All right, we are back with part two of our podcast with Tom Doak. If you miss part one, check it out on our iTunes page or on our website. Also, if you enjoy the podcast, please rate us or leave a review in iTunes. And without further ado, here is Tom Doak.
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 Frida egg, the dreaded Friday Friday, Frida egg brid egg Frida egg bride egg Lie, I'm about ready to run.
Off of the course. I wanted to talk a little bit about.
Your life as a golf course critic and you know the travels and you know, obviously playing great golf courses and seeing different architecture has to help your architectural career. But for a golfer with limited accessibility, what what would be your three destinations abroader in the States that you would recommend traveling to.
Oh man, it's a big question. It's a big world. Yeah, you know, you know, Scotland and Ireland are geared to the golf tourist that you know isn't necessarily a member
of a club. I mean, you don't have to have any clouds to go play Valley Bunty and you just sign up in advance and pay the green feet and you're there and you know, and you know, you're you're getting to see some of the best courses in the world, and you know, most don't have that much experience with links golf, so you know, and you're getting to see the game the way it started and why it started
that way. You know, if you you know, if you get to spend long enough over there, you know, like I did spend any year over there after college, you know, it really becomes a part of you that you know, it's just a different ethos of golf. So you know, that would always be my first choice, and I you know, I get back there fairly regularly, although kind of with my book project, I've committed myself to go in other places and i'd you know, I'd be happy just going
back to England or Scotland all the time. But but I've still got some places that I want to see. You know, Australia is pretty much the same. You know, the best courses in Australia, Well, now there's a couple of them like Barn Google that and the new ones in King Island that are open to the public. But you know, even a place like you know, it helps a little bit if you can write and say I'm a member of a club in the state, but I think you can play them even if you're not, if
you write a nice letter. And those are tremendous golf courses, and you know, and again you know, they have a lot to teach us too, especially in terms of like how they use water on golf courses and how dry and firm they keep it because it doesn't rain much in Sydney and Melbourne and they have to be more efficient with water. And you know, California has a lot to learn from Australia and how to manage water and golf courses. And you know, you'll never see bunkering like
that anywhere else. You'll never see a bunch of Part three is as good as you'll see like on every course at Melbourne. So that's a great destination, kind of a once in a lifetime place for most people, but definitely worth the trip. And then you know, there's a lot of great resorts in America, and you know, I'll
play abandoned dunes. I mean, you know, being able to go there for a few days and you know and just stay there and play all those courses and see how different they are, and you know, it really does feel like like something in the West of Ireland or or somewhere in Britain in terms of how the golf courses play. You know, it's a tremendous place to go and it's it's a cool thing to have been a part of.
And everybody gets gets the chance to play two of your golf courses.
So that's a that's a big cluss.
Yeah, I'm plugging my own work there. You know, I've done I've done some stuff in Australia.
Yeah, So what course did you go to, whether it's public or private in the States where you walked in with very low expectations and were most pleasantly surprised.
Well, that's happened a lot over the years. Although it's you know, it's to do now. I mean, you know, I remember like going to Cruden Bay for the first time in Scotland and you know, in nineteen eighty two and I'd only ever seen one picture of it, so you know, I you know, I knew just enough to know, well, this could be pretty exciting because it's one picture looks
like it's pretty spectacular piece of land. But I had no idea what the golf hols are going to be like until I got there, and that, you know, that sense of discovery of going around it for the first time and being all these pool and wild things. You know, we've kind of lost that a little now because any any golf course you want to know about you can
find a thousand pictures of on the internet now. But I still go places that that I'm surprised that, you know, even if I've seen some pictures of them, it's like, you know, either because they've done a good restoration or because you know, they're just not you know, usually it's it tends to be private clubs, so they're you know, they're not marketing it. Like you know, the trip I made last year that was a real eye opener was
going going across Iowa. You know, there's like there's no golf courses in Iowa that are raided in the Golf Digest or Golf magazine lists, and and you know, there's no Alistair McKenzie courses or Killing Half courses, so you know, there's there's not anything about it where you think, well, oh yeah, that's going to be a different golf destination.
But you know, the first course I saw you you know, if you're if you're coming from the east, you go across the Mississippi River and you're there in the Quad Cities region and the very first golf course when you go across the bridge about two miles is an Allison course called Daventort country Clubs. Is it's just their restoration of is a terrific golf course. I mean, you know, we do consulting for Milwaukee Country Club and the Country Club of Detroit, which are two of the best Allison
courses in the States. And I thought this was better than the two them. Wow. And yet nobody's you know, I've never heard that from anybody. So you know, again, it's a private club is in Iowa, and they don't market themselves at all, So who's going to know that? Yeah, And you know, and it was part of the reason it's not on the Golf Died just list. Until their renovation, it was only like sixty three or sixty four hundred yards,
so they were dismissing it on that basis. And it's still you know now at sixty seven hundred, which is just plenty for me. But there's there's probably some golf died, just panelists who think that's not fun enough.
Well, I then we're both on that same page with with the with the panel ratings.
But but there were like five or six courses in Iowa that I really thought were pretty cool. And you know, one of them was a Donald Ross course Sea Rapids that they just renovated and did a great job with. One of them was a Perry Maxwell course, the one for Iowa State University as a typically wild Perry Maxwell green on it, you know. And there was a new course outside of Des Moines that Keith Foster did which is probably the best, the best solo design of his career.
So there was really a lot there. And it's just the fact that they're private and they don't you know, they're not like northern Michigan where they pool their advertising dollars and run ads and golf digest so you don't hear anything about it. M h.
Yeah, that's it.
I'm in the state next to Iowa, and I have played no golf in Iowa. I think I've only been there when I visited the University of Iowa. So this sounds like somewhere I got to go this summer.
Well it's funny too, because I never thought, I mean I was when I was there, it was like cold and windy and nat I was there like first of April or something, and it was it had been really nice in March, and then it was cold and windy in April and it was just I mean, I just froze my butt off for four days walking around seeing all these courses and trying to play in it once. But but that's another thing.
I was.
It's windy and Iowah. You know, that's a good thing for golf. It makes the golf a lot more interesting.
Yeah.
Yeah, it adds a as an element and it's uh, it's just it's different than what a lot of people experience in places like Chicago or or Philadelphia, where you've got lots of trees.
So what what architects?
Uh, you know, have you gained a lot of appreciation for from all these travels and playing all all these courses?
Too many to lift? I mean, you know there's there's you know, there's four guys that get most of the attention and then there's four or five others like George Thomas, because he wrote his book and and did a couple of courses that are you know, prominent tour side that they get a fair share of attention. And then most of the other golf course architects who worked back in
the old days, you know, aren't well known today. Somebody like Bill Langford who worked around Chicago, or or Perry Maxwell, who did some of his best work building golf courses for Alistair Mackenzie but then did some great stuff on his own. Or Walter Travis. You know, we've worked in a couple of Travis golf courses and they've been consulting a Garden City golf club for approaching thirty years.
Now.
You know, they all did some terrific work and and all, you know, all at this sort of detail level. You know, they didn't necessarily have a spectacular ocean front site, but the greens they built and this, you know, in the bunkers they built, the featuring and and they you know, they some of them were working on some pretty rugged terrain and so they came up with golf holes that that are just different than the kinds of things you
see now. You know, they're they're hillier and the you know, the I mean, it's the landing area their their original landing area might have been designed at you learning twenty yards. So so now you can blow it over that, but you do so at your peril because because it really wasn't meant you know, it really wasn't meant to be played that way, and you can get yourself in a lot of trouble trying to go for it, you know.
So you know, I've seen so many cool things, and you know, and I've seen and I've seen more than a couple that you know, that were designed by people you never heard of, or nobody even really remembers who the heck built it, and you know, and yet it's a cool golf course. So so you know, I wish people didn't pay as much attention to the names as they do. Yeah, you know, it sounds crazy. I mean, you know, my living is the fact. Part of the reason I make a good living is the fact that
people know who I am. But and and that's you know, it's and it's hard to you know, I can't remember like years ago, either either Arnold Palmer or Jack Nicholas. I think it was. Palmer said that, you know, he'd really like it if if people came to play one of his courses and they really liked it, but they didn't even know who built it. I thought, well, yeah, but that's hard to do when they put your picture on the scorecard.
It's it's very it's very, very true. So what I got I had some Twitter questions I put up and want to get to some of those. So Jay rigged and wants to know what are the best nine hole courses that you've seen and how do you, you know, rate them compared to an eighteen whole course.
The best nine hole course I've seen is uh Royal Worlington and Newmarket in England, which which to Cambridge golf team uses. So it's somewhat famous. But you know there's one that you know its origin there is a little bit of a mystery. Harry Colet had something to do with it at some point, but but the guys who designed it originally are really kind of known names yet. I mean, it's on a it's on a tight piece
of land and it's fairly unassuming looking. There's actually a road, the road that goes by the clubhouse and goes alongside the first and second hole. You know, you play over the road at the ninth hole, so you're actually driving through the golf course. And you could drive through that golf course in and not give it a second glance, thinking oh wow, that's really cool. And then but you get out in the middle of the first fairway and look at the shot you've got into the green and
it's like, oh my goodness. And the nine holes of that, I mean, there's there's nine really good holes on a nine holdse which you don't see that much. You know, there's there's a handful of others. Whittonville in Massachusetts is a Donald Ross course, and I think that's probably the best nine hole course in America. Gil Hans just did a bunch of restoration work on it made it that
much better. But you know, I've been going there. I haven't been there that many times, but the first time I went there was like thirty years ago this summer, so it's always been a favorite. Another one that I thought for the first time a year or two ago with super in New Hampshire. It's kind of like not that far north of Hartford, Connecticut. You just go up through Massachusetts and you're right there. Styles and Dan Cleek Course or maybe just Styles actually, but terrific piece of ground.
And then the Dunes Club that my kids have built, you know, pretty close to my Lost Dunes down in the corner of like the corner of Michigan as you're going around the lake towards Chicago, which is a you know, a really neat, fairly freeform golf course. And you know, I saw it the first time when it was brand new, and and before i'd met Mike and and thaught, you know, just some of the the way they'd done tees, more
free form and stuff. I thought, Wow, this is a you know, this is the kind of guy I'd like to work for. And I'm glad I had the team. As far as how I rate them, I kind of informally think, you know, it cost them one point on the dok scale that they're only in nine hole course, you know, because it's like you know, if you you know, you know, there there are some there are some very good golf courses that there's one nine holes that's great and the other nine holes kind of sucks. I won't
go into specifics today. I saw one of those pretty reasons actually that I thought, well, yeah, this nine holes is great. The other night holes, it's like they shouldn't have even built it. They should just play the play them one good nine twice. And but you know, you know, I do that with recognition that it's harder to build eighteen great holes than it is to just build nine
grade holes. But at the end of the day, if you've got a really good nine hold course, you know that's a great golf course and there's no reason to knock it down that much because there's only nine of the hole, because you can go play them again.
Yeah, and just so people that aren't familiar, Tom came up with a Dok scale, which is how he rates golf courses. It's a one through ten and there he rates them all in his books called The Confidential Guide to Golf Courses. I highly recommend them if you're into golf courses. They're they're just terrific things to just read through and great ways to figure out where you want to play next.
Tom tell us a little bit about how you came up up with the Dok Scale.
It's really kind of a lark. I mean, you know, the original version of The Confidential God was just written for I printed forty of them and gave him away to friends and people that had helped me go around and see some of these golf courses, you know, like I gave I gave George Pepper a copy, and I gave them Crunchhaw copies. We he die a copy.
You know.
It was because I was writing just for friends. It was very off the cup and informal and brutally honest. You know, if I didn't like a famous course, I just said, don't bother ever going to this place and they're making fun of a back call of a hole that I thought was terrible or whatever, and you know, and I never really intended for it to be seen
by more than a handful of friends. But you know, I came up with the Doak scale and given the courses as zero to ten rating was kind of a shorting because I really, you know, I think the first book covered like six or seven hundred golf courses, so I was you know, I was only writing a I only had room to write a paragraph or two about the golf course, and I couldn't really cover it, you know.
It wasn't like I was going to cover it hole by hole, So I just thought well, you know, I want to I want to put a number with it, so you know, if I write about Augusta, and you know, because everybody's already read brilliant things about Augusta and all these people I've given this book to, no Augusta. You know, I want to write what I don't like about Augusta. But then I don't want everybody to think, well, he
hates Augusta. He thinks it's the worst concourse in the world, because he wrote two paragraphs they are bad about it. So the number was kind of like, no, you know, it's still a nine on my one to ten scale. It's out of ten, but it's not a five. I mean, I really like the golf course. So you know, the number was kind of a a safety valve check originally.
But you know, once when I when I decided, on the advice of all my friends, that I should really publish the book for the past because it was you know, basically, it was what I knew about golf course architecture, was from seeing all those golf courses, and it would be good for my career to put that out there, even if it was controversial. You know. Then the numbers became like the whole point for most people, which is too bad.
I mean, you know, the to me, the book is still about what I have to write about the golf course. You know what, Why do I think you should go here? What? What's interesting about this golf course? It would make you want to travel all the way to see it. That's really the purpose of the book, you know. It's not It's not meant to be doke critiques every architect whoever with It's meant to be like, you only have so
much timey andy. So if you're going to England, you know which of these courses should you try to go see? And it's written in a way that yes, I've got numbers on them, and you could say, well, I'll go to all the nines in the eighth and the sevens and I'll use that as a cutoff, you know, but that's not really how you know, you shouldn't even do that.
You should read what I say about the golf courses and you should look at which ones they're close together and go, oh, yeah, you only gave that a five, But it sounds pretty cool, So maybe I should go see that, you know. And I'm not expecting it to be one of the top hundred courses in the world. But it's you know, it's going to be cool enough
to go be worth spending four hours, yep. And that's you know, and that's you know, that's been the success of the books, that it works really well on that level, and the people that go out of their way to see some of course they never heard of because I recommended it, are mostly pretty pleased by having made their detour.
Yeah, it's I think it's it's just a great resource for if you're unfamiliar with an area. I mean, you can learn so much about different courses and just figure out you know, the I always say to people they should have a you know, a purpose for why they want to play somewhere, and it does a great job of giving you a reason to go play somewhere.
Yeah, And you know, I just you know, I was involved in the rankings of courses with Golf Magazine back from almost the time they started doing and I'm not involved in that anymore. And I really think, you know, all those rankings is just you know, they've overpowered everything else. It's like, you know, I know these panelists that like they go to Asia for a week and they go play two courses in Korea and three in Japan and
one in Thailand. And you know, because they're quote unquote top one hundred golf courses or curious candidates for the top one hundred, and they drive right by, you know, they're I mean like Japan is the best example of that. You know, Kasumi Giseki used to be ranked in the top hundred golf courses and I can't remember if it still is now or not, but there was another course that Allison had something to do with, Tokyo Golf Club get next door to it, and for years Canilis never
went there. They would go to Kasumikoseki because it was in the top hundred and they wanted to see all the top one hundred, and nobody would go. You know, it's not even across the street, it's like works off the same driveway, but you couldn't get anybody to go there, you know, because they had to get on a plane to go to Thailand tomorrow instead. And that just bothered
the hell out of me. You know, I just think, well, you know, go see you know, actually goes if you're going to take a golf trip to Japan, for God's sake, go see Japan. It's and that's you see the same
thing in Scotland. You know, people people go to Scotland and you know, if this is their first trip to Scotland, they think, well, I may never get to do this again in my life, so I've got to go see all the Open champions courses in Scotland and then and then, but I also want to see Dornick because because everybody
says it's a great golf course. So you know, so that means that you're you know, you're driving two hours from Edinburgh to Saint Andrew's and you're driving two or three hours more to get over to Troon, and then you're driving like five hours to get up at Dornic and five hours coming back, and you skipped so many good golf courses in between there it's a joke.
Yeah, and and you're all that time in the car you could have played two or three more rounds of golf and seeing you know, it's like, just because they're an open road of course, doesn't mean for the ten handicap that it's the best place to go play.
I think, you know, no.
The only thing it means is it's the most expensive golf course are going to see in the k you know, they charge two hundred and fifty dollars for all of them. And you know there could be a good golf course down the street that there's still only charge at sixty four because it's not so well known. And that's you know, so that's part of you know, that's part of the confidential guide to it. It's like, you know, my little intros to the different sections are basically, for God's sake,
don't do that. You know, if you're you know, if you're going to Scotland, just assume that you're going to like it and want to go back again some days. So don't try to touch all the bases this trip. Just you know, pick a couple areas and see some of the little golf courses because you know, a lot
of times you you get more out of that. I mean, it's like, you know, you know, if you're staying around, say, you know, if you're staying around where Mirfield is out there to the east of Edinburgh and you know, and you take time to play North Derrick and you take time to play Gullin, but maybe you've got time to go see like you'll Skindy to this little fifty four hundred yard golf course that the you know, par sixty eighth and the first t is like literally, you know,
as soon as you step off the pavement the walkway from around the clubhouse, you're on the tee. And the first of all the part three in the greens like one hundred and sixty yards right over there was a
really hard shot. And then the eighteenth green is like steps away from the first team and you know, it was fifty four hundred yards and most Americans have dismissed that, but then they go and play it and it's not so easy, and it's a very intimate little place and you play it in like two hours because it's so compact. You know, you have to have that experience somewhere to understand that, you know, golf courses don't all have to be the same, and they don't all have to be
seven thousand yards long. But if all you go to is the Open championship courses that you know, they've all been rectified, and you know they're not you know, they're not as quirky as everything else in Scotland, and they're
really cool by far. The coolest part of going to Scotland is that you will see some things that you would never see anywhere else, because you know, you can't tell the Scotts that they don't know about going, you know, you know you can't tell him, well, fifty four under your course that is that's no. They're like, of course, it's yeah, you know, it's a lot of fun. What are you talking about?
It's uh, that's that, it's funny.
My my buddy is going exactly to in Edinburgh and I recommended North Barrack and uh going, but that's a perfect, perfect U Kills Beanery is the perfect recommendation for him because he's he's asking.
You know, he's asking for more.
What Jeff wants to know, what are five courses in North America that you haven't played yet that are on your list?
M You know, that's hard for me to answer, because I've been you know, part of the reason for going back and updating the Confidential Guy is to check some of these places off my list. But then I have to admit to you that I don't you know, I
don't always have time to play everywhere. You know, I'm trying to see a bunch of courses if I can tell other people about them, and I don't always have time to play, or I get there and you know, it's thirty eight degrees and blowing at thirty miles an hour, and I couldn't go out and play an app But if I did, then I'm not going to go see the course twenty miles down the road too. So so the only one that comes to the top of my
head of you know. I mean, I've played most of the top fifty golf courses in the world, and I think the only one that I haven't played is oakmar I've been to Oakmont like three or four times, and it just it never worked out for me to play. When I was there, you know, I was like I was welcome to play, but they had an event going on. Or I was going to play but we got ringed out or something. So you know, so so one of these days I'm going to go do that because I
really love the golf course. But you know, I wish I had more time to play golf. I mean, you know, I get invitations from people all the time, oh, come, you know, come play here, and it's like, well, I'd love to, but but but I'm traveling a lot of days still building golf courses, and then and then I'm crazy enough to take on this book project, and I need to go see golf courses in Korea and Vietnam this year, and I just don't have much time to get back to to Nebraska and play.
Mm hm.
So I got this, I got this question a couple of times. Easiest change for a golf course to make that would have the biggest effects.
In terms of improving it.
I assume, well, you know, I don't do a lot of like renovation projects where we really change a golf course dramatically. I mean, we we do restoration projects. But trying to take a golf course that's not that great and turn it into something great, you know, I've kind of avoided because it's all a matter of opinion, you know.
And when you've got three hundred members that that joined the place because presumably they kind of like it, you know, blowing it up and turn it into something different, there's a really big you know, you're going way out on a limb to do that. So you know to me that, you know, the two things that make a golf course really good are the routing and the set of groups.
And you know, it's really it's really almost impossible to change the routing of a golf course after it's been there for fifty years, and I've you know, planted trees and done everything else to reinforce the routing, you know, changing it and just completely redoing it. You're just blowing it up and making a hold of golf course. So I won't I won't take that as an example. You know, the best thing that you could possibly do, the biggest impact by far, would be building a really good set
of greens. But again, that's the step that most clubs don't want to make because you've got to close the golf course to do it. You're basically closing for a year to rebuild the greens. But that would certainly be the most impactful thing, you know, as far as the easiest thing to do. To me, it's getting the mowing lines right, you know, getting the corners of the greens back to where they used to be so you can
jam a pin over in the corner. Because because most old golf courses, those things have kind of got rounded off over time, and and you know, the very coolest little edges of the golf course just aren't in play. The city. Same with you know, getting the fairway lines back to the right places. You know that sometimes that get that introduces a lot of strategy. Back to the golf course that it's just you know, it's been narrowed up kind of arbitrarily to get it to thirty yards
wide because that's what the sprinkler here covers. And you know they've they've missed the in kind of a hole when they did that.
Yeah, that's I see that. At the course I play at. There's a one green. It's a Donald Ross. There's one green that used to be this massive green and and like half the green is missing because of because of a sprinkler, because of sprinklers, and you see this like where this green used to go, and it's like that might have been the best green in all of Chicago.
But which is that.
It's a Calumet country club. It's down by the Phlossmoor and Olympia and Ravslow. It's a the a highway cut through it, and now it's you know, overgrown, kind of the story of a lot of Chicago country clubs. But they're starting to take trees down and we're getting it back. But there's this one green that is just unbelievable if
they had, if they could get it back. But there's you know, it's it's a club that's low on money, and there's a sprinkler right in the middle of where that part of the green would be, So it's got constraints. So somebody asked if there was one, you know, one place you could play that's accessible to the public, that you could walk in the afternoon, was a Sunday bag, what course would it be?
And you only get one?
Yeah, that's the hardest thing. I mean, you know, I've been to fifteen hundred golf courses and most of the best golf course in the world. So any of these questions were anybody asked me you only get one, I just have to you know, I just have to laugh at like, so go back, what are my criteria.
Let's say it's it.
Let's walk it with a Sunday bag in the afternoon in the States, We'll say in the States, and it's accessible, it's accessible, and it's not mine.
I'll throw in it.
Not we'll do that too.
But accessible part really narrows it down a lot. Possimo is a great course and it's a little hilly for some people to walk, So so that would be a little tough to recommend, but but that's one of the first places that springs to mind. I'll pick one that's not far from where I'm talking today, in traversity. There's there's an old club in northern Michigan called Belvedere, which
is a semi private club. They're only like, you know, basically the members around for two months in the summer, and it's harder to get onto those two months, but the rest of the time, the public's welcome. All you have to do is calling. And you know, it's a really cool, simple, old golf course laid out on a farm by Willie Watson, and you know, he liked it enough that when George Thomas was doing his book on architecture, he sent him a couple of diagrams of the whole
There's actually three of them and they're all in Thomas's book. So, you know, I thought out the place the first time it came up here, and it was kind of you know, at that point, it was really kind of run down and they didn't have much money to spend on it. But they've done a really nice job of fixing it up and it was host for the Michigan Amateur for years and years and years. They just went back there every year and everybody loved coming north and playing there.
And then somebody, you know, somebody of the Golf Association said, oh no, we have to move this around all over the state to different places, so not everybody has to go north every year. And you know, mostly good amateurs in Michigan are still kissed about it.
I've heard a lot of great things about.
It, and it's very it's it's a very simple golf course with a really good mm hmm.
So thanks so much for the time. You've been more than generous. We're going to get you out here. Last question and then we've got an overrated, underrated segment we're going to throw at you. But last question is, you know you famously through your book, through writing, how much you'd love to get do a bell Air renovation. It sounds like you've secured, you know, doing a bell Air restoration. What would be the next golf course that you would most want to do a restoration up?
Oh, well, you know, the bell Air thing came up pretty funny because I think Rand more Fit asked that question and a you know, we were we just finished volume two of the Confidential Guys. So for some reason, bell Air was on my mind and I just blurted
it out. And you know, I should have been more careful because the problem with answering your question is there's always some consulting architect that's already working there, which in bel Air's case with Tom Fabio, and I just kind of stepped on him and said, gee, you know, I
wish they were doing something different. And I had no idea even knew anybody at bell Air, but it turned out I knew like two or three of the younger guys that were on the Green Committee, so they all so they called me about it, and yeah, a year and a half later, where you know, we're gonna we're gonna start a renovation there this fall. So now I you know, now I'm thinking, oh, you know politics. Do you know where can I say that that somebody's not going to be mad that I said it, or I'm
trying to steal their job away from them. So I don't even know if I can answer the question because of that.
It's like, hey, well we'll give you we'll give you up.
In that little okay, I mentioned that little nine whole course I saw in New Hampshire, New Hampshire. You know it's it's barely hanging on as a golf course, surviving year to year. They don't even have enough money to keep their pretty little clubhouse open. It would not take very much to get it back to just looking perfect like they've done for White and Phille, and I would love to be part of that. I'd do that for
a dollar because it's a cool little golf course. But you know, I'd only do it if if they get their leaf with the town right to make sure the place survive, and that seems to be an issue for them right now, so I don't I don't know where that's going, but i'd love to It is a great golf course. I'd really love to help them. Need is somebody nobody consulting there, So I'm on stave ground.
Whoever's listening from the Northeast that has a passion for golf courses, you know, that's the one they got to go check out. So this is gonna be a new regular podcast segment. We're gonna end it with Overrated or Underrated and I've got just I've got six things here and you just just say, overrated or underrated, and then we'll get you out of here. No explanation, no explanation needed. Aaron Hills, who overrated template hole golf.
H overrated to me because I've seen so much of it.
Okay, Pebble Beach.
He used to be overrated, might be getting to be underrated now because it's like a popular All of that place is overrated. I mean there's still like, you know, the best stretch of golf holes in America at Pebble Beach.
Yeah, yeah, that's uh, it's funny how the pendulum swings with things.
Double fairways, very overrated.
I don't really like that as a design concept that much. I think people do it as a gimmick.
We'll throw in there with it, double.
Greens, same same, very overrated.
Okay, Whistling Straights.
Ooh, you know, overrated with you know, based on its golf digest rating, I guess, but but you know, not overrated as a project. I mean, to turn what they started with into what they finished with is a pretty impressive. I just don't think it's one of the top twenty golf courses in America.
Yeah, it's I kind of agree with it.
It's an amazing place you should go to, but it's not one of the top twenty five courses you should see. And then last one, the Great Hazard.
The Great Hazard, the you.
Know Hell's half acre par five design that you use at stream Song Blue.
Well, it said nearly everything else is overrated, but I'll say that's underrated. I mean you still don't see it that much because you know, people are afraid, like you know, even stream Song it's like, you know, we really debated are we going to really cut this off or are we going to give people a way around it somehow, because it's just you know, that's more the politically correct thing to do. But you know, that's why the Great Hazard is underrated. You don't see it that much anymore.
It's a really cool feature and you just don't get to see it because it's not politically correct. Yeah.
I love the Great Hazard.
I think it's just genius, especially the way you did a stream song where if you have to lay up short of it, you still have a chance to get to the green.
Yeah. Yeah, I think that's for my case, that's the way. That's the way to go. As you know, layoff and then you're like two hundred twenty to go and you could still pull it off if you get a great shot.
Yeah, I love that that that you brought that back. It's something I want to see more of in the future. I think it's a great way to defend par fives and make it interesting. So Tom, I really appreciate the time. You've been awesome and I'm sure all the listeners will love it.
And we, uh.
We were looking forward to seeing more of your work. And thanks for coming on.
All right, Andy, nice to talk to you. And I'm curious to see how many how much response I'll get to this. Viously, I've said enough controversial things that you'll get somebodys.
Well, it'll be great. And then for everybody, Tom recently joined Instagram. It's at Dope Golf. Sounds like his interns got in his ear and uh got them on on a social media platform. So if you like seeing great golf courses, check it out.