Hello, It's Andy Johnson from The Friday Egg. I want to thank everybody for tuning into our podcast. Because of Tom's gracious amount of time he gave us, We're gonna split this podcast into two parts. We will be publishing part two on Friday, so please you know, if you enjoy our podcast, subscribe to us on iTunes and leave us a review. It really helps us out and it's it's greatly appreciated. Thanks and enjoy the podcast with Tom.
I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset when I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset. And when I find my ball in a brid Egg Friday, the dreaded Friday Friday Frida Bride Egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off the golf course.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another edition of the Frida Egg podcast. Today, I'm excited to welcome Tom Doak onto the podcast. Tom is one of today's pre eminent golf course architects, as well as an esteemed author of books such as The Anatomy of a Golf Course, The Life and Work of Alistair McKenzie, and of course, his ultra popular Confidential Guides to golf courses. Welcome on Tom, Thank you Andy.
Nice to talk to you.
Yeah, I'm excited to talk golf course architecture today, and I think a great way to start would be to give the listeners a little bit about your background and how you got into golf course architecture.
I certainly told this story a lot, so I'm probably covering around a lot of your listeners have heard. But basically, I you know, I grew up playing a little public course a mile from my house in Stanford, Connecticut. But as a contrast to that, I saw some of the best golf courses in America when I was a kid.
My dad barely played golf, but he would go once or twice a year on some corporate thing where he played golf with the people he did business with on the phone all year, and they went to the best golf resorts in America. So I thought that Harbortown was one of the very first courses I ever saw when
it was brand new and raided and golfed. I just popped ten, and then Pinehurst not long after that, and then Pebble Beach not long after that, and then unfortunately, one of is one of the organizations that was part of They did their convention at Pebble Beach and they decided they really liked it, so they went back there like every year when I was a teenager, so I played it. I played a couple of each a bunch. You know, long enough ago that the twilight rate was forty bucks.
Things have changed a little bit since that day.
Huh, yes they have, and I don't you know, and I haven't played it very much since they went up to their current pride.
Yeah, yeah, that's uh So would you say, you know a lot of people say they have a singular moment or a golf course that you know, inspires them to get even into, you know, being becoming a fan of golf course architecture. Was there a singular moment or was it more of a building over over your childhood years.
I guess it was more of a building. I mean the you know, the two different things that I always go back to, or when when I was at Harbor Town and you know, it was literally the third golf course I ever saw. It was the all writer Charles Price had a place at Hilton Head and when mister Dye was building the golf course, he spent a lot
of time with it. And then when the golf course opened, mister Price did a little booklet on the golf course, which is pretty much like a yardage book now, except no yardages because nobody played by yardage is making seventies. But you know, so there was a there was a diagram of the hole and like three sentences on how
to play, like second hole. You know, there's only one fairway bunker on the left, but you really need to be close to the fairway bunker on the left if you're trying for the green into because there's a tree up there on the right you have to get pass. You know. It was just a really simple primer on golf course architecture, really well explained, simple enough a ten
year old it could go, oh that's cool. So you know, that's the first thing that got me interested in architecture, that there was much more to it than just get the ball, find it, hit it again. Yeah. And then you know, I and pebble Bee in Cyprus Point when I was a kid was huge. You know, I mean, I don't feel really lucky to have gotten to go to Cypress Point. Really early on. My dad's boss at Unilever, when he retired, moved out there and became a member
of Cyper's Point. So I got to play it two or three times when I was a teenager, and you know, it's a very emotional place, and you know, you know, that's probably the place where I thought, you know, that there that this was a great career and it would be a great thing to do if I could figure
out how to do it. Although you know, when I started at college, I didn't really know how to pursue it, and I had to, you know, I really had to write letters to everybody in the golf business to ask, you know, what I should do and how to go about it.
So after cal you did you start writing? I know you worked under Pete Dye for a number of years. Did he give you the kind of first job right out of college or was there somebody else in between that?
Uh No, I didn't work for anybody else. The first job I had was working for mister d on a construction throughout LONGKO when I was twenty. I've been writing in letters for three years at that point, and I started. I started on my eighteenth birthday. I was a freshman of college, thinking, you know, engineering is not for me. I'm spending all my time reading golf books. I really
should see if I could pursue this. And Tete I was one of the first people I wrote to, you know, and I you know, I wrote to Petey and Jeff Cornish and Being Demon and Ben Crenshaw and a ton of people just ask him for help, and you know, Pete was Pete got back to me when I was eighteen, just a nice little note back, and you know, he didn't really offer much advice at that point. I got it from other people, but you know, but everybody else in the off business said, you know, that's the guy
you should work for. You know, if you can figure out how to get a construction crew working for him, that would be great. So I just kept writing the letters for three years until finally, when I was a junior in college, he called me, like the day I was going on summer break and said, yeah, we kind of cold losing some guys on our crew down here, and you know, we could use a couple more people.
Could you be here tomorrow. That was literally the first time I talked to him, and I was working for him the next day.
What a What a cool story. So with mister Dye, who were some other influential people early in your career outside of mister Dye that you know you would say that really helped shape your kind of philosophies and your in your career.
Oh god, there's a lot, you know. George Pepper, who is the editor of Golf Magazine, is going to give you a chance to start writing about golf. I wrote him a letter to the editor when I was like eighteen or nineteen eighteen because because because I remember it was you know, it was actually about the top fifty golf courses list that they had just published, and it
been a laundertique of it. And he got back to me and said, well, you know, enough an eighteen year olds in charge of this, but you can really write, and you know, we could use somebody who could write some stuff about architecture. So you know, do you want to try to write like a little piece of a
sidebar to the US Open piece next year? So you know, I started writing when I was sophomore in college, and and by the time when I was a senior, I had a writing for magazine's course and just before the semester was over, I had an eight page feature article in coffee. So I did well in that course, you know, but that was a huge help to me because you know, I because of that, I didn't just have access to people as a young guy who wanted to be a
golf course architect. You know, I could call up people in the golf business as a golf writer and and asked them all sorts of questions. So that was great for me for access to people. And then you know Ben Crenshaws. Then you know, I wrote him a letter when I was eighteen and said, if if you know, if you or me, what would you do. And because he you know, even though he hadn't started an architecture, yeah, it was pretty well known that he was interested in
architecture and tried to see great courses. So you know, at first he listed a few courses that he thought I should see, and then he said, he basically said, well, you know, if you come out to a turn during a practice day, just just uh, you know, come up and introduce yourself on a practice day and you know we can walk around and talk talk about the golf
course a little bit. So I did that four or five times while I was in college, and you know, I got to walk inside the Ropes with Crenshaw and Sevy Biasteros or David Graham and watch them play golf really up close and then talk some about the golf course that we were seeing, and you know, wouldn't trade those experiences for anything.
How you know, you've had obviously Stonewall had the US Midam and you know Bandon Dune, Pacific Dunes has had some amateur events and high level amateur events, and then you've you've obviously walked inside the ropes like you just said, with Crenshawe and uh Sevy b by Seros. How much how how much does it help when you get to see that high level golf with architecture and kind of you know, understanding principles and how different people play the game.
Well, it's a good question, and it's kind of there's a lot of ways it helps and there's some ways it hurts. I think, you know, because I worked for mister Dye. I was around the tour a lot when I was really young, you know. I worked for him just just when the TPC at Sawgraph came out and they played. I was there for the first two tournaments.
They spent a lot of time walking with he die those first two years of the tournament, while he would, you know, while people were criticizing the golf course, and you know, he was just walking around watching play, trying to decide for himself if the holes were the way he thought they did, and they really did. You know, you know, he'd gotten an the skin of the players
a lot. And you know, the guys, the guys that were more interested in architecture and more critical of the golfers were so tied up in that that they couldn't play the golfers worth a damn. But then there were young guys that you know, were just sort of okay, you know, I just this is really tough, and I got to hit these shots, and there were guys that could play the golfers. So you know, that was a fascinating time to be around the tour and and and talk to some of those guys and see what their
opinions were. You know, when I got on my own, I realized really fast that that you know, when I built High Point in Traverse City for a for a guy that had owned the land for years, you know, the tour was never coming there. You know. I mean I was around the tour enough to understand that, you know, where they play tournaments at that level is about where the sponsors want them to so you know, so you know, I never really visualized that my career would be about
that at all. Certainly at the start it wasn't going to be. So you know, I kind of had to forget some of what I've learned and not worry about illness. Set of tea is at seventy four hundred yards because the people that were paying forty five dollars to play High Point didn't need those teas. Yeah, And you know, and because I'd been around the tour a little bit when when early clients would bring up something like that, I could just laugh at them and correct them really that, like, no,
don't think about that. You're crazy to think about that unless you've got five million dollars burning a hole in your pocket, in which case, let's revise my design feel a little there.
Yeah, So you know, you were part of, you know, part of kind of the the group of architectures that ushered in this you know, new style of design that was minimalists and really, like you said, focused more on the everyday player and you know what they needed rather than building long, hard golf courses that kind of fit into a square box par seventy to four par five's
four par threes. What was you know, the toughest part about, you know, kind of ushering in this new thought and new thinking of design.
Well, it wasn't. I mean, when I started at high point, you know, I really only had to answer to one client, and I sort of started with the idea that it was a really good piece of l end and if I failed, I wanted to fail on the side of you know, moving less dirt instead of moving too much, because everything I'd seen for the last ten years with people moving too much by my but for my case, you know, I mean, by then I got around and seeing most of the best golf courses in the world,
and most of the ones I really liked weren't built that way, you know. I mean, and I saw how Pete Died built what he built, and I'm not demeaning it by I mean, he's a genius for coming up with some of the things he did on bad pieces of ground. But when you got a good piece of ground,
you don't have to do those things. And you know, I was really lucky to stumble into my first job with a pretty good piece of ground to work with, and I just thought, you know that, I mean, sort of the guiding light of it was that three miles down the road from High Point was a Jack Nicholas course called the Bear at Grand Traverse Resort, and it
was a completely manufactured golf course. They went out in the field and built a bunch of nouns and lakes and everything else and called it Scottish style, which just you know, horrified me. But you know, I just kept thinking, you know, I want to do something that's almost the dead opposite of that on this piece of ground and just see how it goes. And you know, the superintendent that we hired to work on a Tommy who had been at Crystal Downs for a while before he worked
with me. You know, he and I were talking about at that point, you know, we were young, and it's sort of like, well, if fifty percent of people like it and fifty percent of people hate it, then will be about the right place. And of course we didn't tell our clients that because the client probably would have been horrified. You know, most clients like ninety nine point nine percent of people to like it. They don't want to give up a potential custom, you know, and unfortunately
that's you know, that's why everything gets so homaged. We'd better do four part three because that's what people like. And you know, the old golf course architects didn't think that way. It hadn't been so standardized yet. And plus they you know, it wasn't such a commercial business in the nineteen twenties. I mean, golf clubs in the nineteen twenties were actually formed by a group of guys that wanted to build a gos club. Now they're formed by
a developer who wants to sell memberships in it. Even if he's not really looking to make money in it, he's still concerned about you know, he's taken the financial risk and he's got to figure out how to sell the memberships in it to get his money back. So you know, he doesn't want to rock the boat too much. And that's you know a lot of architects are really
afraid to rock the boat. And I'm just not because I've seen a lot of things that are really different and I know they worked, and and I think, well, why can't I make that same idea work, or why can't I make a little different idea work.
It's it's interesting you you talk about that, and I'm curious. You know. Obviously with Cyprus Point, I know Alistair McKenzie was worried that he had gone too far and you know, done too much and worried that it was going to be too tough. But the natural beauty obviously nobody complained
about it. Do you feel that you your golf course when you when you build something and looking at it, you know, for the future of golf, you know, twenty years said do you need to have do you feel like you need to have criticism from some some angle if if it's a great project, does it have to have some sort of criticism?
Oh? I don't know. I just you know, it doesn't have to. But I'm not afraid of it. Yeah, you know, and that's and that's having you know, having been around Pete die for that week of stagraph, I'm not afraid of that because that it'll never get more intense than that. And that was and ultimately that was good for god.
Yep, yep, it's uh, he did it great stuff. I think that Uh, Pete Dye often gets a very bad rap, you know when people talk about his designs. Being too penal and you having a you know, a front row seat to that. I imagine a lot of the design philosophy. Some of his designs were based off of what the developer wants correctly.
Well, they always thought, yeah, I mean, you're always you've always got to answer to your client to some degree. And you know a lot of people, you know, when people criticize what other architects are doing, you know that you have to stop and think, well, what are they being hired to do? You know, I mean most of the projects that Jack Nicholas gets, you know, the developer wants a big, expensive, quote unquote championship golf course because he's trying to sell big expensive lots next to it.
And that's what those people think. They you know, that's what they think is prestige and what they want to live on. So, you know, if you're not going to see Jack Nicholas build a sixty three hundred yard minimalist efficient golf course, because that's that's not the kind of people that hire him, you know, you know he you know a lot of people are very critical of mister due, which to me is crazy. I mean, nobody that's ever spent any time with the die would criticize the man
at all. I mean, he's He's given a lot to a lot of people. He's always been very open about the game and what he thinks is right about it and what he thinks is wrong about it. You know, he had me ghostwriting articles about how the golf equipment was getting out of hand thirty years ago. That more
than thirty years ago. You know, he's still sort of a role model to me, especially in the way he went about the work, how involved he was in it personally, and and that you know, he made decisions out in the field and he changed it. He changed his mind on the fly to make something better. He wasn't afraid to, you know, do that. And you know, even if even if the client was nervous about it, and it's like it's gonna be fine. I'm here, I'll get it sorted out.
And you know, people see our work as being completely different because my golf courses don't look like his golf courses, but you know, the way that they're built, and you know, and even a lot of the philosophy behind them. I mean, I'm building golf courses that are challenging to people, and you know, I just I just put the challenge in different places and they don't make it all about length because I'm not building golf courses for the tour, yep.
I think I think that the tour needs more golf courses where the challenge isn't you know, off the tee, you know, you've got hazards on both sides, and then hit it to the green because it produces a certain type of player, you know, a golf course does.
There's there's no doubt that the Tour tour courses and the way they set up the courses favor certain kinds of players. And you know they're not doing it deliberately, but but it's but they do it. But they they do make deliberate decisions that have that effect, you know, like they'll set up a hole so if you know, they'll set up a hole so the long hitters can make a carry and the short hitters release mh you know, and they think that rewards the guy who can hit
the ball farther. But then if the if the wins in the face of that hole and the long hitters can't make the carry, they'll move the teasa so that the long hitter can still make the carry and the short hitters still can't. So now who are they? You know, now it's clear they have a bias.
I think.
You know, any short hitter on tour will tell you that.
I think a perfect example of that is is you look at Riviera and you know, probably the best architecture, architecturally sound golf course that they play year and year out. And you know, they haven't had a winner at Riviera younger than twenty eight years old in the last I think twelve years. And it favors somebody that understand. I think that course has no force carries. It's more about hitting shots to the correct angles than it is hitting
it far. You know, there is a lot of strategy if you go for a carry and you don't, you know there there's so much that goes into that golf course. And I really think that's a great example. You see guys like last year you had kJ Toy, you know, in the lead late on Sunday and this is a forty five year old who hits it, you know, two hundred and seventy yards. And this year you have Dustin Johnson when it albeit it was soft and you know, the rain took a lot of the teeth out of it.
But you know, that's a course where it doesn't really favor a specific type of player.
Well, I mean, I guess it doesn't favor a specific type of player. It does reward a player who knows how to work the ball left to right and right to left, which you don't. There's not any courses on tour that do anymore. It's really hard to build that on a new course with no you know, if you don't have any trees, you know, and you can, you know, and you can carry the ball as far as those
guys do. You know, even if the fairway is curve and left to right or right the left, or the bunkers are set up a certain way, you know, they can just hit it a mile in the air and land it three hundred yards away in a relatively small area and it doesn't matter which way it's curving. But you know, Riviera takes that away, the results that you
can't hit that. You know, you you know, if if you're on fifteen, which kind of bends left to right off the tee, and you're you can't hit that shot, you kind of have to back off on the te side because if you just you know, because you can't take it up over the trees on the right to to go down there where you want to. You know, there's certain shots that takes away from you uncertain hole, and so you have to be able to adapt. You know,
Dustin Johnson can't adapt. You know, even if he's even if he's not going to try to hit the ball left to right, he'll he'll back off and he's still long enough he can hit the long shot into the green for the second shot.
So I had Michael Clayton on the podcast a couple of months ago, and he talked about how he believes technology has diminished the skill. And obviously, you know, nobody's going to argue it's it's altered the path or the design. You know, you designed your first course in nineteen ninety or nineteen eighty nine. How would you How have your philosophy has changed over the years because of technology.
It My philosophy hasn't changed very much in thirty years.
You know.
And some people would say, oh, you shouldn't say something stuff like that. That doesn't sound right, But you know again, I'm I'm not building my courses for the elite players. I mean, I think about the elite players. I've been around enough of them, you know, Mike Clayton. I've had more fun playing golf with Mike Clayton at half a dozen times than with almost anybody I've ever played with, because he, you know, he does know how to work
the ball and half shots. You know. He came to the state a bunch of years ago when I was doing that Park of Palooza thing. We were going out to sand Hills. We stopped and played a couple of the other courses in the sand Hills on the way out, and one of them, that Bayside course that Dan Proctor
and Dave Exlent built, had some really severe holes. And there was a hole that was a little like Sticked at Riviera with a bunker in the middle of a green, except more slope around it, and the pin was like back right, And after we'd all at a shot to the green, I was like, I wonder if you could hit a shot you know that's that green looks though severe.
It's like you could land a ball on the upper tier behind the pin or behind the bunker and have it sucked back down around the bunker to the lower tier where the tin is and you know, It took Mike two tries to hit that shot. And and you know, there's a lot of guys on tour that could they can hit those kind of shot and the shots that Sevy used to try to play and the shots that Ben Crenshaw used to play all the time. But there's
no percentage in it anymore. You know, nobody builds the golf course where I mean, you know, that wasn't you know, that wasn't really the high percentage shot for Mike at the time. It was just like, yeah, I could pull that off. And it's a shame we don't see courses that that get them to try those shots, because they're really you know, that's what I learned from Pete die and watching the TPC. Those guys are way more talented than you get to see week to week.
Yeah, I think then, but for my own work.
You know, my own work will give them fancies to hit shots like that. But I'm just not worried about whether they're going to shoot sixty four when they come because I don't have, you know, because there's not going to be a seventy two hole PGA Tour stroke play event on this course, and because and you know, and I don't have any ego at stake over what they do. You know, Gary Woodland went to Dismal River a couple of years ago, thinking you should you should play on Sescu.
The week before he went to Chambers Bay for the Open and shot fifty nine one day on my course, And you know, that kind of boggles my mind. And at the same time, I'm like, yeah, you know, he's that good if he gets a going. You know, those aren't the most severe greens I ever built. He's reaching the par fives into no problem. Yeah, and probably driving
one of the par fours too. So yes, he could shoot a number like that, plays a great round of golf, and that does That doesn't really bother me, you know. And the thing is, the thing is I think if you asked and you'd say, oh, no, that was a great round and I had a lot of fun, And it's not like I wasn't challenged. Yes, it's just that the you know, the number adds up to what it adds up.
But it's well, I think that's a huge problem with golf. Is this Why why are we so wrapped up with par It's just it's just a number, Like who cares if you go out and shoot sixty three or eighty three, as long as you had fun, you know, right, and you.
Know you could go you know, you could go different directions with that. Like you know, I went and saw David Kid's course at Gamble Sands a couple of years ago, and I, you know, I had heard about it that you know, kind of as a reaction to some of the other things that he'd done that that were critiqued pretty heavily, including by me, that you know, he'd built a golf course that was you know, it was big and pretty, but it was pretty easy, you know, Like I mean in golf club at last, you know, the
first testimonial to have like five of the eight guys in my group had their career low score. And I'm like, well, that sounds crazy. You know, if it's really if it's really that easy that that you know, everybody's shooting their career low score, then you know, because I still you know, I worked for Petei. I still believe that you want to challenge the golfer. I don't believe that you want to make them shoot one hundred and twelve, but you want some shots out there that are challenging to him.
And if if you're doing that, then they're probably not shooting their career low score the first time they see the place. Yes, and you know there is a fine you know, there's a fine line. I mean, you know, I mean, one of the things I've learned about design is, you know, I think a lot of my best work is is the power four, especially the short par fours. And the reason the short part four has come out so good is because because you can get away with more.
You know, it's like it's only three hundred and fifty yards, so this green can be severe or that's you know, I can pinch the landing area really narrow, or I can put cross bunkers forty yards in front of the greens because you know, because I'm not making you lay up off the tee and hit a fourwood in you know, you can approach this a whole different a whole bunch
of different ways. And the other thing that's interesting about short part four is is you know, you can give people a really wide range of angles into the green. You know, a four hundred and seventy yard hole. Most people, you know, they just have to hit it on the line because they have to hit it as far as they can twice just to get there, and they can't really worry about what kind of angle they're giving themselves.
But a three hundred and fifty yard hole, yeah, you can drive it way out to the right and still be hitting nine er in their witch. Yeah.
From what I've I've played about seven of your courses, and the short part fours are really great, and they what I really like about them is if you play them correctly, you've got a great shot at you know,
you've you should make birdie. But if you the second you get out of position, you're you're in a very very difficult place where all of a sudden you're looking at it and like, well, I have to hit a really great shot here to make you know, A have a chance at three and even make four sometimes depending on how how far out of position you get. Now to mention you know, you have so many different ways you could play it. One that comes to mind is stream song. Is it thirteen thirteen at stream song or
fourteen thirteen? Uh huh? And that one I got into the I tried to hit driver and I got into the left bunker and oh my god, I was just in the worst place in the world, and I think I just picked up my ball after after about seven shots.
Well, you know that hole is that whole is kind of loosely based on and that's a loosely based on sixth at Pacific Dunes. It's one of those it's the only hole extream song that we had to do a
lot of earthwork on that hole. I mean, it was kind of the fairway was a lot higher than it is now, and it was you couldn't you couldn't even see where the water was coming in on the left because the fairway was so high you couldn't see over it and see that there was a really steep and there there was like a really steep, dangerous edge to the left side. So we kind of had to cut it down to make it, to make it where you could get people around the golf course without somebody driving
a car over a cliff by accident. And you know, and and you know, Bill Gore needed the dirt from that fairway for for one of the teas that he wanted to build, so we just, you know, we just moved all the dirt over to his hole and you know, just whittled away at the fairway until we got it down. But but I was trying to think of, Okay, how do I do a short par four with a fair way down in the green up? And you know, I think six it. Pacific is one of the best poles
that I've built. So it's the only it's the only hole I've tried to copy that that basic idea from
for for this hole as well. I mean, the difference is the one that streams Song is even a little shorter, and you're usually not playing it right into the teeth of the wind these you know, Pacific, it's into the wind most of the time, So you know, driving the green is not really you know, you could drive it up and near there somewhere, but if the wind is in your face, you're not going to drive the green. You're to pro Yeah, to pros are going to do it that much stream song. You can really take a
shot at it if you want. I mean, it's it's a hell of a rip. I've never hit driver in that hole myself. I haven't played it a lot of times, but you know, I'm not going to take the bait on that particular hole because I know, because I know how many things can go wrong. And a friend of mine as says that on my short part Furs, you should just never take the beat, no matter how tempting it looks. You know, this would be an easy birdie if I just do this that that's usually a bad
play at least for them percentage wise. And you know, and that's kind of what you're trying to do. Yeah, I mean, you're you're at least trying to make it where the guy who is, you know, going for something has taken a big risk to do it. Well, you know, if you could, if you could drive it anywhere and still make birdie all the time, then that's not a very good hole.
I agree, And I mean I walked off the hole and I thought to myself, why the hell did you just hit driver when you can just hit a four iron right here and you've got a wedgend. And I think that's a great way though, That's a great subtle way to challenge, you know, the better player is to give them something that entices them to hit driver, because they every every really good player thinks they can hit driver where they want it if they really need to.
And you know, and they and they think that they should be entitled to hit driver on every single longer hole. You know, I've heard that cruisism a bunch from from good players. Don't take the driver out of my hands, and I don't just make it like a stupid play sometimes that you can hit it. I'm not making you lay up. You better hit a good shot if you do it. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a really important
part of golf. And you know the tough part about doing that though, and the reason you don't see every other architect doing the same thing is because it's not always popular to do that. You know, you walked off
and think, you know, I've learned something about architecture. But a lot of like low handicapped guys are going to make you know, they make eight in a short part for they hate the whole and they might hate the whole golf course as a result of fact, and they're not going to go back and play it the second time and figure it out. So and then the client
is nervous about that. So there's a lot of and the architect is nervous about that because he wants to win some award and he doesn't want good players to go around telling him he's building unfair of golf courses. It's really bad for business. So there's a lot of guys that just shy away from building things like that that might be controversial. And again, I mean, I've just been you know, I've just been trained from day one
not to be afraid of any of that. You know that that's that actually makes the golf course better in the long run, provided you have the confidence that people are going to come back, you know. And yeah, you have to have some confidence. And you know where I am now, it's a little easier to have that confidence. People will give me the benefit of the doubt and you know, but but you know, I only got there
because I've been doing it from the start. You know, even when I was risking my career, I was building those kinds of holes.
So which, uh, which of your projects are you most proud of? You know, it doesn't have to necessarily be the best one or the highest rated one, but what what one are you most proud of? And why?
Well, you know, I'm gonna I don't give the politically correct the answer that they're all my children, but you know, I'm proud of a lot of them. I mean, you know, we've worked on some great projects and you know, and you know, not just me, but the guys that work for me a ton of time on them, trying to get them right, and I think they've come out really good.
And you know, still picking one between specific dunes and barn Google and you know, and then some places like Creek that aren't as well known, or Stone Eagle that
was really hard to build. But you know, if it's not everybody's cup of tea, you know, I'm proud of all of those, you know, to some extent, I'm just as proud of something like Common Ground that we build a public course that people can play for forty bucks, especially considering some of the programs that they've come up with to not just encourage golf, to encourage public golf
and encourage youth golf there. But you know, we managed to build them a little kids course on the side for free for you know what we saved up during the construction budget by building it as as efficiently as we could. And they, you know, they've used it for
all kinds of school programs. And then then one of the one of the people involved with the Evans Scholarships in Colorado decided to like start like a a caddy camp and leadership academy on it so that they they train the kids, the local kids in the neighborhood and kids that they bust in to be caddies, and they subsidize it so you want, they pay They pay the caddy a little bit out of their fund so that you only have to pay twenty five dollars to take a caddy. It doesn't cost any more in a golf
cart wood. And then and then by by letting these kids caddy, if the caddy more than like twenty rounds in the summer, they're eligible to apply for the Evans Scholarship. Yeah, so that, you know, I'm really proud of that for entirely, you know, for reasons they have nothing to do with golf course architecture or my egos. You know, it's just nice to work for clients that try to do cool things for golf links. Yeah.
I think that is an emerging trend in the industry. What we're starting to see is, you know, with places like winter Park golf course and and common Ground where there's these new you know, municipality run golf courses that are less expensive and you know, one of the things I think is interesting is that you know everybody and likes to go. They don't really know the names of architecture,
and you you've established a great intern program. I'd be curious, you know, if you were running a municipality and you could hire you know, if you could put five guys on a list of who you'd want to hire to do a lower cost renovation of a of a golf course, who would they be?
Are? Now I have to be playing correctice. You're asking me to pick between like fifteen guys that that have worked for me at various times, and and I've you know, and I've helped train that are all really talented, you know, including three guys you know, including three or four that still work for me on my payroll, where talented as anything.
I mean, you know, the hardest thing about my company is that, you know, I always envisioned that the guys would, you know, the young people that we brought in, you know, would event you would want to move through and then try to get out on their own, you know, like I did when I worked for you know, I worked for Pete Die for like four years, and and there wasn't really a way to keep working for Pete Dye
He didn't really keep a payroll. He just moved from one project to the next, and they were all over and you know, you just had to pick up and move to the next one when you were done with one. So it wasn't you know, it was a business model where the employees were it was they were intended to kind of burn out after a while and then you'd find new people to replace them. You know. He gave a lot of people a chance that way, and I've
tried to do the same thing. But you know, when the when the recession happened and all of a sudden it was really hard to get a job. Then, you know, nobody wants to leave and try to go on their own. And that was you know, that was a really tough thing in my company, having to downsize a little bit and try to figure out who's stayed and who laughed, you know, And I tried to do it in a way.
You know, I kind of kicked the senior guys out of the nest, which was very controversial, but I knew they could make it on their own by then, and I knew the other guys couldn't. And you know, and by that point, you know, the younger guys were the ones that were on the machine shape and the stuff. And to me, that's the most important part of the whole deal. You know, if you're if you're really good at that, you will always have work in this business.
And you know, and that's one of the great things about my internship program, all these young guys that have worked for me, If I don't have, you know, I mean, I don't want to be so busy, you know, I don't want to be gone three hundred and sixty five days a year so that they can all stay busy. You know. I just I can only do so many projects a year without losing my mind, you know, getting
too frazzled trying to do too many things. So a lot of these guys, you know, especially with you know, with Eric Iverson and Brian Swonik and Brian Schneider who still work for me, I mean, all the young guys that have worked for us, know that it's going to be hard to ever, you know, get past them and root one of them out. I mean they you know, they're like still young and enthusiastic guys with like fifteen years experience on the equipment. Who can you know, build
anything you want at the snap of a finger. So you know, so all the young people that come through see that, see the writing on the wall that they're either going to have to go on their own or they're going to have to go work for somebody else eventually, you know, when we're not so busy, but they are,
you know, they're you know. The cool thing is that nearly every good project in the last fifteen years, no matter who the architect is, there's like one or two guys that that worked for me for a while that have helped build it, you know, and you know, and because we've had success, and because a lot of architects are curious about how we do things. You know, having worked on barn Google Dunes or Pacific Dunes or Dismal River or wherever is a pretty good thing to have
on your resume. And you know, some other architect will want you to work on his project so he can try to get a little bit of as knowledge into it.
M that's uh, it's it's true, and I think you're on the right kind of philosophy. The best boss I ever had told me that, you know, part of being a boss is always trying to make uh, you know, you're the people that report to you end up being better at your job than you are.
Yeah. Yeah, And it's you know, it's it's a weird thing because I you know, I mean, I'm a very hands on person, and you know, I'm still kind of resistant to the fact that you know, I've graduated to the point where I'm not at sean time on my
own projects. You know. I mean I went out and walked with's left of high point with somebody the other day and said to them, well, you know, the special thing about this is this is the only one of these courses that I built all these creams myself, and and you know, I'm not saying they're better than the ones that my guys are doing with me. Now we're turning out great work now too. But I you know, it was different because it was all me and and
I really enjoyed that part of the business. And you know, I'm not good, you know, I'm bulldozer to justify. I mean, I clearly got tons of people around about when I did it at a high point place that you know, a lot of times I didn't even know exactly where I was going when I was when I when I would get on and start building green. But you know, I knew when to jump off because it'll look good.
And that's a really different process than what everybody imagines we do, is that you know, we have an exact idea of what this green is going to look like, you know, when we're chomping around in the trees before we ever start building a golf course. I mean, I don't have that all figured out in my mind. You know, that's the fun part. That's that's what makes going to work every day exciting, is you know, figuring it out and making it better as you go.
Yeah, so you've done a ton of restorations, you know, of a lot of classic golf courses. What's what would you say is the most difficult thing about doing a restoration versus designing a course? And you know some of the key differences.
Oh, by far, the most difficult thing is is dealing with big committees or you know, hundreds of members as your client instead of one guy. You know, because because I've never I've never worked for any club where everybody was really on the same page. There are all sorts of factions and differences of opinion as to you know, what direction they should be going and they're looking to you for advice, but there's always going to be people
that disagree with you. And you know, and that's you know, I've been really lucky and the golf courses that's done by myself. You know, I haven't worked for you know, I imagine that dealing with you know, having a municipal project, you could run into that same problem. You know, you're dealing with a committee. I've only I've built thirty five new courses and and only once I dealt with a committee.
Nearly always I had like one person that I answered to, And that's just you know, that's great because if you you know, if you you know, as long as they're okay with what you're doing, then you don't have to worry about what else, what else you're doing when you've got you know, when you got a bunch of members and they want to know all the details. You know, the one person client, he could be comfortable with the
fact that you don't know everything. Right after that, m you know, other than that, I mean, you know, where I think where I think a lot of restoration renovation work goes wrong is you know, not so much the idea, but the execution. I mean, you know, in theory, if it's really a restoration project, and no matter what architects hired, they should be telling you the same thing. Between fis, here's what the golf course was, here's what we should be trying to go back. But there, you know, there's
there's varying interpretations of what restoration means. You know, does it mean putting back exactly what was there in nineteen twenty six, or does it mean well, technology changed and we all hit the bone so much farther now that you know we're going to we're going to make it play the same, but we got to stretch it out and move the fairway bunkers to different places and all that. You know, that's not the way I advise clubs most of the time. But but you know, that's a different interpretation.
So you do have different ideas on what restoration is. But ultimately, when you're rebuilding something, you know, ideally you'd just be doing the work that really needs to happen. Like you don't have to rebuild a hundred fairway bucks, you know, and I have to rebuild every bunker on this golf course. You just have to rebuild sun and then, you know, but you can only do that if you're good enough to make the new and look indistinguishable from
the stuff that was built fifty years ago. And there's not that many people that are good at that, you know, when you when you when you do it the normal way and get it out to a contractor, they're not good at that, and they don't have that much incentive at being good at that. They just you know, their contractors to build a bunker and get it done as fast as they can and not have to tinker around
with it so much because they make more money that way. Yeah, and you know, and we just you know, I've got the guys who can get on the equipment and shape it and make it look like it fits, and you know, and our incentive is all about getting it right, however long it takes. And you know, that's what our clients want. Yeah.
It's so you've got the Loop opening this year, which is a reversible course. If anybody hasn't heard of it, you can play it's essentially two different golf courses of eighteen greens that you can play a different direction each day.
Right, It's it's an eighteen old golf course that every other day you play at the backwards down in eighteen stairways, in the seventeen stairway and all the way back around, and then the next day you play it forwards and then and then you also did the Sheep Ranch out in Bandon Dunes, where.
It's essentially you put the ball on the ground and you tee it to different greens. I love this concept. What are some other kind of innovative concepts that you've you've got that you would love to try out?
Well, I don't say I've got a bunch, you know, not not all of them are like groundbreaking innovation. And you know, the reversible golf course wasn't my Yeah, that's something I read about in Tom Simpson's book when I was like sixteen years old and just thought that's a cool idea. I'd love to do something like that today. It just took me off a long long time to find the right place to do it. So some of the things that I'm thinking about, I don't know if
I'll ever get a chance to do it. But there are there's a few different kinds of projects that I'd like to do. You know. One one that I'll put out there that I've tried to sell to one or two clients and they've they've shrugged it off, and like, no, no, no, we don't want to do anything like that. I would like to build a golf course that's tailored to women. You know, it's not just like has a good set of women's teeth, but it's you know, it's it's sixty
three hundred yards max. Because that's the longest the LTGA player would want to play it, and it goes down from there. You know, that would be an entirely different experience, you know. I mean, like I've spent a couple of days in the practice rounds of the Women's Open at Sabonic watching them play my course and like up close.
I I contacted Stacey Lewis and Paul at Klemer and it dances that event, and said, you know, could I walk with you for a round and and just you know, watch what you're doing, and in return, I'll answer any questions you have about how I think you ought to play certain holes. And they both yes, we will do that. So that was great for me to get back inside the ropes and and you know, see where they land the ball and see how it reacts and you know,
they're so precise. I mean, and women's off you know, like a savonic that the percentage of Fairway's hit statistic was like, you know, the last player in the field was at seventy percent. Invest players are like ninety six because the airways are wide, and you know, they just stripe it like they're used to play in every golf course, like it's twenty yards wide. They never they never miss wide very much, so you know, so that's the chance to you know, and they don't hit the ball quite
so high as the men do. Yeah, so you know, designing a course thinking about their skill set would be very different. It wouldn't have to be this big wide thing that everybody builds now that I sort of help popularize. But at the same time, I'm thinking, you know, we've gone too far in that direction because all you've see now is, you know, every course that's won the Best New Award for the last twenty years is like the biggest, widest golf course that was up for nomination that year.
It's like bigger is better, and you know, and I don't think that's true. And I think the way to do it is, you know, like really I just want to build a sixty two hundred yard golf course. But I think that the way to sell just only building a sixty two hundred yard golf course is to say, Okay, this is a great course for women, and you guys can try your luck on it, but you're going to find out you're you know, it's not a pushover.
It could be women, women and juniors. You need the LPGA Tour to create a TPC sawgrass like course for one of their championships.
Well supposedly they did years ago. Whatever the LPGA International is that Reece Jones designed, I've never seen it, but I don't think it's the course that I'm describing here.
Probably not.
I sure, I haven't heard a lot about it.
So you you touched on Savonic and you've done a couple co design projects with other firms. You know, how tough is it to kind of share a vision with another ego on a project.
It's it's tough, and it's it's different depending on who it is, like, you know, Yeah, I mean the two projects that I did in Australia, we worked with Mike Clayton, and that was pretty easy because I was friendly with Mike going into it. And it's the same by the same token, I had more experience than he did at that point, so he really deferred to me on a lot of stuff. You know, it was more like he
was a consultant. But at the same time, you know, one of the reasons we we entered into that agreement was, you know, he had some really strong guys that worked for him that would help get the golf course built, project manage it. You know, one of them was a superintendent for years and had been an assistant of Royal Melbourne who I really respected a lot. And it's like, you know, so you know, he had some team members like I had some team members that really fit well together,
so that made it easy. But at the end of the day, you know, it's like, you know, he'd give a lot of input, but also really isn't my decision on what would have got you know, Sabonic was completely different.
You know, we had to agree from the beginning that you know, nothing was finished until we both liked it, and you know that meant that Jack, you know, there were some holes that you know, we tried to do some stuff that Jack didn't like, so we'd have to keep revising him, which is hard, and there were some holes that he wanted to do that you know, I didn't like it exactly the way it was, and he's
not hearing that from somebody else. But you know the relationship between me and Jack was still pretty good because that's what we agreed to do and we both understood going in that that's what we're agreeing to. But the hard part was getting our teams seamesh didn't work very well.
I mean on that project. You know, Jim Orbina who ran the job with me, and then Brian Schneider and Eric and some of the guys that shaped it, they had to take like several steps back from the role that they're usually involved and the level they're usually involved, you know, Like I mean, the cool thing for Eric or Brian working for me is if they build a wild green and I like it, it's done, and it's
the bonics. It wasn't done, you know, I could like it, and then Jack didn't like it, and then it had to change and that was hard for them. That's you know, that's not what they were used to, and that the odds that they were going to build a green that went that flew through with flame colors and we were done were a lot lower, so you know, that part of it was really tough, and they were just you know,
there were more politics to that job than most. Again, you know, that's what we signed up for, you know. And I always said about that project, well, you know, other people are going to have to tell me if they think this was a good idea to get us together to design it, because you know, both Jack and I are always going to look at it like, oh, I would have done something different on Maple, you know. And yet and yet it's a pretty good golf course and it's pasted some big things and gotten a lot
of acclaim for doing it. So I'm not saying that they did it the wrong way, you know, It's just it's just it's a different kind of emotional experience to doing it. And you know, you know, I don't get to go back to some of my own courses and enjoy them and play them as often as I'd like. But when I do go back to them, I really
feel good about most of them. You know. It's not like I'm kinkering and second guessing myself and you know, wanting to go rebuild the Third Green because I just don't like the way it turned out, and you know, so so in most cases, I can just go back and play golf and have fun. And I actually play pretty well because I you know, because I'm comfortable with all the shots that I got to hit. You know, Sabonic is kind of the rare one that when I
go back, there's still questions about it. And you know, even if I'm playing with a friend, they all want to know, like, okay, so this is your idea? Is this Jack's idea? And it just takes away from the fun we normally have building the things. Mm hmm.
That's uh. I imagine it's just got to be so tough when both have to sign off on it, and you know that it's kind of differing design philosophies with the with the two firms. I want to I want to.
I mean partly it's you know, I will say too partly it's my fault. I mean, if i'd have known Jack Nick, look well at the beginning of the thing, I should have said to him, you know, look, don't worry that we're going to ignore what you have to say. You know, you don't have to babysit us to make sure that we're sticking to stick and do things, you know, just let us ruffian stuff for you and then come out and and you know, tell us all the changes you want to make, just like you would to your
own staff. But you know that course was overstaffed. Yeah, we didn't need all you know, we didn't need all my people and all his people there at the same time. That part was the part that didn't work.
So well, yeah, it's gotta be tough, so