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 bright egg Frida egg, the dreaded Frida egg, Frida egggg Frida egg bride egg.
Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the.
Garrett. How are you?
I'm doing pretty well, Andy, How are you? I?
You know, always Monday after the after a major is like a weird day. I feel like it's like a you're just kind of tired of working all weekend, so it's a it's just a strange, uh, strange day. And then you're thinking about all the stuff, and sometimes you get a little bit more perspective the longer you wait from that from a major championship. But what a weekend of golf, huh.
Yeah, amazing weekend of golf. There was a lot of golf to watch, for sure, even not at the PGA Championship. You know, there's some interesting tournaments going on outside of it. So I definitely got a load of it. And I feel you on that. You know, the Monday after a major there's a little bit of a letdown, but you still have some of that buzz going from the excitement of the tournament, and this was definitely an exciting tournament. Yeah.
I mean just I was just returning some stuff at the store at a couple of stores with my wife, and I was, you know, this is when I'm waiting, I'm thinking about Tony f now, and I looked it up and here he's finished. He's only played sixteen majors. He's finished in the top ten seven times.
It's kind of nuts, I know. Well, yeah, no, completely, you know, it gives legitimacy to the idea that there's actually a curse on him. I mean, the guy plays so well so often and he just doesn't have any wins. I mean, it's it's amazing. But what's funny to me about that story is the fact that you were on an errand with your wife and you were thinking about Tony Finow, which is which is certainly exactly where where my head is at the Monday after a major championship.
You know, I can't have a normal human conversation with anybody. So it's good that we're going to get all our takes out there right now.
I feel like, yeah, yeah, it's a when doing all those shotguns start spotlights over the quarantine with with all those historic players, like forty top ten rate in a in the prime of your career and majors, is like really unbelievable. And that's essentially what Fenale's at right now.
Yeah. No, he's such a great player. He does so many things. Well, I'd love to figure out what it is that's holding him back. I mean, obviously he's not a great putter, but but you know, I mean, one of these weeks he's got to put it together. It's just got to happen.
He made putts yesterday too.
I know he was he was closing out those like five six footers down the stretch. Well, he shot sixty six. He did his job. It's just it's kind of like you and Brendan talked about on the Shotguns start. You know, Morikawa jumped out and got it, which is why it was so satisfying. But it was also a bummer for guys like Bryson and Tony Feenow who played well but just you know, not well enough.
I know, for a while it looked like we were getting get a seven man playoff.
That would have been that would have been interesting. Yeah, it would have been interesting to see how they would have pulled that off.
What was your what were your thoughts on the golf course. Obviously you you covered the golf course extensively between the article you wrote and as well as the docupied that is the podcast before this Golf in the City Harding Park. How did you what'd you think of the first major championship at Harding Park.
Well, I thought it was a great success. I mean it certainly the tournament justified all of the things that Harding Park's supporters say about it, that it's a great championship venue, it's challenging, it stands up to the best players in the world, and it tends to create drama. It's done that in the San Francisco City Championships, it did that in the Lucky International in the sixties, It's done that in the tournaments that it's held this century.
And so all of those advocates of Harding Park, like bo Lynx, who essentially narrated the story for me on that Friday Stories episode, their perspective on the course, I think was found a lot of justification this week. I think we also saw some of the things about Harding Park that are less than great. On TV, especially when you're looking at one hole against another, it's sometimes sort of hard to keep track of where you are unless
you're along one of those lake holes. And you know that the bunkers the greens just don't introduce a whole lot of a whole lot of interest to the play. But you know what, it came down to the wire. There were a couple of holes that allowed more Kawa to show what he does best, that allowed him to differentiate himself, and so the course did its draw job.
It was dramatic, and it felt good that this championship took place at a at a true municipal course of course that's been a true UNI for ever since it opened ninety five years ago.
I thought one of the things, obviously we're in such weird times and the circumstances didn't allow fans, but I thought one of the best aspects of the golf course is the idea. I think golf in the city. You know, major championship golf within the city is so neat. It's not forty minutes away, it's not a train rider away, and it brings such an atmosphere. We got it a little bit even with just the people watching from the
street on thirteen t which was really neat. But that idea of golf in the city, a municipal course and fans is such a such a cool ingredient with it.
And obviously we won't see Harding Park in the PGA Roda for however long, you know that they're booked out for over a decade and the but the that's the thing, the one thing that I thought got robbed of the championship And you know, when when we weren't even sure if we were going to have major championship golf when they started planning it, I thought it would make a lot of sense to move this one and bring Harding Park back with fans because I think that was the
one thing that really if that's the X factor of that venue.
Right, Oh, completely, And if you look at the video that's available actually on YouTube of the two thousand and five American Express Championship, the first big event that was held at Harding Park post renovation, the duel between Tiger Woods and John Daly. The atmosphere for that, for you know, a WGC was unbelievable. You know, the crowd was just so in it and it was so fun to see that course crowded and allowed like that, and that would
have definitely been part of this championship. I think that that was definitely missing, and so yeah, I mean it's a bummer, but you know, we were all still watching at home. There was plenty of tension without the crowd. I kind of wonder though, I mean, this might be a bad take, but I kind of wonder like if the lack of a crowd made things even more it made this even more of an opportunity for somebody like
Colin Morikawa. I think it would have just felt different to him down the stretch if there had been thousands of people crowded around found him, you know, yelling their lungs at Yeah.
That's such an interesting thing to debate because even in lead up questions to the tournament, there were some responses. I can't remember exactly who press conference I was watching. It was one of the big players. It might have been even Rory God, I can't remember who it was, but they were talking about how they were struggling to really without the energy of the crowd like in regular events, but then being a major, they really knew it was that.
And the other question is, I mean, was Colin Morikawa Scheffler Wolf at more of an advantage because they're basically a year removed from playing all their events just like this one was played with no fans, just basically family and officials and agents at college events. You know, that's basically the a big name player is going to have twenty agents following him around in equipment, guys following him
around to a college event, and that's about it. And that's essentially what we see at these New Tour New Tour events without fans is you know, big name players have more people following them, but it's just officials and you know, different coherts of the tour. PGA Championship.
Yeah, yeah, and we heard about it plenty on the telecast. Obviously, Moricow was familiar with the course, but in a very real sense, this had to feel specifically familiar to him. You know, he's he's played events that that probably looked quite a bit like this in very recent history. You know, all that added up to an opportunity. But you know that's that's not to take anything away from how impressive
what he did down the stretch was. It's really one of the most unbelievable finishes from a player in a major that I can remember. I mean, who's gone out and grabbed it like that recently Brooks did at Aaron Hills.
Yeah, he did it at Aaron Hills. I'm trying to think Shinnacock, he kind of did. I mean, there are a lot of guys fell apart there. Yeah, Tiger, Tiger. Everybody fell apart around Tiger.
Right.
It's it's amazing when you think back because everything's like all the recent memories almost Brooks, It's like Brooks Brooks there, Gary, Gary Woodland. I will say he he kind of did that.
He was good.
He played so good on Sunday.
That shot, that shot on seventeen, that the chip.
Or the shot on fourteen getting home there, that and the way he started, the way he answered Brooks is charged in that first six holes. That was Those first seven holes of that tournament were electric. But yeah, I would I think, I mean what an iconic finish, And I think that was what had to happen, was like
just pure excellent play. And who knows if you play eighteen more holes, like some tournaments we see like if we just kept going, if we keep playing three more days, Hendrix stens into probably winning at Troon if that tournament turns into a ninety hole tournament or a one hundred
and eight hole tournament. This tournament, I have no clue who'd win if it was one hundred and eight holes, you know, like that's the I think one of the things with it is that we would if it if it picked back up today and we're playing Monday, a fifth round, it's still anybody's tournament.
M Yeah, it was. It was an unbelievable level of golf. Uh yeah, people really didn't didn't fall apart. It was it was just uh and that and that might be more fuel for the uh for the notion that fans do create a little bit more pressure at majors. It gives it that atmosphere. It reminds you of what the stakes are on a regular basis, And so when you've got a more or less empty course, you know you're
you're a little more able to lock in. And there were just a whole lot of guys who were locked in on Sunday at at Harding Park, and and I think it was fun to watch, but I'm not sure that i'd want it every major. I think when we see three or four more like this, we're going to start to yearn for the fans back.
Yeah, what what do you think about the setup?
So, you know it was it was PGA Championship through and through. I real listened to your podcast with Kerry Haig this morning and and you know, he was very circumspect and professional in that in that podcast. But I you know, I I saw, you know, his sort of personality coming through in the setups. And this is what he's done for a number of PGA Championships in a row, where basically it's a pretty conservative setup and you know it's it's plenty challenging, but there's no nothing that the
pros are going to object to. But then there are a couple of holes here and there where there's some creativity introduced to the setup. So you had the sixteenth hole, which I think between the first day, second day, third day, fourth day, there were some really really smart changes made to that hole to make it different and it influenced play in exactly the ways that I would imagine were intended.
So they used both the championship tee and what's normally the forward tee at Harding Park, which is about two hundred and eighty to two hundred ninety yards and then they used a bunch of different pin positions on that green, which has these kind of three different lobes in a middle section. They put the pins on all of those edges, and they moved the te's backward and forward, and the dynamics from day to day were really interesting, really cool, and it paid off in a spectacular shot from Colin
or Kawa down the stretch. The defining shot of the tournament was enabled by that smart, varied setup. And so I think that that's the mo of the PGA Championship Championship right now that we're seeing. We're not seeing big mistakes on the setup, and the reason for that is that it's pretty tentative for the most part. But there are certain places on the course where there are some smart changes made to the whole, some variety in the playing dynamics from day to day, and I thought it
really worked this time. Now that said, I can't say that, you know, watching just a player who was a few shots off the lead, not a few shots off the lead, say a player who was a number of shots off the lead Sunday morning. Just watching that player play this course shot by shot, I'm not sure that that would be that interesting, Whereas if this were Melbourne, that would
be fascinating. Roll Melbourne as it was set up at the at the President's Cup, you'd want to watch any player in any situation play that course shot for shot. I don't think you could say the same about Harding Park as it was set up for this tournament. You know, I think the players had to rise above and provide the drama on their own. I don't think the course was necessarily giving us anything that was super fascinating in and of itself, if you know what I mean.
Yeah, I feel like the only holes that created drama were the short par fours seven and sixteen. I felt like eight, nine, ten was a great stretch of golf I did enjoy, and Will Knights tweeted this from the Frida Egg account. But the pacing of the golf course, now, I'm not talking about the design characteristics of the greens or bunkers, but just the way the rhythm of the
difficult verse is gettible holes. I thought, you know, you have that first seven holes where you felt like you really had to take advantage of those holes because eight and nine were, you know, pretty much playing at if you played those in eight, you know, a bogie and a par you were, you were playing, you were, you weren't going to lose ground, and then you had ten, you could get one, and then all of a sudden you have another tough stretch of golf for a few holes,
and then you got a couple of gettable holes coming down the stretch, and then eighteen's another tough hole. I thought I liked the way the rhythm of the round where you had these periods of you know, you got
to get this done. And I think if you look back on Dustin Johnson's round, him not making a birdie grant he parted eight nine, he played those great, but not getting one at ten from a great drive was really the nail in his kind of coffin and one that you look back on, and every every guy in that in that top eight players this event look back on a couple of things, and I think that that was a cool The rhythm of an aspect of it was really neat, and I liked that the short part fours,
it weren't like a four gone conclusion. What was going to happen? You know what somebody was going to do off the tee, which was which was neat and something we don't see when the tour goes to the players at the twelfth hole, like where that's everybody's going for it.
Yeah, Morikawa made a legitimate in the moment choice on the sixteenth tee in the fourth round of the tournament. You know, he said to the press afterwards that he at the beginning of the tournament he thought he was going to be laying up on that hole, but you know, he called an audible on the tee and he and he pulled the driver out. You just don't hear that that often from pros. That I deviated from what I thought my plan was going to be, and that speaks
to a really good setup for that hole. And I think that hole specifically does I mean it, you know, the design of it and the setup of it just worked really really well here. Yeah. I mean so you're mainly though, talking about the pacing of the round, the mixture of easy and hard holes. I think you do have to work it both ways at this golf course, right that there's there's a you know, a balance.
Of but what I mean limited amount of working. You know, nobody really works it outside of Bobba.
These days, what what qualifies as working the ball has definitely changed. But when we see even a little bit of curve, we kind of get excited. And and then the you know, the routing of the course we talked about on the on the Story podcast that we did. Bo Links talked about it. Ron Kreutzchek talked about it.
It starts on the inside of the property, and then when you get to that thirteenth hole, the green sits against Lake merced and then you know that you're really heading down the stretch right and and and that makes it a really fun, dramatic turn make golf moment where everything starts to tighten up right as you get out to Lake Mercaid, and it just feels right. It's it's exciting, and so, you know, I think that people are looking
for simplistic takes on golf courses. Either this golf course represents everything that's bad about architecture or everything that's good about architecture. But I don't think that's the right way to go with Harding Park. I think there's a lot of things that the course does brilliantly and a lot of things that could be much better about the course. Just because this was a great championship doesn't mean that
the course couldn't be better. And just because there are some critiques that we have of the greens and the bunkers and various other aspects of the course and the setup, doesn't mean that, you know, a great tournament can't occur here. Yeah.
I think that's the thing, is that we live in this world of where there's only one right now thing. And I always keep going back to the idea that two, even three, even four things can be true about the same thing. Like you know, the TPC Harding Park had a great championship on it, TPC Harding Park isn't necessarily the greatest championship golf course. And I you know, I think TPC Herding Park will be as rumored will be a great year in year out tour stop. I think
that's it's going to be a really cool atmosphere. And I think I like the trend that we're starting to see with more and more events going into cities, and I think it will draw a great field because one of you know, obviously Riviera is a great golf course and it always gets a great field. But one of the reasons it gets a great field for with superstar players.
Is the idea like, hey, we got to go spend a week in LA like that, and going and spending a week in San Francisco is a is appealing to PGA Tour players versus going to spend it in you know, suburbs of x YZ city. Being able to stay in the city, especially as this tour gets younger and younger,
is going to be an appeal. And I think that's one of the things that we you know, another municipal golf course that's hosting a regular PGA Tour event is Memorial Park in the city, you know, in Houston, So that should be another neat tournament with its own unique atmosphere.
Yeah, we should briefly say a little bit about what you're referring to. So there's going to be it sounds like an annual tournament at Harding Park in the fall, hosted by Steph Curry. And I talked a little bit to ron Kreutzchech about this, but it didn't make the story podcast. But it sounds like it's basically a done deal. Steph Curry is involved, and it will be an event, and there are a couple of things that are really cool about that. One is that fall is the time
to be in San francs Cisco. Right right now is not the time to be in San Francisco, though he said something about the coldest winter I ever spent is a summer in San Francisco. Except so, I wrote a dissertation chapter on Mark Twain about his time in the West Coast, and I found absolutely no evidence that he said anything of the sort. This is not something that Mark Twain said.
Very complectic, you know.
But in any case, it's in the fall. San Francisco is great. You know, it's sunny, it's like seventy degrees. It'll be beautiful. And because the tournament is going to have the involvement of Steph Curry, I think that'll give it a little bit of extra juice and it'll make it feel a little more distinct from the normal fall of events, right which which do I think kind of blur together and need something to make them stand stand out.
I really believe that that Steph Curry is one of the few people who is involved in the golf world who can make an event feel bigger than events in the fall normally feel.
I I agree. I think I believe the plan is to keep safe way too. So you know, when when players are laying out what they're going to do, all of a sudden, a week in Napa, a week in San Francisco, that is pretty appealing. I mean, right now I'm thinking about it, and I don't cover I don't go to and cover many tour events, but now I'm like, you know what, it's pretty good. Two weeks there.
Yeah, Napa is amazing, awesome.
It is such a great golf city, you know, it's it's a unique and cool golf city. As you cover, you know, pretty thoroughly in your podcast with all the other you know, the dedication to municipal golf, in public golf, and then overall golf in the city. There's so many golf courses there and so many golfers in San Francisco.
It's a rich golf culture. I think it's a unique golf culture. You know. San Francisco has long been a city where it can be difficult to be a blue collar person, and it's become more and more difficult recently. But I think golf, and this is surprising for a lot of people to hear, has for many decades been an outlet for blue collar people in San Francisco. Harding Park has been a place where, you know, the Plumbers
Union holds its annual tournament. And so the people who play golf in San Francisco tend not to be kind of your stereotype of golf, and that gives the courses a distinctive feel. I don't know if you've been to Glenn Eagles, but that's such a fun place to just b I mean, it's a fun golf course, nine hole golf course in McLaren Park, and the hang in the clubhouse at the bar is one of the most fun things that I think you can do in golf. And so, you know, the golf.
Course basically it's basically a dive bar at a ninehole course.
It's great. I mean, it's and it's got a great view too, Like it's got this amazing view and you're sitting there and people are telling stories and it's just a wonderful place. And so I think that's part of what's really valuable about San Francisco golf and what needs to be preserved and defended in that city is a certain kind of rough and tumble culture to the golf courses. These are really welcoming places. These are places where you
feel comfortable. Even after Harding Park got renovated and turned into this sort of higher class of PGA tour course, it still retains a lot of that, I think significantly through the Fleming nine, which is within the course and and and that's the place that a lot of people will just kind of play casually. But yeah, even Harding Park I believe partakes of this kind of feel of San Francisco golf, which which I believe is different from a lot of different cities. And I hope to see
it preserve. You know, San Francisco is a tough place to live now, and and I'm I'm I'm a little bit doubtful about the future of the golf courses there, but I hope people stick by them.
Yeah, it's obviously there's a cost of living issue there and housing issue.
Were my wife and I were just looking out of curiosity because we lived in San Francisco for three years and we basically got priced out of the city. We couldn't live there anymore. And that was that was more than ten years ago. We were just looking at apartments just out of curiosity, see what they what what they go for now, and you're looking at five six thousand dollars month and in a lot of places it's yeah,
it's it's tough. They've got some issues there, but yeah, the golf courses are are on great pieces of property and and I hope that they choose to save them.
Yeah, So with the golf course, I think that we're going to see a really similar setup at this year's US Open, but we're going to see completely I could probably couldn't get more opposite of green complexes at Wingfoot versus Harding Park, where where even CBS is commentating about how flat the greens are, there will be no such
remarks about about wing Foot. How do you think that will impact the power players We saw, you know, always having wedge in their hands, but not always necessarily and obviously Marco one largely thanks to his putting, but you know, probably more thanks to the fact that you love the field and driving accuracy. How do you think that's going to impact the Bryson. I mean, Bryson drove it pretty pretty dang well, but we saw him in the rough a lot. How do you think that will play out differently?
Well, I'm not sure and I'd like to actually hear your thoughts about this, because you've you've been to Wingfood and you've looked at those greens. But you'd have to assume that iron play would become really, really important, or would become at least more important than it was at
Harding Park. Which makes you think about Morikawa again. If he's winning at Harding Park, it would seem almost that wingfoot is better suited to him because there there's going to be a real premium on being in the right section of the green.
Yeah, I iron play is going to be huge. One of the things that Jeff Ogilvie always says about US Opens is the underrated US Open skill is shipping and the and pitching around the greens is that you have to have a great chipping week because you're going to miss greens and then it becomes about how you recover and get up and down and and we're going to see a lot more treacherous surrounds if you miss. That's where you know, almost always a double bogie is in
play around those greens when you miss. When you miss the greens, it's almost like, oh boy, I better hit a great shot to have even you know, just save bogie. And I think that's maybe a little bit of the difference between what we're going to see at the two is like Harding Park, if you got it around the greens, you were going to have a pretty good chance at
making par. If you're in the wrong spot at wing Foot, all of a sudden, your focus some point in some points means turns to how am I going to save bogie and avoid having to make a six foot or for bogie? You know, how am I going to make this? You know, I miss my shot? How am I going to make this an easy bogie as opposed to you know, easy.
Par Yeah, yeah, I think that's right. I think, well we'll see a lot more guys get in jail around Wayne Foot's greens. That that was something that you didn't see as much of this week, right, people were you know, there weren't a lot of like triple quadr quadruple bogies when when people missed in the wrong spots.
That's that's one thing I felt like we missed a little and we saw it obviously, like Joel Damon triple bogie at the end of Friday was you know, but that was more the case of Okay, he hit he bladed a forty five yard bunker shot, which is something that could happen. I you know, I think about what happened at Shinnikok Hills with you know, Tiger with a wedge in his hand making triple on the first first hole of the tournament. And you know, I think Speeth made an eight on ten if I remember correct.
And guys just not being able to get anywhere near the pins from certain bunkers.
Keep it even keep it on the green from certain bunkers, and I think that's what we're going to see. The other idea is when you've got a wedge but you're in the rough and you're hitting across the greens at Wingfoot, and we're going to have a video pretty soon all about the greens. But the greens at Wingfoot sit up
and then they have really big pronounced slopes. So if you're on the wrong side of into the rough on a hole hitting to short side, your ball is landing on a grade and the green say it's a five percent six percent slope, you have no chance. Versus at Harding Park, we didn't see slopes above two percent.
So I'm curious the players seem to like Harding Park a lot. You know, they said really positive things about it. They usually like PGA championship setups. There's a lot of respect for this championship gets set up. Obviously not the same as true of the US Open and the USGA and the players. What do you what do you think the players are going to think of wing Foot or does it depend on setup?
I think it's they they're going to feel sometimes. The one thing Carrie Haig said so much in the in in the interview that I did with them was fair, the idea fairy, and I think it showed in the setup it was nobody's ever going to complain about the way that that PGA was set up. It was imminently fair. I mean, so are they were complaining about the lack of sand and bunkers, I mean, which is a hazard. It just kind of gives you a lens into the
and I've been there at playing as an amateur. Now obviously not but where I you totally buy into the unfair thing. There's a fair there's an entitlement thing as a player in a tournament where you feel like everything should be fair. But at wing Foot, you definitely have the potential of a situation where people the crowd could start to think that it's unfair. And by the crowd, I mean the players and the locker room talk might push it in a certain direction of oh, can you
believe where they put the pin? Just because you know that? And I think that's the It's where I get frustrated a lot. Is like your point of the point of golf, overarching is overcoming the obstacles in front of you with the equipment you have, you know, yeah, right, And that gets lost sometimes when you get in the discussion of fair it's like, well, it was it the same for everybody? Yes, then it was fair, right, yeah?
Yeah, But it doesn't feel like it to players because from their perspective, they may have played well or hit a good shot and it didn't work out for them, And that's really disappointing in a major right, And that's hard to deal with emotionally, and so you have to deal with it somehow, right, You've got to process it somehow. And it seems like the way that at least between the players and the USGA, it's worked out that they
process it by blaming the USGA. And and you know that didn't happen as much last year at Pebble Beach because we saw the setup get a little more toward the PGA Championship end of the spectrum. So I wonder if, given the severity of Wingfoot's greens, whether they're going to be really cautious at Wingfoot.
I think, and I think you could set it up very fairly and Wingfoot's still going to do its job,
you know. I think one of the things that the USGA has to deal with at your shinnecocks and your wing foots also that doesn't get talked about is the balance with dealing with the membership side of things, where they are being welcomed into these clubs that are very closed off normally, and the idea of the members have a view of what the score should be, you know, and golf is changing so much with distance and scoring that the idea of trying to pease this, you know,
to the public silent party that is pretty much invisible the week of the championship. They're in a tough position where they have to balance both sides of the coin there a little bit, because we all know that memberships love to puff their chests out about how difficult. Their golf course is like, I can't go and play Butler without them insisting on me playing the back teas. And I'll say that I don't want to play the back sees.
That won't be fun at all, Like I'm going to get my ass kicked, and you know, sure enough, then I shoot like a seventy eight with no birdies and it's like, well, that wasn't fun at all. But it's like that that feeling of it has to be hard for the pros, which I don't even understand at the long You know.
That's that's been with us for a long time, right, that's a that's a big part of the story. At the nineteen seventy four wing Foot US Open, which was famously difficult, the members were advocating for they were happy the course, that the course was that difficult, and and I don't think that that's changed much. And what you've got at Wingfoot also is a very powerful membership too, Like the people who belong to that club are not nobody's in the world, and they can throw their weight around.
And so that's very interesting because at a place like Chambers Bay you don't have that. So it's open season on Chambers Bay.
But but or Aaron Hills or Aaron Hills, Yeah, exactly, Yeah, And I think there was there was a period too where you know, the usg didn't go back to win. They haven't been back to wing Foot or Shinnacock until two years ago for a while because of maybe said politics, you know. Yeah, yeah, so it it that should be. I'm really excited. That's probably the thing I'm looking for to most the rest of the golf season.
I don't know about you, Yeah, I mean definitely. You look at the schedule, and certainly the US Open sticks out as being being the interesting tournament that that we have left in the year. Aside from the Masters, We've got what the Windom this week and then the then the FedEx Cup playoffs and you know we kind of know what that's going to be like mm hmm.
Yeah, Olympia Fields will be somewhat interesting. But I think that'll that'll kind of get beat up by these guys.
But have they have they started the work there. They're supposed to do some work there, right, Yeah, that's that's too recent to to have come to fruition yet. Yeah.
Yeah, they don't know what course they're going to do first. And so that's but the one of the things we talked about earlier, the pacing of around so Harding Park you kind of had this mixture of of getible holes, tough holes, gettable holes, tough holes. And then you have like your your Augusta where you know, at Harding Park Matthew Wolf could have posted a great score and he might have won, right, And at Augusta you post a score,
you really have no chance of winning, right. And at Wingfoot it's you know, the last five holes, if you post a score, you're you're probably in the driver's seat, like you can't get to the clubhouse soon enough.
Out there, Yeah, there are courses where the longer you stay out there, the less of a chance you have, and courses where the shorter the time you spend out there, the more of a chance you have. Obviously, at Augusta you want to be out there late on Sunday having a shot at thirteen, fifteen and sixteen and going low. Yeah, it'll be I don't know, like the Wingfoot it'll be obviously the seventy four Open and and what was it, the chess oble be six Open. Those were wars of
attrition like we remember those well. I wonder if it's possible for that kind of championship to happen anymore. I mean, I know we've had a couple fairly recently, but it's been because the greens have been really hard and things like that. I wonder if it's possible in this era of the USGA and the US Open for there to be a five over par winning score at a place like Wingfoot.
I don't think it is.
Yeah, I don't think so either. I think that the era of that occasional change sixty eight, right, Julie might have to start doing pretty soon. But yeah, I mean I think that I think that that era is gone. The time when you have that occasional championship where the winning score is seven over or whatever, I just don't think we're going to see that anymore, unless something kind of goes wrong and and they lose the golf course, you know, to quote zj.
Or or fisted just crazy windy or something right which we put in a heavy wind would not be fun at all. So I want to talk more about the Muni aspect. You wrote a piece about the Mega Muni and uh, you know the theme of it and is TPC Hardy Parks one of the few of these where the idea of a community, a city getting behind a municipal course and renovating and pouring money into it with
hopes of a championship. And I thought this was just an interesting article topic and something that we have seen less and less, if not any of maybe one attempt here in my city of Chicago recently to get something like this off the ground. And how we've seen a shift to the the mini Muni. But as we know, trends, they go both directions all the time. They could you know,
we're going to see swings in different directions. Talk a little bit about the Mega Beauty and how it's fared across the country.
So the Mega Muni is a kind of municipal course that gets renovated or built with the intention, as you said, of hosting major championships. And you know, while they are city courses, they do charge high green fees for outsiders while giving discounted rates to locals. But the whole idea is to kind of bring money to town right when
these championships are held there. The city gets free advertising and everybody's happy about that, and the course gets some extra stature and starts to attract tourists tourists to town. Basically the golf court versus a kind of driver for the local economy, and it's also supposed to fund other things that the local government does. And so the main examples of this that I think currently exist that currently function as mega munis are TPC Harding Park, Bethpage Black,
Tory Pines, and then most recently Chambers Bay. Chambers Bay obviously is a new build, and then the other three are renovations of older courses. And so, you know, I refer to these as mega muni's because I think they're pretty distinctive and they represent their kind of own model of municipal golf course. And most of them got built or renovated in the early two thousands. Bethpage Black was
the first, right. It got renovated in the late nineties with the intention of hosting the two thousand and two US Open, And to my mind, that sort of started the trend. Right around two thousand and one, two thousand and two, two thousand and three, you saw Tory Pines
get renovated by Rhys Jones. You saw TPC Harding Park get renovated by Chris Gray and the PGA tour, and you saw the county government, Pierce County government up in Washington start to move on the Chambers Bay build and so all of these courses kind of came about in the same era. This was the late nineties early two thousands, and I think it was a result of a couple of factors. One is the rising economy obviously of the nineties,
but also the Tiger era. People just had a feeling during that early Tiger Woods era that golf was the sport of the future and that it was a really good, high potential investment to build a big golf course that would attract high green fees and championships. And so all of these courses got to renovated right around the same time.
And obviously they're still with us and they're still kind of doing their thing hosting championships, but since the recession, none of no more have been built, and so they're more and more starting to feel like relics of a bygone era of golf course development, of specifically municipal golf course development, and so I thought it was just time to kind of look at those in context and consider, you know, how much are we really rooting for these
golf courses. Would we rather see municipal governments kind of take on smaller golf projects or do we want to keep seeing them kind of shoot for the stars and build a golf course that has the potential to bring in a lot of revenue. And I should say that you know, Bethpage, Black and Tory Pines do pretty well. Oh yeah, I mean they fund a lot of things, and for those local governments TPC. Harding Park hasn't done as well as people thought, but it does fine. You know, it's super busy.
And I'm guessing it's going to do great after this. I think part of that so too. I mean, I mean part of the huge appeal of these championships is seeing people getting a commercial on TV like you referred to for the city and also the golf course. And then you know the years following where people are going to be like, well, I want to go play where
they played that PGA. And I think that is a huge part that Harding Park, like beth Page was lucky they got that championship right after, yes, And I think it was all.
Part of the plan, right, I mean that it was the USGA really drove that it started in about nineteen ninety five, and yeah, it happened quickly, but it was you know, the fact that David Faye, that the executive director of the USGA at the time, wanted to take a championship to Bethpage Black is really what drove that.
And I think that's the key is where where these have really thrived has been with the major championship imminently in the future upon finish, and that to me is where I think about it today is how these could continue and you could see maybe new places pop up Munie's.
Kevin Clark had a great Kevin Clark Ringer employee. He's got a great podcast, NFL Ringer Show, but he's an avid golfer, avid golf fan, and he tweeted, I think the PGA Championship, if it wants a real identity, should be the major that plays on great and interesting public muni courses every year. Golf should be fun and accessible, which I think this does have a larger appeal whether or not. You know, I'm not a fan architecturally of Harding Park, but I am a fan of the of
championships going to Munie's. And I think where Beth Page and Tory have succeeded so much is because right when that work is done, had a championship in the next year or two. And where maybe Harding Park struggled more is that the championship didn't come right away.
Yes, yeah, this is the first major that they've held, even though obviously the renovation happened almost twenty years ago. So yeah, I mean, I think you're right that the future of TPC Harding Park is bright. You know, it's going to have a regular tournament there. It's going to be in the public eye pretty often, and maybe that'll drive more and more people to want to go play there. I think, certainly after this week this week, there are a lot of more people who are going to be
interested in playing Harding Park. I'm not sure it's been on people's radar in making a golf visit to the Bay Area that Harding Park is a must play, but maybe maybe this week kind of pushed it to must play status because of how well it was received generally, And so there's a lot of hope there. What I need to see, though, what I'd really like to see out of the Megamuni model is an ability to fund
an entire city's golf system. So San Francisco does have a golf fund, but it's a second priority for TPC Harding Park behind paying back the money that it took to get renovated. And I'm not sure they've really gotten to a point where they can start building that golf fund. And for that reason, you've seen San Francisco very hesitant to renovate courses like Lincoln Park, Glen Eagles, Sharp Park down in Pacifica, which San Francisco owns and has a
great history. Those courses have continued to decline in terms of their condition, just the general shape of the facility. They haven't gotten money injected into them since the renovation of Harding Park, and I think that that was part of the hope of the movement to renovate Harding Park in the first place, was this will be a great thing for San Francisco golf in general. So maybe that'll
happen in the future. Maybe this week has made that more possible, But I would really like to see these Megaminis actually do that thing where they're able to lift up all of the golf courses that the city owns around them. I'd love to see Tory Pines eventually lift up Balboa Park, which frankly is the better golf course, but it doesn't have that tournament held on it, and so it hasn't gotten as much attention. But Balboa Park, city owned course in San Diego, awesome place, but it
needs some attention. It needs a little bit of money put into it that they're not going to spend on the clubhouse that they're going to spend on the golf course to restore it to that wonderful design that it had in the nineteen twenties. I'd love to see that happen. But even though Tory Pines makes a lot of money, that just hasn't happened yet. And I'm not sure of the reasons exactly. It may just be the complexities of
city government. It may be because Tory Pines has continued to need renovations, right, they had to go back and undo or redo what they did in the first place.
Lost some money for not a lot of work.
I know that much because a ton and so you just have to wonder, when is this model going to really work in the way that people hoped it would, And I still hope it does. I think it's a great idea, you know, I want cities to have these big golf courses that attract a lot of attention and a lot of cash that they're able to use in other ways to lift the city up and improve the
services that the local government provides to people. But it just hasn't quite worked that way yet, and I hope it does, and I think once it does that you'll see more cities trying it.
The other thing with obviously in Chicago Marivi, which is a nine hole er right on the lake, and the driving range, Diversity Driving Range, which has got to be one of the best settings for a driving range in the in the world, but it's also at the same hand one of the worst driving ranges in the world because of just the ball. It's just a it's just a brutal experience going down there. But that driving range in the golf course Marivits they float all of the
other golf courses. They cover up the losses at every other golf course. And then and I know in La the same is for Rancho Park and Rancho Park's driving range, where they basically cover the the losses of the rest of the golf courses that the that LA operates. And it's it's interesting that those two in those two cases, the Rundown golf Course that is, you know, great location, Rancho Park unbelievable, Bones could be a great golf course with with some money, it is a great golf course
to go play. Chicago's the driving ranges are such and maybe that's a way is focusing in on also practice facilities with these mega munis to generate revenue.
Yeah, yeah, you've got to look at creative ways to use the space.
You know, you.
It's not a mega muni if it doesn't have eighteen holes. It's not a mega muni if it's not a championship layout, which means that you need to devote a certain amount of room to the golf course. But at a place like Jackson Park and South Shore, where there has been a proposal to turn that into a championship facility for several years now, but that just hasn't found the support
or funding that it needs. I think that that that whole idea, you know, you could you could quibble with some of the details of it, but the idea as a whole, where you're taking basically twenty seven holes of golf turning it into an eighteen hole championship course and then developing a practice facility and a number of other drivers of revenue at the golf course place around the
championship layout itself. I think that that's got to be the way to go, because, you know, it just seems like for municipal golf courses specifically, that affordable rounds of golf for local people is not the way that you're you're going to make money. It's just not you know, it's a great service for the government to provide, you know, I don't want to knock that part of it. I think we have to remember that these are public facilities that the government is providing to the people. That's a
great thing. But yeah, the mega muni model relies on the notion that these courses have a high potential to generate revenue, and yeah, you need to look at other ways to do that than just green fees.
Well, and what we've seen with like winter Park, the mini muni has generated revenue profits for a city of winter Park, where going the complete opposite direction of the idea of the mega muni, it has has generated money where it's affordable, it's fun, it's welcoming to beginners. It's a it's not an easy course for you know, expert players by any means, but it's not challenging for beginners.
Has been and creating a welcoming atmosphere, which that's I think one of the issues with the Megamuny is it's not it never is going to be a welcoming atmosphere to a beginning player, and I think that's one of the pitfalls of it, is that you're you know, and I wonder if there's a way that there could be the Megamuni mini Muni model blended together in any way.
And I think Harding Park more or less does that with the Fleming Nine. The Fleming nine is a mini Muni. Now. I think it needs to be updated architect I think it could be more fun to play, you know, if it's a course, it's a nine hole course that's supposed to be for kids and for older people, you know, why not make it a little bit more fun. I mean,
it is fun. It's a cool little golf course. But you know, while Harding Park has gotten some attention and him has been kind of polished up, the Fleming Nine has has sort of remained more or less the same so Harding Park does that. That said, there are people who used to play at Harding Park before the renovation who are still mad about the fact that it was turned into this golf facility that charges a bit a
higher green fee, even for locals that host championships. They wanted their old golf course.
That's what I kind of think about, is like Harding Park kind of lost its soul when it went mega because that you know, at a even you know, sixty dollars is not expensive for golf, but it's not cheap.
Mm hmm. That's right. It's not where you're going to play every single weekend or or multiple times a week, like I think a lot of the Harding Park regulars were in the nineties leading up to the renovation. But you know, that said, in San Francisco, it's a particular situation because there are plenty of other city golf courses within a short distance, including inside the routing of Harding Park itself, where you can go to play a cheaper,
more casual round of golf. But if a city has fewer golf courses, if it's looking to megafy one of its very few golf courses, then these questions I think become a lot more urgent and a lot more difficult to answer, and as you're saying, the minimuni and this is why I said in my article, I think that's the real future of municipal golf and that even after the success of Winter Park, even after the success of Goat Hill Park and places like that, that it's still
not quite catching on the way I'd like to see. And that might be be becase because people are imagining that the only way to renovate a municipal golf course truly is to go the Beth Page Black PPC, Harding Park Chambers Bay direction. But there are so many other options, and we're starting to see this. You know, we've got the Reversible Course in Atlanta, the Bobby Jones Golf Course, We've got you know, rock Wind, community links, Andy Staples's
community links model. It seems to be appealing to a lot of people. These are creative, smaller, less expensive ways of creating a great municipal golf experience without attaching to the PGA Tour or the USGA or trying to attract championships. But man, I just wish we saw more of it.
I wish it were happening at a at a higher pace, And yeah, I mean, maybe I'm just impatient about it and unrealistic, but I just you know, there there are so many options out there for making municipal golf courses great places to be that don't involve, you know, gunning for a US Open.
Yeah. The So this is where I kind of quibble and my kind of opinion on the Chicago project falls is that I think that became entirely too big of an ask. And one of the aspects of that is they could have started small. And you know, they had the perfect opportunity with Sydney Merovitz the nine holer, which is it got its lakefront property. I mean it as
it is now is packed. It's a jam pack golf course, but that has the opportunity to be one of the best nine hole golf courses in the world because of its setting. I mean I used to play there early in the morning before I'd go to work. I'd play at five in the morning and I'd be done at six fifteen, six thirty and watching the sun come up over the lake and playing golf along Lake Michigan and then hitting t shots with high rise apartment complexes as
your backdrop. It's one of the neatest experiences and it has this opportunity where you could and it could have been done for fractions of the money. Obviously, the big hurdle that that Jackson Park and any megamuni project is gonna run into is funding, and that's the issue that Harding Park's having is paying back the funding, you know, And where I almost think there is a potential way of the mini muni allowing the megamuni to happen with
these big city golf systems where pouring. If you put two million dollars in higher a talented young architect at Sydney Marovitz, you're going to get an unbelievable golf course there. And then from there, all of a sudden you've built up the trust and then that megamuni becomes more of a realistic opportunity.
Yeah you said it, I mean trust, community trust. That's such a huge deal, and every project builds it differently. In San Francisco, that was a huge part of the process. Sandy Tatum and the group that he was leading managed to garner the trust of the community and the buy in of the community enough to make it happen now. There are still people who objected to it, for sure, but increasingly toward the end of the project, those voices
became more and more marginalized. Jackson Park, the way that they went about introducing that project to the community was all wrong.
You know.
It was completely top down. People who lived in that area were looking around and saying, I haven't heard anything about this. Who was asking me about this? Completely the wrong way to go about it. Of course they're going to resist it if you're coming in and saying we're going to blow this place up and turn it into something completely different. And you know, here we are a bunch of rich, well connected people and you're just going to be grateful for it. No, that's bs You've got
to go about it completely differently. And I think it's a great idea to start small, especially in this day and age, when you know golf it's much different than twenty years ago that the idea of golf and the public consciousness right now, you need to help people understand that golf is may not be what they think it is.
And that it can be intertwined with the community.
Yes, exactly, that places like Winter Park exist and are very woven into the community in an unobtrusive way that you know, almost everybody is happy with. Now there are people who even objected to winter Park. There's always going to be conflict. But yeah, I think starting small and showing what a golf course can be and how it can improve a community, and how it can be open and accessible to a community that's huge, and then it
makes it a lot more possible. And that this is the argument essentially, that you're making a lot more possible that you can make big moves right and get that mega UNI. But yeah, I mean, I don't know. It's uh, it's hard either way. To get the funding, even to get a little bit of funding for a small project. That's hard to you know.
And so I always think back to when I was in sales. I had a boss who told me, you know, here, Andy, one of the things you got to remember when you're selling somebody is if I came to your house and asked you to put a political sign in your house, and this is not going to be a political statement in any way. We're steering clear of that. It's just
about the science here. But if I come, as you've reassured me, thank you, and and I'm comfortable now if I come ask you to put a small, you know, eight by ten inch sign in your yard, versus if I come and ask you to put a you know, a four foot by four foot sign, You're way more likely to put the eight by ten inch sign in
your yard then right off the bat. But if I get that eight eight inch by ten foote in your yard and then I come back in you know, six weeks or whatever, four weeks and I say, hey, you know I got some bigger signs. Do you mind if I put this bigger sign, The chances of the person saying yes to the bigger sign are exponentially more likely
now that they've had the small sign in there. And I think the same thing goes for golf within these local government is just being able to start small and if if it's a if it's a beauty, that's a little worse, worse for the wear that hasn't has seen
better days. Even if you get them to do a small project that really significantly upgrades the golf course and does it at a small capital expenditure, is the way to get that bigger, bigger spend because you've shown, hey, we can improve this and then the community and the bottom line sees a benefit from it.
Yeah, I agree, and we've seen that a p coach succeed usually in smaller towns.
You know.
I can't think of a big city that has gone about it in this way because big cities are just you can't do anything ever. But but yeah, that seems very reasonable. The issue is that it's just it's almost like it's easier to do the huge project because it attracts people in their money, whereas if you talk about something small, it's not going to appeal as much to the people with the money. You just kind of have to do those smaller things on your own. It has to be your own initiative.
You know.
I'm starting to get this to know. The superintendent done in Eugene, Oregon at Laurelwood Golf Course, and he's been there for almost for ten years, maybe even up to fifteen years now, and he's just been making these gradual improvements to the course and he's really turned that place around.
But it's been so hard, and that's a nine hole course, and the things that he's been doing have been you know, minor, very minor compared to the mega muni renovations that we were talking about earlier, and it's been just all his energy and initiative and talent, all of that has been necessary to make even the smallest things happen. And so it's just it's just hard.
And uh yeah, here's what other one other thing I wanted to touch on briefly with Hardig Park. So they adjusted and narrowed their faaraway lines for this championship. What do you think the chances of those faraway lines ever getting pushed back out to their original size again are.
I'd say that's pretty small, right, don't you think isn't that messed up? Yeah? Totally? But but it's now the PGA Championship Course, right, that's the PGA Championship Course, So why would they why would they change it? People want to come and play the PGA Championship Course. Now they come and they see wider fairways, and that might you disappointing. I mean that that's said. You know, Pebble Beach consistently takes us fair ways in and puts them back out
after the US Open comes to town. But that's Pebble Beach, you know, It's it's uh, it's not a municipal golf course. So yeah, no that I agree, that's a that's a bummer. What do you think they're going to do about the rough? The rough has got to be gonna going to go lower, right, they're gonna.
I'll tell what. I played it in March. It was not high, but it was still just so punishing.
It's because that grass, you know, it's just yeah, it's gnarly.
It's just was not not an enjoyable experience. I was not driving the ball well, and and I was just in the in the rough all day. And you know that you saw the best players in the world. The rough wasn't necessarily that long, but they were hitting shots that were just incredibly horrible because of you know, how thick it is and how.
But of course that course is unbelievably hard for an average golfer, and it raises the whole subject of whether it's possible for one of these courses to truly be enjoyable for the average golfer. And this is where we need to shout out Chambers Bay, which I think pulls this off really well. You know, that's a that's a fun golf course, but it obviously was plenty hard for
the players in the in the twenty fifteen US Open. Now, the reason that it was hard then was was that it was it was firm, obviously, and the players didn't like that. And if the championship went back, maybe it wouldn't be the same way. But you know, the way that it goes about being challenging for good players but accessible for less skilled players, I think is really admirable and presents a better model frankly than Harding Park and Tory Pines.
Yeah, I think that's one of my big complaints about. You know, what happens when the Mega Muni comes is then the golf court, the key golf course characteristic tends to you know, center around difficulty, and and you know when they that happens, then bad architectural decisions are made. And you know, for the every ten years it has the major Championship, every twenty years it has the Major Championship, there's there's fifty two weeks for those twenty two or
twenty years. One week, you know, I can't do the mathem. I had a thousand weeks of pain and suffering for the regular players versus the one week where it stands up to the best players in the world, or it doesn't, because that's the other thing is sometimes it just doesn't even stand up to them.
Right, Oh, it was a par seventy this week, so we should always remember that too when we look at the final sort of what was it minus thirteen number, that this was a par seventy golf course. But yeah, I mean, you know, and maybe that's fine. You know, maybe people maybe people really want to come and get abused at the PGA Championship venue. Maybe they want the same from the Tory Pine South Course.
Well then they built the North course the same way. That's the that's that's the big blunder on San Diegos.
I mean, it's a little wider and the greens are a little but no, you're you're right, and and and Balboa Park also go back there again. That the whole idea is okay, So if you're going to set up a championship course for one of your courses, the other courses in the city should be different. And that's and that's what I'm looking for out of San Francisco. You know, make put a little bit of money into Lincoln Parker or Glenn Eagles and make those courses what they should be.
And uh and if you can do that, then great, you know, make the fairways at Harding Park even narrower, make the rough even higher, you know, whatever you have to do. If you're going. If that enables you to attract enough money to fix up your other golf courses, then then awesome. I'm fine with it. But it doesn't seem like that's quite happening yet. M hmm. Yeah.
So the Mega Beauty, Well, see what happens next. I'm sure there's going to be a proposed project pop up one of these days somewhere.
I mean, Memorial Memorial Park is the closest thing that has happened in recent years. That's that's kind of a megamini. But I don't think they're looking for a major championship.
That's an interesting one too in the architectural sense. They didn't hire the open doctor. They hired the guy that's known for building the most playable golf courses, right.
Tom Duck. Yeah, so uh huh yeah, well it, I mean, what's that, what's that tournament going to be?
Like?
I don't really know, you know, we've uh, the Trinity Forest experience has made me a little bit gun shy about best practices of current architecture as it matches up with the PGA tour. So, you know, I hope Memorial Park works out. And it certainly seems like Doak was intentional about reaching out to play and asking them what they thought, you know, involving Brooks, Kopkin and all that kind of stuff, and so maybe maybe it'll work out
a little better. But I think that's going to be an important moment for the kind of nexus between high level tournament golf and current golf course design. You know that that could be a moment where we either go one direction or another. If it works out brilliantly, if they if they all love the course, then maybe we'll get a few more like it. If they hate it and it's a disaster, then I'm afraid about what's going to happen next.
I know that, you know, Tom's talked extensively on the podcast about you know, the slopes and the greens, and they're being handcuffed there. So I think what we'll see is probably a low score and you know, a golf course that's Trinity Force without as much as not you know, necessarily to stereotype it, but Trinity Forest ask from tee to green, but then on the green very very.
Tame. Yeah, well I'll take it still.
Yeah, you know, it's better than the TPC circuit, that's right. So all right, Garrett, any party thoughts, No.
I mean, what a what a great week of golf. And I'm definitely looking forward to the US Open.
Yeah, yeah, awesome week of golf. And it's cool to seek golf on a municipal golf course.
Absolutely, and it's and it's so cool to see Colin Morikawa when there, and and you know, the whole story is is just great. You know, obviously it got driven into the ground by the telecasts, but the fact that he is he is familiar with the era area, has has roots in the area, and uh and is emerging just now as a superstar at this municipal course. Fantastic stuff.
And I think that we'll definitely remember this one. This will be this will be a major kind of point in the history of you know, this part of the tournament golf's history, and so yeah, we're just processing it now.