, bringing Kai and then Brian

Sloank somewhere in between. You know, I spent the summer on the weekends, I was shaping over at high Point building bunkers, and Brian Slank is basically building the whole damn thing himself, you know, And God's he good. He is. Just he's going so far beyond me. It's scary. You know. He's my intern. He lapped me the year or two. That guy. He's a smart dude, and ah got such a great eye. He's a musician too, so that's kind of cool. But he's got such a great eye and

a great, great shaper. Now, I was pretty fun. I hadn't worked with him in ten twelve years. To hang out a high Point this summer and watch him and Tom work together, I just, you know, I'm usually the guy walking with Tom, so I just was in the background, just prouds can be. Like, man, these cats still got it.

a way even to describe that. I have a hard time with this As somebody who writes a lot about golf architecture, I really have a hard time describing to people in words, why this bit of shaping is just a little bit better than this other bit of shaping that is similar, maybe inspired by some of the stuff that you and the team did at Renaissance Golf design or that Corn Crunshaw did you know, But it's but

it's not there, it's not fully there. How do you identify that or describe that extra bit of excellence in shaping?

and a lot of golf courses polish too much. It's I always say, it's like when you're polishing a nice fine piece of furniture, when do you stop? There's no point, you know, you just keep buffing and buffing and buffing. We know when to stop buffing. You stop buffing right really soon you don't. We don't want them to be pretty. We don't have to be natural. So you know, we're

building Pacific Dunes. Jim Wild go away for a couple of weeks, and then I'm remember vividly working on the ninth Ferry with Brian, Brian Slanik and I we had two weeks just we call it f and up that fairway, you know, and you know it's like go with a you know, D four and gouge some you know, just randomly gouge and then come in with a samprone run them over and just it's random contours. It's it's it's fighting your human nature to make something perfect. That's how

you do it. And you know, when you get off it, I'm like, oh yeah, that's good, move on. You know, if I spend too much more time on that, it's going to look like a human built it. So that's to me, that's the key. I I remember teaching guys how to build mounds or moguls. You know, we hate mounds, you know, modern mounds. It's like Tom goes, when you start, when you build a when do you stop? You have to keep building them just to time in all of each other. You know these faux links golf courses that

have mounds on them that look just got awful. They don't look natural. So Pete Diovis, you say change the rate of change. That was a great I always thought that was a great thought. If you have a mound, you know, you say you have four or five mounds sitting there, five mounds because you want them odd. You want them all to be different. You want them to look like wind blown. So wind blown dunes have a leeward side where it's long and then drops off at

the end. You know, some are pointed mounds, some are flat tops, some are round, some are awkward. You're just trying to make them awkward. That's nature. And also look around, you know, the biggest key for me is like nature's everywhere. Just go look at the woods and look at the contours in the woods and just replicate those there. You just got your eyes open. It's it's not that hard. It's just you have to fight your human instinct to make something pleasing to your eyes, even though natural is

more pleasing. You just your brain doesn't work that way. So that's kind of how I always tell shapers, Hey, just go make a mess. We'll clean it up, and it might look really cool, and usually go.

credit for teaching us restraint. And Tom is the best at it. He does know his go not his guy. Golf courses are over eye candied. He thinks, you know, eye candy is just unnecessary nuisance to get pictures taken of their golf course. Tom is all about ground features and greens and bunkers are bunkers are important, But the frilliness of the bunkers he couldn't care less about. He

was like, and he gets it. Bill. You know, I always tell people Bill and Tom are the great architects because they think about golf all the time, and we were building golf courses. For Tom, he was about golf, and he gave us a little bit of time to make it look cool because we wanted to look cool. You know, it's all the chunkying and all that frilly bunkers. He only gave us so much time as like, hey, man,

move on to the next hall. So we snuck in the artwork where I think modern golf courses now are all about artwork, not a lot about golf. And those two guys are still you know, Thomas Thomas back to number one right now. That work he's putting out is insane and so different than anybody else. You know, when everybody's zigging, he's zagging because he's not smarter than everybody. And the golf courses he's cranking out in this short period right now are so diverse and so good and

so understated. You know, not a lot of freely bunkers. You know, they're just pure golf. So that's kind of how we look at it, you.

cut salaries. Yeah, that nice timing. But he said he can take all your clients with you, they'd be fine, And so I ran stream Song Is under Hepner Golf Design and then I had I had thirty clients right out of the box. So I've been going pretty strong since a.

We've been doing slow burns over the years and restoring these places, and it takes you know, a lot of these early on, they weren't nobody was in. It wasn't in vogue like it is today to drop fifteen million bucks on a classic golf course. They didn't even know they had a classic golf course when it first started. It, so we would, you know, pick pick away at the golf courses. So about about twenty ten, a lot of

them started to really come together. Like Blue Mount. It took a long time to get Blue Mount where it is, and we still got some ways to go. I'm gonna rebuild all the bunkers next year.

in the country. You know, they're not. There's a handful of Top hundred courses there and I've worked at a bunch of them and built a few, but a lot of them are like just like the second hundred, like below the radar, you know, obviously Cape Rundell and places like that. A hundred go up a fairfield. A lot of those just small ones that they've allowed me to

do my job. And that's my sens right now. That's that's all I you know, I'm getting not close to retiring, but I'm slowing things down a bit, and I just want to help. I want clubs that want to be helped and let me help them. And I have a whole stable full of them. So there's you know, it's hard to pick. I got thirty three of them. There's some cool ones and nobody's heard of North Shore Golf Club up and Wisconsin on North Lakewood and Bago. That's

unbelievably cool. You know, there's a lot of Belvedere obviously up here is getting a lot of ink. Tim Acquana down Jacksonville starting to get a marine because he just you know, Jim Firkez event. I couldn't be more proud of that. That's that could be some of my best work there.

He's going to put him back together. That's a slow burn too, And and it's a lot of it has to do one is a lot has to do with superintendent, but it also has to do with the comfortable how comfortable the membership is in their skin. Essex County is just the greatest membership. They're just so chilled and they don't care about anybody else, Brookline and all you know, Charles River and all those other ones. They just do

their own thing, and that's those are great clubs. I love working at those places.

It's been so patient. And something that I think is really important about that process is that it allows the golf courses to continue to feel like themselves, to continue to feel old.

You taste it, you smell it, you hear it the wind blowing, you feel it in your feet, you feel it in your hands as well as your eyes. But you're using all your senses when you play a great old golf course. And these rebuilt wonders are mono stands of perfect grass, perfect you know, crush quartz sand which isn't even natural, Billy bunkers under them, which is not natural. You know.

of these feel like. You know, they're they're done really well, they're they're spectacular, but do they feel old? Do they play old? No, they don't. They don't have the modeled grass. They have that that one hundred years of fairway turf that we have at Cape Runnell play so beautifully and the greens, you know, just insane obviously. But yeah, that's that's what I have a little issue with, and that's why I like working at my old clubs. You know,

I got projects one to two million dollar projects. I'm fixing a golf course and it's just as good as the fifteen million dollar one next door. It might even be better because it feels it still has that smell, taste feel of an old golf course.

and I don't know if these things are if it's sustainable. Yeah, I think Derek, you Derek Duncan when you're I think it's a great guy.

spending forty million. But did we learn our lessons from maybe that that the greatest courses that were built in the last twenty five years were by Tom Doak and Bill Kohr, and they were like three million dollars. You know, Pacific Dunes might have been three ballian, you know, I think you get safe to say that ballly Neil Pacific Dunes in Barnbogle were built less than ten million dollars combined, and now we're now we're spending more than ten million

dollars restoring a golf course. It just doesn't make sense to me.

to replicate that stuff. But there might be a more important underlying lesson or series of lessons that we haven't learned about maintainability, sustainability, financial frugality, and just about being yourself and not just doing what everybody else is doing. It seems like those lessons have been more difficult for some reason than the others.

you're kind of good. You're probably better than them. Why would you Well, it's envy, you know, it's and it's a lot of has to do with, you know, the kind of group of people taking power now. They're they want to be someone who they're not. I want to be them. Like, man, you're luckily most of my clubs and you know, I think I've been the right guy for them. Is like, no, we're pretty cool. We're good. We're comfortable in our own skin. This golf course is fine.

We don't need to have pure grass everywhere. We don't have to have the the expensive bunkers. They're just fine. Used the cheap sand, You're just it's just sand, you know, you know, it's as long as a place. Well, why would we spending two hundred bucks a ton to bring it in from Ohio or somewhere. So it's just where we're going in the business with a little disheartening. I got just I've become really good friends with Doddie Pepper and David Memorial, you know, and David's he is a

true soul. He's a deep rooted in the history of the game. And I was at their house a couple of weeks ago, spent the night and David just got back from playing like the dinner matches at Urfield or something like that, just flew.

players and and where a lot of architectures going. And he goes, I think we're losing the soul of the game, you know, And for him, someone like that just say, it really struck me, and I agree it's like in my business, I think we're losing some of the soul of the game too. And there's plenty of architects out they're more unhappy to spend the twenty million bucks you know. Oh shit, yeah, I'll do that. Yeah, yeah, I'll find a way. I'll give you my version of you know,

I think I think Tom said this recently. He goes, oh, there's a lot of restorers of restorers going on right now. You know, all these courses have been restored to getting restored again.

Jim Nansen talked to him about it. He goes, yeah, it's just it's not a very good product. You know, they're they're they're struggling. You know, the fields are you know, with live coming in and we all know what that. You know, we all have our opinions about that. That's just pure money. And then you know the west of the products is watered down. You know, you're going to watch them. We're going to watch the Open, We're going

to watch Augusta and maybe a couple other events. But the other stuff is almost unwatchable unless it's a great golf course.

Nashville has the bones. They have seven great, you know, really good golf courses that just needs some minor work and all of them, I'm just fixing what needs to get fixed. I'm not blowing any of them up. And that's how we're keeping the budget to two million less. And that's how it's sustainable, because you know, once it gets north of two three million bucks, people are like, what are you doing? You know, people get disinterested. You can't raise the money that way. The two million dollars

is kind of easy to raise. And and if you have someone like me that's only going to go there, fix it what needs it to get fixed, and everything else is fine, you know, it's amuni. Just fix the things that are important to make the golf sustainable more interesting, which is the greens and and move on. Let let's let's let them play golf. You know, eighteen bucks a buck a hole, I'll play all day long, you know. So that's I think that is the future. You know.

Luckily the Links Trust, you know, Will and Mike mccarton who all worked for us, they're running that and that's got some good momentum, you know, Cops Creek if they ever get that thing going. You know they've been talking about it's a lot of talk. Yeah, what I'm proud of Stuart Smith, who is you know, my dear friend in Nashville. He goes, they're all talking. We did it, Yeah, right on, brother, So we're gonna keep doing it, But

I think you're right. That's here's here's the interesting about Nashville. There are no seats at the table. All these Nashvill's are booming, booming town. They think maybe another million people moving there in the next ten years. Yeah, and there's no golf spots. Every country club has a three hundred person waiting list initiate. Initiation fees at Hillwood are going up to one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Wow, it's like what you know. So there's just no room. There's

no place to play. And these high end guys making good money working for Pinnacle and Amazon moving to town,

they want a place to play. They have to they have to play the public golf courses, and they're forced to play courses that are under maintain and under man We have thirty seven employees maintaining seven golf courses in Nashville in their packed So all we're trying to do is increase the budget of each golf course to make it decent golf, and then fix all the little things at each golf course that we have to make it. You know, where it's good golf, it's sustainable, it's playable,

it's fun. And we're hoping that we get Nashville to be the best system in the country.