Welcome back to another edition of the Frida Egg Podcast. Today's episode is with Jeff Shackleford. So we are continuing our series on golf course architects after many people stated that they loved the podcast with Wayne Morrison recently on William Flynn, so we figured who better to talk about George Thomas than Jeff Shackleford. Jeff has written the club History for Riviera as well as The Captain, a profile book on George Thomas, the man himself, the man, the architecture,
his courses. Obviously. Another thing on George Thomas you can look into is his book Golf Architecture in America, which a reprint is available on Amazon for fourteen bucks. So if you want to dive into George Thomas more, that's available. But this is a riveting chat with Jeff Shackleford, obviously the owner of Jeff Shackleford dot com. He also has a substack newsletter called The Quadrilateral that is fifty bucks
a year that I subscribe to. I really enjoy it, recommend that and without further ado, here is Jeff Shackelford. 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 fried egg Friday Egg, the dreaded Frida Egg, Frida Egg, fridagg Brian egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the course.
Jeff, you are the foremost living George Thomas expert. In my opinion, You've written an entire novel, The Captain. I'm George Tom I'd love to hear how you first got interested in George Thomas.
Well, I was very lucky Andy that my dad joined Riviera when I was sixteen years old and kind of an aspiring player at the time. And he also had a copy of Golf Architecture in America, And so the combination of kind of getting to look at it. And that was when, by the way, when when copies of the book were a big deal and very scarce. Now there's reprints and it's easier to get your hands on.
But and it's such an incredible book. So it was it was as somebody who had kind of doodled golf holes and and had a young mind, and in that book, more than any of the great books, has just got so much in it visually, and so many little tantalizing things once you start playing some of his courses, like well, wait, what was this? What on earth is that photo of where's that course now? And so I was kind of
in that mindset as a teenager. And then again when I was sixteen, he joined Riviera, and so then I got to play Riviera and that was a crazy time there. It was a very busy place, so it was a miracle to get out before three o'clock. It was like a muni. But I grew to love the course, even
in it's sort of not well aged state. And then as I played in college and got more into architecture, and they had the Greens project there in ninety three and ninety four, and I got to know Ben Crenshaw and Dave Excellent and Dan Procter were doing a lot of the shaping on site. And one thing led to another, and I just started looking for old photos. Went to the just kind of as my game was starting to stink.
I had a bad risk, I hit too many balls, never took enough days off, and I started hunting for photos because they started this project and there were a lot of questions we had. There were things that Ben new and figured out, and then I went found photos and really just got more and more into that, and that's what kind of led to me pitching a book
to the ownership after college on the history Riviera. And then I followed that up pretty quickly at age twenty four with a self published book, The Captain, and it was printed quite stunningly by a member just did a beautiful job, and it was bound and a nice way. I'm very proud of all that. The writing makes me cringe a little bit, but I'm very proud of the book still. And I used to be able to draw too. I was kind of excited when I could. My hand
was steady or something. But it was just labor of love kind of thing. And and uh, there were just so many questions to try to answer about the man, not only his golf architecture, but his his unbelievable.
Life with the with Riviera. You joined your sixty, you'd played golf before, obviously you were you know, you played college golf, so you at this point you're a you know, aspiring golfer. As you said, Yeah, what did you notice that was different about Riviera than the other courses that you had grown up playing?
Oh, well, it's just the scale of it. Was so grand. And and again even with more trees than and different things that that were clearly kind of not quite right. I mean, there were really a lot of trees. Eucalyptus were really dense, not trimmed. I mean it was it was a there were a lot of tight drives in but uh, the bunkers of course, even sort of in that state, were beautiful. And you know, the the ultimate thing about Riviera that got me was it's just it
was just so much fun to play every day. You never got tired of it. No hole ever got boring, even the holes that look you know, if you looked at them on Google Earth today or or then, which it didn't exist, but if you looked at them from
afar as, some holes didn't look that captivating. Other holes obviously did, like sixteen and the part threes, all of them really and and there just so were so many subtleties and different elements, even with cocuya, which also messes up a lot of the great components of that design, the approaches in particular that are just beautifully done. And so it was just that kind of that that interest in playing it every day, you just never get tired of it.
I didn't want to. I didn't This is jumping way ahead.
Rat hole, We're going to go down.
But why is it cocuya? Does it need to be cocula? Could it be grassed differently? Yeah, to get those approaches back.
Yeah. To answer the last question first, yes, I do think it's kind of sad that, you know, a lot of people have thrown that idea out before, of why can't you have bermuda collars and approaches, kind of like Tory Pines did that when when Reese Jones redid it, one of the things they did was kept the kakua.
How rustic is.
Yeah, yeah, it's bent, and uh, we'd want to have a little more of the bent in the fairways. And originally it was rye fairways. Then the the bent approaches and by the way, the bent approaches are unbelievably healthy on the native soil, whereas the California greens are. They're fine, but they're not as healthy. It tells you a little bit about you know, when you have good native soil, you should use it. And Rustic had it on all but one green site, so but Riviera it would be
really nice to have that. And I know the USGA threw it out when Tim Morgan was there, and some other people have pitched that idea, and it just never happened because in the summertime it's just a It really kills the the the allure of having hard, firm, hard greens, because if you landed three feet short of some of those greens or three yards short again in the summer,
it just stops. Now they've done a lot since to get the kukua a little tighter, and they use primo and it's still though, is not you don't run the ball up, but in the winter time you can at least see balls and that a running ball will move, and that's that's nice because there's just some of the most beautiful approaches. The other thing that kind of got screwed with over time is every green has like a little raw style ridge in front, and that that wasn't Thomas.
Thomas had very clean approach. He and Bell built their approaches right into the green. But years of top dressing built these little rims or or up slopes or false fronts or whatever you want column and they're awful because I mean, I remember as a kid when you know you're hitting a forewood into some of these holes that are really long, like eighteen, You hit the most beautiful
shot and it just hits that little upslope. Sometimes they would come back at you and you're like, oh God, that was such a good shot and a stupid coculea ruins it. So coculea was brought there for one of two reasons. Don't really know which one is. After all these years, I still don't know the actual reason, but either one of them works either. For the polo fields that were next door to the first fairway, is one version that it was a grass sought to be tougher
to handle the polo. I think that's a less likely reason. The more likely is that after the big flood that went through the course in thirty eight, Willie Hunter the pro was kind of charged with trying to reinforce the seventh and eighth holes and prevent them from from washing out and having more damage. They were damaged in that flo and they use kukuya to stabilize the banks and be a tougher grass, And I think that's the more likely story. And then it's spread through the course and
spread through all of West la. If you ever round here, you can look at a parking sign and the grass actually grows up through the railing and comes out the top. So it's it's just a noxious, brutal weed. And I don't think there's any way you could get it off the property now, I mean it would take I mean it's so that the root structure is incredible. It just keeps coming back. But I do think you could, and it makes a great fairway grass. And they've learned to
manage it, by the way. You know, when I was younger and playing there, they'd scalped and it was so puffy. I mean, you would be exhausted after eighteen holes, just because like walking on a sponge. Now it's it's managed better. I wouldn't lick your ball or anything out there. Just
premo is probably not a great thing to ingest. But I would say that that ultimately, if you could get the approaches regrasped, smooth out that transition to the front of the green, and it would be it would just make the course so much better, and it would allow you to really have those greens nice and firm and still let somebody land a ball short for those front pins.
So let's talk a little bit about George Thomas. He said, what an amazing person in life he led. Tell us a little bit about George Thomas. You know, his upbringing and then his eventual move out to California.
Well, he made his living the old fashioned way. He was the executor of the family estate. But you know, the beautiful thing about George Thomas is that, you know, he only lived fifty nine years. And yeah, he was born into money and never really had to work. But boy did he do a lot in his fifty nine years. From serving our country and uh to experimenting with roses was one of his obsessions. Golf architecture, we know, flyfish, shoating, yachting.
He had a nice yacht. Dogs. He was into tobri I have a trophy up here somewhere in my collection that his grandson gave me. Uh uh, English shutters I believe were his his dog of choice that he showed. Now. I don't know if he was out in the ring, you know, I don't. I don't actually know that part. But he had a he had an interest in dogs, he got. He just was a busy guy. He really did a lot, and.
He wrote a lot too.
He did. He wrote two books on Roses one on fly fishing and of course golf architecture in America, and multiple articles for various publications, and very inter goal in you know, the creation of Pine Valley. A founding member, a friend of Dry George Crump was out there quite a bit. You know. One of my real regrets is there was a little blurb and I cannot find it.
When I went back to the USGA after I had done the Captain and went through the library, I found some things that answered some questions that I could not answer in the book. And one of those though, was a blurb that I I know, I'm not hallucinating, but it made clear that he was coming back to help William Flynn with the alternate green on number nine, and just drives me nuts that I don't don't have that
little blurb that he made the trip back. So he was very devoted to that place, and he mentioned George Crump and his his book and obviously tilling Hast and Ross. He had a lot of experience. The one question I've never been able to answer is during and I speculated on in the book is when he was in World
War One. He must have there must have been a way he saw the great links because he refers to some of them, and he clearly was inspired by elements of golf there, but he never really wrote anything about any trips, in particular the way Tilling has did about going to visit Tom Morris and took photos of him and all that stuff. And so I don't think he got all this through a w. Tilly ass. I think he had to have gotten some of it through experience.
So he was really if you look at the golden age of American golf was you had kind of McDonald leads Fowler, and then you had also Ross doing early work in the nineteen tents. Obviously he had his work at Marion, So he was more if you would, you'd kind of classify him as almost like the second generation of the first generation of American golf architect in a way where he had the benefit of having people that somewhat mentored him.
Correct. Yeah, and he made that very clear in his own writings.
Yeah, and who were those people, well.
He Tilling, Hast and Ross he singled out as having been huge parts of his life. Crump, Hugh Wilson, the whole Philadelphia gang there were really vital to his education. And then he attempted and built the golf course on the family estate at White Marsh, which still exists today. So it was a combination of all those people. I'm sure William Flynn was another person that was vital to his education at the time.
With Pine Valley that was you know of course that you know, there are shades of all different types of all different architects in there. You know, obviously like health half acre is a tilling half feature or believed to be what what would you say are the things that that screamed George Thomas at Pine Valley other than the ninth graden You know.
I never really thought of it that way. I can't. I can't say there's anything that I would I would attribute to him. It's just hard to tell, you know, when you have you look at Pine Valley and you look at Colt drawings, and you you know, some things are maybe attributed to Crump that that weren't his. It's
it's just it's hard to say. For me, honestly, I would I would certainly look at the twelfth hole is the one hole that I've always wondered how much that influenced Thomas or how much Thomas influenced that because it has some shades of the tenth or Riviera, sort of sort of almost playing away and taking the longer path, uh for the approach shot into the better angle into the green, which is is a I think the most fascinating thing he did with with the tenth of Riviera,
and with that more people don't like to try and do, which is which is create a hole where there's obviously the instinct to take the short route, but if you actually take the longer path, which is so against anybody's instinct as a golfer, uh, but you get this better angle. We tried to do it on the on the twelfth at rust A Canyon and just just a total ripoff of that concept from from Thomas and and a little
bit of Pine Valley. Although I don't I don't really know if it works on twelve at Pine Valley because I've I've hit it over to the right. I don't. I it's I haven't seen it since Fazzio uh took a dump on it. But I can't imagine it's looking too great these days from every what everybody says. But uh, but I love that concept that because it just it's just not what anybody, especially now with carry distances, anybody wants to do you It's like, why would I make
the hole longer to get a better angle? And it just it's something that especially good players just just loath doing, even when they've seen it play out in a way that you know that, yeah, if you take if you're gonna play the whole ten times and you're gonna you're gonna your average score is going to be better, and you're gonna take out double bogie and you're gonna take out and maybe you're gonna make a few, you know,
fewer birdies or no eagle. But over the over the long haul, playing safe, playing the longer way in uh, is the better way to do it. It's just still fascinating that that if the hole is done right, when when the golfer just just resists that and uh, that that that he got from probably from Pine Valley and tried to carry Riviera is to me really really need and something not enough. The architects explore with especially with short part fours.
Well the idea too. You know, it's an architecture that reveals your reveals itself after multiple plays, that counterintuitive nature of it. The first time you play it, everybody's going to hit it up that can hit it is going to hit it up into the spot that the architect wants you to really hit it and realize this is the best spot to be. And it could take a long time to figure out, Wait, I should play way left. And obviously the strategy for tour professionals that Riviera has
changed drastically because of the immense carry distance. And I just want to clarify that before any any of our friends come at us.
Yeah, and that's very recent, by the way too. I mean, and that's why I've always I wish the whole would be lengthened fifteen twenty yards, so I just.
They could put it back on the on the roof of the clubhouse.
Well, I wouldn't go quite that far. I just go there's a nice little pocket on the other side of the Gargantua.
County up there too.
They well they might well know. I wouldn't be surprised. Uh, they have cheat off. The club used to have a green Monster tournament and they did create a tea up on the on the deck of the clubhouse. They actually built a platform and and and put a mat down. It was pretty wild, and uh, I'm not sure liability wise, is the smartest thing to do, but it was. It was pretty cool.
So he's he's in Philly, he's he builds Marion, which was up in Massachusetts. He then goes to World War One, and then as I understand it correctly, he builds White Marsh Valley after that, right, I.
Don't remember the exact year, but because that's correct, and then also Spring Lake in New Jersey.
M and then what prompts him to move to California.
Well, according to him, I mean, he was pretty bang up. He crashed three times, he was lucky to survive.
He was a pilot, right, Yeah, he was a.
Pilot, crashed three crashes, he did, and uh, there's there's that that he he was his famous quote as he was damn lucky to survive as more of a miracle of something like that to Zane Gray, the famous author who was his buddy out at the out of Catalina flight of deep sea fishing, and uh, he was clearly never quite the same from that. He had health problems and he died at fifty nine. And there were a lot of references to various times even when he was
out here. You know, he never got to Stamford, which he did with Billy Bell and and because of his health, and and he never really quite got the south course at La Country Club going because of his health. And he did plans which are all gone, of course we never saw. I never know. They're in the dump somewhere. But he wanted to move west in search of better rose growing conditions and probably just better weather to kind
of enjoy. And he was banged up, but the roses were the primary reason, according to him and all sources that he came here in search of better conditions for hybridizing roses, which was a huge passion of his.
So it would you say he was a avid rose gardener, I feel like that might be under selling it. He was one of the best rose gardeners in the entire world. Correct.
Well, it turned out that, yeah, one of the roses that he created wasn't a very attractive rose, but it ended up ended up doctor Hughey, who was sort of
his mentor. He named it after It's it's like a dark red not it's just not a very attractive rose, but the rootstock of it kind of the And I apologize to any rosaria and listening to this because I still don't understand this, but it essentially is the core DNA of the plant that was used to as the basis for hybridizing a large majority of the roses by one of the main makers. And so because it contained elements that made the rose, did did different things for
different roses but made them hardy. So it was kind of accidental, but it ended up being one of the most important roses ever created. And then yes, he hybridized multiple others. In Is he had this incredible estate which has now been subdivided. It appears to me I haven't been up there, but I did go there one day.
I just walked into the backyard, which I can't believe I did in hindsight, but where you could still see the remnants of this which are the photos are in the captain of this incredible sort of layered tiered garden he had where he did all this. And I have some film that the family had that's really cool. It's on YouTube somewhere. I've posted it, uh, and it shows him walking around the garden, amazing garden and UH, and that's where he did all of his experimentation work and
creation of multiple roses that went to the market. Very few are available now, but you can still get people to make cuttings and things. LA Country Club just planted some what i'd call I guess I'm sure there's a rose term, but but children of his roses, you know, where somebody created a rose taking Captain Thomas. Well you know, well it's not even looks, it's just sometimes some of them are you know, they have defects whatever they are. Every rose has are not every but most roses have
now come on. Now, I don't mock.
To play that. I couldn't. I couldn't.
You can go there, but uh, you know, like in his time he was trying to create a better rose and and taking different ones, and now people have taken some of his and yeah, one of them is called Golden Showers that's created from Captain Thomas, and another one that that is still available. I don't think the name has aged very well, unfortunately because of some recent events. But so there are still some that you that are
made from his roses. There were a couple of very famous roses that are sort of up in the air as to whether he was involved in them. So, yeah, it was he had an amazing career on that front, and then he when he passed, everything was left to the American Rose Society. But there were some some issues there and some tension with with I think his wife and family, and there were some roses named after women. I don't know who they were, and I have a feeling the rose Garden was kind of destroyed in a
in a sort of a sad way. So I've never really gotten that full story, but it I never since It was a kind of a it was an odd ending to his rose career after he passed.
So he moved to California for roses. He's an accomplished player in the Northeast in Philadelphia, He's built some golf courses. How does he get into the golf scene in Los Angeles?
Well?
Joined What was the golf scene like? What was like the golf secene like when he got there, Well.
It was emerging. There were interesting people around, like Norman macbeth who did Wiltshire, And there were these characters like the founders of La Country Club, Ed Tufts and Joseph Sartorre who were trying to grow the game and build out and there were different people wanting to create clubs, and so it was burgeoning, I guess would be the word.
And then during the twenties it really took off and we had some amazing things created around here, and a lot of them obviously left us during the depression years, but an incredible number of courses and wild locations, and
there's photo of all sorts of interesting holes. And so when he got here, he joined LA Country Club, and being a member of Pine Valley and already kind of the the story of Pine Valley being known, he was asked to supervise the carrying out of Herbert Fowler's plans for renovating the two courses at Los Angeles Country Club.
And Herbert Fowler wasn't here much, and so he really took that job on and oversaw those those courses and the creation of them, and they were very much in the style of Fallor in terms of the bunkering, a little more grass faced, and they were there were there were parts that were really fascinating, and there were parts that were frankly kind of aggressive in the way that because it's a very severe property, and they took on
some weird parts of the property. So that was his that was the beginning of his career here, and then in a couple of years later he did the two courses at Griffith Park. They ran out of money. He funded the creation are the completion of the work, and they gave him a pass. There's some great photos of the opening day that I that I have photocopies of, and I think there's some in the No, I don't think those are in the Captain. I think I got
those after the book was done. I can't even remember now anyway, I'm looking here, But big opening day, the whole thing. They gave him the essentially the version of key to the city. They gave him a golf pass for life, which was really cool, and and so that was that was sort of the next They were called the La Municipal courses. Now it's Griffith Park and the Harding and Wilson courses, and so from there and then from there it just went were nuts.
Very little of the Thomases left correct.
The Wilson routing is quite a bit of his, and and a good portion of the Harding is. But yes, there was a wash and a freeway installed and and so they lost some holes there and then yeah, architecturally, the they've screwed with it over the years and added water bunkers and done all sorts of weird things, and but it, you know, it's the Wilson starts with his signature touch of a of a nice par five, gettable
and then a pretty tough part four. Those two holes are beautiful, just a great start, and and then the third holes of part three, and then the fourths of a short part four that somebody put a pond on and I might have taken that out now, but I haven't been. I haven't been on that part of the course in a while. Last time I was there was when the Special Olympics was played and they played the hearting, So I didn't get much out on the On the Wilson,
it's it's hard to look at. I mean when you and we have a pretty good aerial too of it, and it yeah, but again it was not on the level of the work he did with Billy Bell. It was good, it was solid, but things got better. A few years later.
He wrote about municipal golf and designing for municipal golf correct mm hmmm.
And it was a big passion of his.
What was his prebis obviously, that's that's something that Gus talked about a lot, is that this is the way municipal golf or public golf has to be. We can't do this for public golf. What was his stance on the difference between designing for public, you know, municipal golf versus private golf, do you Yeah.
He may have overcorrected a little, but he definitely had a mindset of of a little more rudimentary and a little more playable and not beat people up. And it may have been an overreaction to the Pine Valley.
I saw like seventy five yard wide fairways.
Right, Yeah, he I mean he always built all of his courses were built pretty wide, even though he was apparently a very good ball striker horrible putter, But yeah, he was into with and he wanted with and he wanted people to get around and have fun. And he
might have taken that a little far. But like I said, it may have been overreaction to sort of the Pine Valley inspiration in his career and not wanting to and having seen that kind of golf and thinking that the public golfer needs to have a place where they can ease into the game. But you know, in hindsight, he Bill, all of this course is pretty tough. When you think about what the clubs were at the time, I can't I can't fathom. Well, Bobby Jones, frankly, he came right
out and said it. After he played Riviera, you know where do the members play? And there's a great photo we found. I was so excited. It was. It's a little out of focus, so we ran it real small in the Riviera book, but it's Bobby Jones and you can tell he's out on the third green. If you know Riviera, you kind of can tell by where the clubhouse is. His hair is just a mess, and he just looks he just looks shot and so and that
was when he was at it his at his his peak. Really, it was when he was here filming the Warner Brothers films and he still could play great and he thought it was impossible. So he definitely builds his courses pretty tough. And when you look at Riviera and you think about playing that with Hickory's, wow, it was it was. It was a beast.
Well, so this was before Bell. When did he meet Bell? And who was Billy Bell at the time.
He was a superintendent at the time. I don't know exactly how they meant, but he was from Pasadena and obviously a very innovative guy with a background and engineering and and then got into golf maintenance and created a sod cutter and quite a talented, brilliant guy. Really in hindsight when you think about what they accomplished, and they first worked together on and now I'm forgetting if it was Ohio La Cumbre first, but anyway, mid twenties.
I think it's La Cumbre.
Yeah, it probably was. I think that was twenty four and then OHI followed that's correct, And yeah, I would love to know how they got linked up. But George was a busy guy. He had roses, he had his yacht, he had to go deep sea fishing, and so bell was the perfect person to oversee the construction on a daily basis, and that's what he did, and handle the engineering of all these very difficult sites they took on.
I mean, they're not difficult now compared to where people build a course, but at the time they were canyons and different things. Riviera was awful, soil La was a redo. Bell Air was a bunch of canyons and a real estate development and La Cumbre was had some spots that were really tough, and o Hi's obviously another difficult site. So he was the perfect guy and really brought his
a different level of construction expertise. And then as they work together, you see it in the photos each course they got more and more aggressive with the bunkering style, to the point where by the end at Stanford they were just doing some really crazy, wild, cool shapes and it's fascinating how you just look at the photos each course they just got a little bit more and more aggressive.
And so they worked together. They were in about a seven year eight year span and created some incredible courses.
With those bunkers. One interesting thing I kind of think about a lot is a lot of architects seem to get subdued and worn down the more they the work they do because of the green's committees or owners working on them over time, and they get almost safer and safer, whereas their style seemed to get more and more eccentric.
Yeah, and I don't know what in particular inspired them to do that, except that they just probably got reactions to things and let's take it more, and they just became very consumed with the look of erosion and really capturing your eye with great bunkering, and thankfully they did do that. The only I guess downside was that it appears, based on photos during construction of some of them, that the process was to sort of seed and grass the whole thing or a large portion and then come in
and handcut some of those shapes out. And they lost those shapes fairly fast once somebody, once the depression came and it was harder to get the resources to pay people to maintain them, or the desire to maintain these
little frilly edges that somebody probably thought were ridiculous. And then obviously as things got better or they got in people got it edgers and weed eaters, and that's kind of how you have the current look of of the their bunkers and a lot of the courses, and why we came up with the style we did at LA North, which is to to replicate some of those shapes, but to make them look old and to build them in a way where those shapes were very are hard are
almost impossible to edge out, but they did. They obviously didn't know how that look was going to evolve at the time.
How would you, I mean, I know it's hard because they're there. Would what would be the best way to describe a bunker And obviously this is probably a visual thing better shown by pictures over than rather audio, but would like kind of like an amoeba, or like if you if you cracked an egg into a pan and there go with the egg, let it go all of I know, I knew you were going to get me with it.
Yeah, no, I would say, you know, the two the things that I mean, Mackenzie supposedly was kind of pointed to clouds. If you look at a little floating clouds, and I think that's a shape that you if you just watched a little floater and you look at the shape of them, the bottoms a little cleaner and the top has sort of the more rough edged I think they were trying to portray erosion. I think that was part of it, is to have that look a little bit of a more maintained dune look.
And that was that fit kind of that fit the landscape they were working in, correct, like, because you know they were working in these places. If you go for hikes anywhere around La, you see that type of natural erosion look. On edges of you know, land forms.
Yeah, and I think mackenzie did it in part. If you look at the Monterey Cypress, some of the shapes of the bunkers and cypress for instance, or Lake Merced or cow clubs, some of those, they were kind of mimicking those shapes the trees. So yeah, I think they were. They were working in these canyon settings and kind of saw those little blowouts and different landslide things, and that
that inspired it. Obviously again the in the uh influence of Scotland, and because bunkers back then in Scotland were not the bathtub sod wall things that so many courses now unfortunately have a reaction to those bunkers evolving in ways that people didn't like. But but that certainly was uh, because Thomas wrote extensively about naturalness. They all did, you know,
they were fighting. Uh. Even the Fowler style that he was overseeing at LA initially was a more from the Penal school of of design, where the bunkers were were more in your face and less natural looking. Yeah, they were trenches, they were they were not attractive and you know, he wrote about it. McKenzie wrote about it. They were all clear in a mindset of trying to get people back to a very simple, seemingly simple concept, which is that if something is natural or seemingly natural, you will
enjoy taking it on. If it seems artificial, if it seems like the hand of man is trying to screw with your game and get in the way, it takes you out of that sort of quest to take on nature, and it's not as satisfying, and you're offended by an architect when they are screwing with you that way, and that mentality. Max Bear wrote about it, and Thomas and Max Bear were friendly as well. That was what Max Bear was consumed with and writing articles here at the time,
so they were all. They were all kind of even if they had little disagreements, they were all from that same mindset and trying to get golf back to that after a period of player architects and people with less artistic sensibility feeling like that's that that more in your face style of design was proper, and they were saying, no, that's not going to age, well, that doesn't have any permanence to it, and so we're trying to do it
this way. And then Thomas and Bell when they got together, really took thanks to another level in terms of the details of every little feature, feeling as if it were natural, when in fact they did some unbelievable stuff that was required a lot of work to make it feel like it was always there.
So it is time. In California, he designed roughly about about twelve or so courses yep, give take how many of them are still mainly intact, Where you could you know, responsibly call it a George Thomas design.
It's really down to the big three in La you know, Riviera bell Airne. I can't really say, Look, I mean nothing's Lakumber has just been slaughtered. OHI has moments, but it's really been butchered in a lot of spots as well. So yeah, it's it's really down to the to the big ones.
From from those three courses and obviously one we get to watch on TV every single year. One we'll get to watch on TV in two years. Uh what what would you decipher as his strengths and weaknesses as an architect?
I I don't really view him as having had any weaknesses. I'm biased obviously because I'm I'm his biographer, and.
Uh I recognize it.
Yeah, Oh yeah, well, I I really just think when he and Bell were at their peak, I just don't know if there was anybody a team that was better in terms especially when you know what they took and what they care created. They weren't given great sites. I mean La North for instance, was a redo they I mean, there there's an area where you see people out playing
while they're redoing it. And it's hard to believe when you look at La North now that that that that was a redesign that was done in a fairly short amount of time with people playing and the whole thing and and it, and yet it comes together as this amazing thing like they built it from scratch and it really was.
What were the big the big changes that they made to La North in that redesign? How did it change for people that aren't familiar with the you know, either design? Really what what were the big themes of the redesign?
Just replacing some bad holes and turning turning some of those into great holes, or just creating new holes like the eleventh and the fifteenth, the two back nine par threes, which are just two extraordinary holes, and the eleventh you just you know, you look at and you think, how on earth did they imagine this location for a sort of a reverse d Dan Part three with his green site, you know, just built up there was They just created that whole thing. It wasn't like they carved out a
little thing allege and put that that hole there. It they created that, and obviously he was trying to fix something and having to put in pieces. But still in the fifteenth does you know for years it used to be viewed as an afterthought, like what the hell happened here? This little short part three that that does feel like it's a little bit forced in in a sense because it's short. But now I think not to you know, toot our restoration, but it it's now an integral part
of the back nine. And mostly because the hole was fine when he built it. It was great, but it was and he may have built a bunker in the middle of the green, but it didn't last very long if he did. We have one photo where you can kind of see it. I interview him, who took me right out there, and he is a sharp guy. He recently passed away, but he insisted it was there for a while and he replaced it with this bump in the green.
But anyway, the point is he he took, he created new holes, he fixed old holes, he eliminated, i think reluctantly, the old seventeenth, which we ended up putting back, which was not our I mean, it was our suggestion there.
Was a hot topic hole. Huh.
And well in Thomas's time. Yeah. So the other thing we didn't get into is he he was also very involved in course set up and he had a Tom Meeks moment in the California State Open they played there. I always thought it was the LA Open, but it
was a State Open. And someday I'll have to just do the whole seventeenth, whole story, because there was a poem written about the hole by his friend Scott E. Chisholm, who documented a lot of the work, and they had a sant Ana win and he put the pin down in the front, and uh, he was a problem hole in tournament conditions before I think, uh, or it was was it was. It was definitely iffy to put the pin down in front. And of course he wrote multiplely.
You know, he was very his writing was so succinct. He got he just didn't waste time. But yet in golf architecture, in America. He kind of waxes on for a while, sort of defensively, like McDonald smith was a smart guy because he basically like played to make bogey as sart of was he his.
Sharp part three And he's justifying that it was fine because one guy.
The winner, the winner. Yeah, let's be honest, the guy who won the tournament. But he uh but he screwed up. And uh but the Santa Ana Blue, Now, they didn't have the weather forecast that uh we have now. So in his defense, you know, he didn't know what the wind was going to be like probably and uh yeah, he put it down there and nobody they could keep it on the green. And and so that hole survived
for the LA Open in twenties. The first LA Open was at La Country Club and they played the Fowler Course and the sixteenth hole was was apart four and and then part three was the seventeenth and then the eighteenth was a blind t shot and he changed all of that. But he did take the hole out, but it was clear it was it was hard for him because it was a neat little hole. It was a beloved little hole. Robert Hunter took a little shot at it there were obviously people that were detractors at the
time as well. It was a controversial hole for sure, but there were definitely people who absolutely adored it. And you see some great scenes in the tournaments out there where people are are are was it was a place to hang out and watch the golf.
Clearly, what was something having you know, worked out there for so many years and obviously a historic restoration, one of the most influential restorations of this era of restoration, And what were some things that you picked up on, like maybe just more subtle ones that you wouldn't pick up on your first time out there, that you just really love about La his work at La North.
Actually the greens, you know, because Thomas didn't build the most build the most exciting greens, but the and it was believed because he was just not a good putter. And he wrote a story an article about wanting to make putts a half stroke, which Hogan probably it.
Was called a vandal.
Yeah, yeah, that wasn't it was not. Everybody loved that one, but he felt like there was an over emphasis on putting. I can't even fathom what he'd think of what the game looks like today with the over emphasis on putting, you know, watching his greens at Riviera at thirteen and guys marking eighteen inches because of poet and you know, they're scary little putts in February, and I just think he would say, oh, my lord, putting has really become
ridiculously overvalued. So he made his case, and I admired that he made the case. But I think when you look at at l A, it's such a the greens just are. They're interesting enough and they don't ever detract. And then there there's a nice variety of them, and they are a couple that are that are more severe, and they are a couple that are just beautifully contoured.
And and I think when you what I what I love about his greens is in la in particular, is there's usually one or two key features on each green, and as a player, you can you can remember those and use those to your advantage depending on where the whole is obviously, uh to place a shot or to know I can't miss it there. And I love that in that Not enough people bill greens that way where
they're they're they're memorable enough. There's just too many greens where there's just too many things to try to remember and and and they're hard to visualize as you're trying to play a shot in so he he really allowed you to if you could perform the shot, uh, use those features to your advantage. And I just think that's it. Certainly wasn't making life easier. It was just making the golf better.
It's something that I've kind of started to really believe in, is that confidence as an architect is the ability to build a really subtly brilliant green, not the really like we everybody always says, oh that the boldness of that green. Can you believe?
How how you know?
How confident that architect is to build something severe? But in reality, I think the opposite is true, where you know you could build something very subtle and small and that it's going to be just by yeah.
Yeah, And he was. He was really good at that, and Bell was was great at that. And I think a big part of the influence on that as well. They love to use little bumps kind of on the side of a green and create little little corners and tiers and wings, and they knew that was enough to
just create interest without going nuts with the contours. And then the other thing they did with their greens that again you swear their courses were just sort of often lay of the land, but they really weren't that they they but they were an extension of the fairway essentially that that they didn't you didn't just have this kind of quiet ground and then get up to this green that was just going bonkers. And so that again fed to their mindset that if it seems natural, people embrace it.
If it seems man made, they rejected. And and I don't like that when you're when you're on pretty quiet ground and then you get up there and the greens just a roller coaster ride. It It takes you. It, it makes you think of the architect and and and and can be quite annoying if the green is getting in your way of trying to score in a in a way that that isn't isn't much. Uh, I don't
want to say unfair, but isn't fun. So that that, you know, that was a big thing at l A to me is is is kind of having that that trust. Plus it's a it's a site where that you just get so few flat stances and so you just don't need the green to be doing much because that alone throws you off enough that any slight tilt back, front, sideways, whatever is accentuated. And uh so that's a beautiful part
of the design. Uh there for for sure and probably doesn't get a lot of attention just because again the uh, there's so much more to look at their tee to Tita fringe with the.
Uh with with the other courses bel Air and Riviera, how did the sites differ from l A, which you just it was a more severe site, big big canyons that La is kind of situated. And how were bell Air and Riviera different and how did the designs differ there?
Yeah, well, bell Air was a real estate development. He wanted to He used his plane supposedly to fly over the canyons and kind of help mister Bell, Alfonso Bell, the developer find the best site. He wanted to be on the other side of Sunset. And there are some renderings showing not actual architectural rendering, sort of an artist rendering. And then now that and then the state wanted that
for UCLA and it became UCLA. So he had to stay on the I guess the north or the east side of Sunset, and that forced their hand to really keep everything in those canyons and then figure out how to go from one canyon to another. So they came up with the tunnel system. Really unbelievable what they accomplished. But down in the flats of the canyons, I can't
even fathom what it once was like. It had to be incredible to try to well, it had to be pretty awful what they destroyed, I'm sure in terms of beauty, but it to create corridors for golf. And then bel Air, you know, his daughter who I got to speak to.
She was, you know, obviously conflicted. I think George had some affairs or something, and so she had kind of a She and her mom had clearly a complicated relationship with him because she she ended up being a very good golfer and a longtime member of LA and an
unbelievable woman. Just amazing woman to talk to. And I had some really fun phone calls with her at the time, just discussing things and trying to get things out of her and what she she could never you know, how it is, they people don't really know what's of interest sometimes when you're trying to find out about an architect, and but one of the main things she told me was that, and she held this against bel Air by the but she he made very clear that was his
greatest accomplishment to her and his favorite design because it was so difficult, and then he built some of his most I don't know, flamboyant or bold or nuts kind of stuff like the may West hole, and and so when they did screw that up, both both she and of course Joe Novak, who was a pro at the time, kind of a legendary instructor, and he really held it against Dick Wilson, and she did too. In fact, she told me she stopped going there for team matches and things,
and so it was interesting. She kind of admitted that it took her time in golf to start to realize the magnitude of what he did. But she played at LA and was a wonderful woman. So bell Air was just his most and Billy Bell the combination artist. Yeah, I mean, just what they pulled off and in the time they did it. And you know, my only question on bell Air is is and we don't have that that perfect photo right when it opened. There's a few
photos though that show some better bunkering. But the bunkering there. I know, it just didn't It just wasn't quite as nuts as it was at even at Ohi or La Cumbre, where they were a little more interesting with the bunkering. And then obviously Riviera in La They and then Stanford they went to another another level. So that was that was the complication with bel Air, was just pulling that off, and they did it spectacularly and also used it's interesting
there you think about. They were more into the little bumps I mentioned by the Greens. They went bigger there. They were bigger scale moldings as he called them. And then Riviera was just a river bed. It was not an attractive site in terms of soil. It would flood.
There were all these issues. It did have this cool feature going through it a lot like what we had Rustic Canyon, and we kept more intact I guess to Rustic because we had to environmentally with the sort of a sage scrub style wash that ended up obviously being a little bit of a problem in nineteen thirty eight, but so crappy.
So well, that's the wash that runs along. It's not the Baranca eleven thirteen, yeah. Eight. For those that have you know seated on TV.
Yeah, yeah, and it's now a deep, deep ditch baranca with a with a concrete Army Corps of Engineers washway or channel underneath. It goes all the way down to the ocean and at the end of Santa Monica Canyon. And that was installed after the flood and was a big excuse me. That was installed in the seventies, But after the flood, the baranca got a lot deeper. If you see the early photos of Riviera was more shallow and you could go play a ball more easily out
of it. So, yeah, the biggest complication there was they wanted to build the homes on the side and the thirty six holes down at the bottom of the canyon and still plenty of movement in the ground and the tilt of the canyon, but it was essentially pretty flat. And that's their greatest construction accomplishment in terms of subtlety. And this is what I really learned from Ben Crenshaw,
so much that I just didn't understand. And there was a great old story by the first club manager, and he detailed each of the green sites where they the number of feet they brought them up like eighteen number one and number four, all these greens where you go Holy cow. So that was at this elevation and they raised it, but you would never know when you're out there, and so that was where they and they really pushed
sort of the boundaries. They talked about bringing out roadscrapers, and they pushed the boundaries of construction and sort of elevated the art of construction. And then drainage was Bells where he was just truly incredible the way he he dealt with that site. And even though yes there were floods and and it did damage, but it was a historic flood. It damaged many things in southern California, led to the La River being it was a big deal.
It was a bad, bad al Nino, and so even no matter what he did, it wouldn't have mattered.
I think a few years ago you posted a video from Riviera, if I remember correctly, on social media showing all the way the drainage works out there.
Yeah, it's crazy, like when there's a huge nutty downpour, you suddenly see these little beautiful rivers through the property and it all takes it over to the Baranka and out to the ocean. And he they just create and and then what's great about him, though, is they add interest to the golf. They add these little swales and
things and break up the land and and uh. But then but when you get these monster rains that we can get by the sea, the coast and an al nino, And when I worked on the book, I saw it and and out there that was the first time. It's just wild because you can stand up on the hill and you just see these perfect little little rivers. One goes through the range and uh, one, one, two, and ten, and there's some so there's an unbelievable one. But there's
a great feature on the fifth hole. Anybody who's played their noses, it's big, funky, weird mound. And uh. After one of the really big al ninos, I went out there in a cart, stayed on the path and there was just this unbelievable amount of water coming out of the hillside but kind of bouncing off and around that big mound and then kind of snaking down in front of the sixth hole to the to the washway and out to the ocean. It was just and it was like, oh, well,
maybe they there was maybe some rock underneath there. Who knows there was some reason they created it, and then it also served this great purpose of drainage, so they they were masters. That's sort of that dual purpose thing. But you don't really notice unless you are looking really really hard for it. And that's what Ben opened my eyes to was and he wrote about that in the forward of the Riviera book. What a what a master work of And maybe he thinks the greatest created golf course.
I think he say the world anyway, greatest created course that that he can And what he meant by that is that they kind of took nothing and made it something spectacular.
But it looks completely natural the ground does.
I mean, now it doesn't because there's just so many. Yeah, bunkers are so clean and they've kind of gotten the barancas have lost their their shape and their impuct Yeah, I mean there are elements that have. The greens have been screwed with in weird ways, so it's lost some of that. But yes, if you actually just look at the groundwork, Uh, you just can't believe how many elements out there were man made.
We're at this point with restoration where we're getting down. Yale is getting restored. Lookout out and it's getting restored all day, and I start to think about, you know, what are the great durations left, and you know, Riviera is one that jumps to mind, but oh yeah, other
ones include Ohi and which potentially La Cumbra. I don't know how much there could be done there, but you start to think about it, it's like, well like kind of like three of the best restoration candidates that exist in golf, in American golf at least are George Thomas courses.
Yeah. Yeah, I mean Riviera was called the Pine Valley of the West at the time, and you look at the photos and you see how dramatic it was, and you think, my god, with the right approach and getting that back and getting some of the strategy lost back and fixing the approaches, I mean, it would be a big job, but it should easily be one of the top fifteen courses in the world if in that original state. I mean, there's just not a week hole. There's a
case that it's the greatest set of part threes. There's a case that it's got just just multiple unbelievable part fours. But it's in good shape and it's the bunkers are clean, and it's fair and people like that, and so it does fine, it's it's it's still ranked very well still, but as a work of artist, would be the very best, it really would. It would be. Yeah, it would be incredible. I would throw Pine Valley by the way onto your restorational list. I think it's it's been screwed with a
little ways. Yeah, well we won't go down that at hole. Yeah, and obviously.
That's a whole other podcast. Yeah yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Of the other courses, which one would you most like to see returned or would you have most like to see in its you know, great state of all the other courses.
Probably, OHI just because it's such a beautiful place and and in a difficult site. I mean I saw o Hi. You know. They used to play the Champions Senior Tour up there, and I was roommates with the Algeiberger's son John, and so I would always go up and watch that, and my dad I played there even before the Moorish projects, So I saw parts of it. But obviously the abandoned holes that they tried to bring back weren't weren't in place.
But it's just such a The back nine is so beautiful and there were elements that you could see were really great that they've kind of lost, So that that would be I mean La Cumbro would be tough because there were other changes, but you still have the lake holes and you could still capture certain elements for sure.
Could they get that canyon hole back? Is that even feasible?
I think so?
What was it the sixteenth Yeah?
I think so. I don't you know, it's been filled in the canyon. I don't know what you would do. I think you couldn't quite recapture the depth of the old canyon, but you could do something to get that look of that green out on that crazy spot. The next part three is gone. It's the maintenance buildings on that green site. I don't think that that one would be easy to get back. That would be that would be a big project. But it was.
There's a lot of money in Santa Barbara, Yeah.
There is, and it was and it was a crazy cool little Part three. So he built he built amazing Part three's. I think that's another part of his career that makes him stand out. I don't know many people who built more diverse and memorable and unusual, but but great and fun Part threes and than George Thomas. I really don't know there's anybody. I mean, I obviously if you love your your template, Holes and Rayner McDonald, Rayner
Rayner built amazing Part threes. But I would also say and and and varied and and went off in great tangents away from the the template and and not to diminish that in any way, because they're amazing, but in terms of originality, I just don't think anybody was in the league of Thomas and Bell and their their prime and they also, you know, these awful sites we're talking about did lend themselves to some fantastic Part three though.
That's the one positive of canyons. Canyons, Yeah, severe ground is a great place to put apart exactly.
And they but but as we know, people screw that up, and they didn't. They really got the most out of those and that's another thing that makes them so so amazing.
So one last thing I wanted to hit on. This has been terrific. Uh he In your book you have some excerpts of him talking about raiding golf courses. What was his theory around rating a golf course and how it should be done?
Yeah, he called it standard of competitive merits of Courses. I just happened to flip open the book to that page.
I think he would do You think he would appreciate the golf ranking system as they stand today.
You know, it's a great question because it was such a it was such an odd thing for him to go off in this mindset, and I would love to know. It's one of the things you would love to ask him, like why was this such a thing for you? But in a nutshell, no, I think he'd think the rankings.
I mean, who would who would look at what not not necessarily Golf magazine because they're they're they're they're going in a good direction, but like who would look at what Golf digest in golf we do now for rankings and say, oh, that's that's a great idea. Yeah, that's that's superb.
Anybody a chief revenue officer was I just wanted and correct, look correct? How much money they make?
I know it's up to three hundred a year and thirteen hundred as a down payment, and it's probably going to be double that in a couple of years. But uh, yeah, it was interesting that he went down this rat hole sort of of trying to do this. I'm guessing that you know, so much of this probably was dicked a
by kind of the climate of the time. When you go back to what what he and and Mackenzie and we didn't discuss their little spat I would love to clarify that if you'd like me too, But go for what they were all bitching and not bitching and moaning, but they were they were advocating very hard for their philosophy,
and each of them had little slightly different takes. But Mackenzie and Thomas, their work is very similar in a lot of ways, especially when Thomas joined with Bell in terms of the artistry, and Mackenzie obviously had such an
incredible group of people building his work. And but they were all rather they just they just felt the need to keep pressing this case for for a certain kind of naturalness and permanence to design, having seen in their lifetimes the various phases that golf architecture had gone in, and they all well, especially Thomas and McKenzie, explicitly wrote that they thought they were just at the beginning that the next wave of people would take their ideas and
go to the next level. Obviously, that didn't happen. It went the other direction. So I think they almost in a way be a little disappointed that there hasn't been a more intricately strategic old course style trend of of just crazy crazy strategy as part of the theme of architecture.
But they were really working hard to make their case because they believe that's what was the right thing for the land, and what was the right thing for the golf and the beauty and and and the responsibility of plowing this property for golf and leaving it behind for peoples to make it natural seemingly natural, and both for.
Golf to do it. California, you know, like the most naturally beautiful place in.
Americaa well, and they were probably realizing that there was a responsibility they were they were taking on, especially Mackenzie's case, some amazing sites so so, and that's why it is kind of odd that they clearly had attention. And I wrote a piece about Mackenzie's time in la which was just kind of one cluster after another. He had projects fall through, and this and that I wrote this for for the upcoming book on Mackenzie that Josh has done.
And I wrote just a just a look at his time in la because I did have a story related to that from my research on Thomas. Because one of the things that could not figure out when the Spirit of Saint Andrews came out in ninety five and when I was sort of in the middle of all this, was why why did Mackenzie just crap on Thomas? And it was obviously Thomas in his part three course at Riviera in the to Saint Andrew's and it's he never
names him, but it's obvious who he's speaking of. And Riviera had this par three course where the range is now, and it was magnificent. It was very heavily bunkered. It was a pitch and putt course and it really the ground for it was there until the tour had a phase I guess it's now been what twelve or so years, maybe even fifteen now, about ten to twelve where for some reason every range had to be a grass field with little stakes. That's that was the feedback they got
from players in a survey. So Riviera redoing its range to try to get majors, you know, did a nice job building a huge, big tea, but they just took the landing area of the range and bulldozed it and is heartbreaking because all the remnants of the old par three course were out there, and I you know, walked it a few times when the range was closed the lad evening and found some of the old greens and one of them was this crazy little clover leaf thing. And anyway, so it was a it was a bold
part three course, let's call it that. I mean, it was tough, I'm sure for what those guys at the time thought a part three course should do. And anyway, I think it was an opening for McKenzie to take a shot because the story that was relayed to me by Frank Hathaway, who was the grandson of one of
the founders of Riviera, of Frank Garbett. There were two key founders and they were big, big guys in the city of la William My Garland who brought the Olympics here in Frank Garbett, and they co founded the La
Athletic Club. And Frank Hathaway was really gracious and spending a lot of time with me when I worked on the Riviera book, and I mean he should have been They got one hundred and eight million dollars for the place, so he should have been in a he was living in a nice place, but he and he didn't know the full story. But I helped him kind of piece it together. We kind of pieced it together, talked looking
it through. But essentially there was a mix up. And there's those famous photos that Scott Eachishom took of Mackenzie out on the side at Riviera, and they're in and they're in my books and all over and they're all dressed up and they're looking at sketches and Thomas says his little glasses on and they're pointing, you know, and the whole thing. And there was a mix up that Mackenzie thought he was being brought in to to be the architect with with this group, and he was clearly
rather resentful of that from that day on. I mean, he put on a good show. He came out there and one of the things he did was he brought a box of golf Ark his book Golf Architecture. And it's another side story, but I many years later a member sold me a copy they had. It's the original with the dust jacket on it, and I paid on her books for it. Yeah, they're worth like two grand. Now there's very rare, and uh, he he brought this box of the books and they sat in the club forever.
And then Ron Rhodes, the great Man, one of the pros, put them out for sale. They didn't sell for years. They just apparently sat in the shop, you know, just out and nobody, nobody wanted a book in the eighties or seventies. And Willie Hunter and Mac Hunter the old pros before him, and I guess they didn't throw them away, which was nice. And so he brought books. He put on the full show and he gets there and and uh, there was a misunderstanding, so he was kind of bitter
from that point on. It sounds like, which is too bad, because again their styles were were pretty similar. Now and then I also might as well take this moment to clarify that Mackenzie had nothing to do with any changes to the course. There's a kind of a huckster there named Mike Yamacky who tried to peddle a story with using Ian Scott Taylor and Phil Young's claims of these these drawings of Mackenzie and they're they're total fakes.
They're totally from mackenzie papers.
Yeah, just total, total fraudulent stuff. And the thing that they didn't know when they embarked on this canard was that after I did the Captain, I found when I went back to the USGA and these old Pacific Golf and Motor and Country Club magazines an article by Scotty Chisholm explaining what George Thomas was going to do to the course for the nineteen twenty nine LA Open. So I have that article and I obviously shared it with
the people who needed to see it. And there's even a photo of the tenth hole where Billy Bell is supervising. Not Billy Bell's not in the photo, but it says that he's out there supervising the changes to the tenth and a few other tweaks for the coming nineteen twenty nine LA Open. And it shows the installation of new bunkers on ten that really made the hole what it is around the green and all that. Mackenzie had nothing
to do with any of that. It was all Thomas and Bell and it was all in preparation for the twenty nine LA Open. But I didn't have that in the Captain found that out about two years after a year and a half after but they didn't know that, so they tried this, this ridiculous scam to claim that McKenzie did all this work there. And unfortunately, the club tried to tell everybody and their brother that this was the case. I don't know if they wanted to enhance
the value of the place or whatever. But he never set foot out there again after his h as far as I know, and as far as the McKenzie folks who've documented his travels know. I mean, he might have popped out there one day and seen the Part three course and that was his excuse to slam it. But anyhow, so it's uh that that part of the mackenzie legacy at Riviera is just really more about a site visit
and a misunderstanding. And like I said, all his time in La just was sort of it seemed like it was jinxed for McKenzie.
So about the course rating system, back to the so what how did he went hole by hole?
Right?
And it was there was one point for a feature hole, yeah, correct, two point two points for a good hole. So he basically graded he graded out every hole from a score of I believe one to five and one was like a truly great hole, right, And then you know, and it's an interesting way. I think about this all the time because it's a format that I really like, because it's I always ask the question how many bad holes
can a great course have? Right, and it exposes courses with bad holes, and I think it also lends insight into how he built his courses because you know so often and I think, obviously this is a modern thing, but it's it becomes about the picture holes, the spectacular holes, right, and it sometimes great holes or are given away in order to get to a place where that spectacular picture is taken, and the entire golf course as a whole
loses some of its luster because of that. And I think, you know, when you look at Thomas and the courses that I've seen, and I haven't studied nearly as much as you, but you whenever you get off and done playing, you go, wow, that was that was really spectacular. And one of the toughest questions to answer would be what's the weakest hole at La North, what's the weakest hole at bel Air, what's the weakest hole at at Riviera. You you could sit and argue that for hours.
You could, although I will say the one weakness of his of his design work, and I think it was more product of the time than than than and the equipment than than his ability. Were his par fives. He generally didn't really make them very tough at the end at the Green, and I think it was because they were pretty long and people were I mean, if you went through his with his his system, you would probably
knock his par fives the most. But again I would say is because he built Some of them were five sixty seventy, which in the day of Hickory's is yeah, you're hitting a long club into those. So he tended to and we in fact at La on the eighth hole, we just flat out said we're going to make this more difficult by the green because he didn't make it very difficult, and I really but it was not just
that hole. I mean, he did it at seventeen and at Riviera eleven, at Rivie Era, so he that was his one week spot where you'd probably knock him down. But I do think, I mean, I do think there is something to the system. It's a little like the match play system of matching courses against each other, because even though some people don't like that, you ultimately do
speak to those holes that are not as spectacular. You know, it's really fun to match play Riviera in La North and you do kind of or well any combination of courses and you do, it does almost highlight more not the great holes, but those those moments of where like, well, why didn't the architect just do something to get a little more life out of this whole, to to make it interesting enough? And uh, you know, and that was where he and Bell were amazing. They just they're just
they just didn't do any uh bland holes. They might not photograph well like you you know, but there was character, there were there were there were subtleties and uh but they they most of the time they kind of hit you over the head with pretty pretty uh inspiring looking stuff. They didn't they didn't like to, but they threw it enough. I mean, you've got to have some holes that are not You can't have every I think he even was here, mackensey, I mean you can't have no actually it was uh
it was tilling ass. You can't have attacks of hysteria. I believe it was a line on it. You know, you don't want every hole to be uh just an incredible you know why. You know, Pine Valley does that, but but how many courses can do that and make you want to keep playing the game and not lose your mind where it's just relentless. And that was always the mentality of Pine Valley and obviously inspired him to
create those kinds of holes. But you just can't and of course people are going to play every day, and he thought more in that mindset. He also thought that way with routing. As you know, he was into loops of holes and he made a big deal about that. And I was fortunate to experience that playing Riviera, the great little loops of holes. You just go out and play three or four holes and you're you're right there. You know, you're not stuck out at the far end
of the property. You're right there. And he took La Country Club has great little loops around there, So he was he was a little more cognizant of that day to day enjoyability of a course while still blending in the crazy and the magnificent and all that. And I think that's why he's so so incredible as an architect.
All Right, that's perfect place stand it. You know, it's a waxing poetic about George Thomas. Hopefully we will see more Thomas restorations in the next ten years. Who knows. Hopefully one can one can dream. Yeah, I think we were dreaming about Yale for ten Who would have thought years.
Yeah, what about our Inverness or Oakland Hills or Congressional or I mean, there's quite a f I was just pondering that looking at the golf list I wrote about in the newsletter that you know, I mean, just amazing to think Congressional and Oakland Hills, these old PGA sites in southern Hills that had gotten either tired or now look where they are. You're like, Wow, if you told me that ten years ago, I never would have Those wouldn't have been the ones I predicted seeing the light
and look look where we are now. It's pretty cool.
Maybe Griffith Park who knows, who knows?
We need a rich guy, We need a rich guy to write a check and uh that that's that would be key.
So people can find you. You got Jeff Shackleford dot com, yelf's og blogger. You know you were you were the first. We all owe you a debt of grad Thank you, dude. I think that's the way and Uh, then you've got your You're also on substack. You're very trendy. Yeah, you've got the Quadrilateral. It is a subscription. I subscribe. I enjoy it. I read it all the time. I highly recommend people subscribe. It's what fifty bucks a year.
It's like correct.
A Starbucks trip, one latte a month, and you can get Jeff's writing delivered right to your end box. It's delightful. I would recommend it. And uh, then you're on Twitter and Instagram at Jeff Shack, so I can find you anything else, any parting thoughts on on Thomas. Anything to leave people with, you just wish your book probably was cheaper.
Right, Yeah, it is kind of kind of amazing how expensive it is now. I do have a stash that I need to get out on the market. Think that's going to lower the price much. But it was great. It was great fun to self publish that, and I got very lucky again with the quality of it. But you know, the thought I'd leave you with is, don't feel bad. But because he didn't inherent a lot of money and had a lot of free time. But when you think about what he did in fifty nine years
it's with health problems in a war in between. It's it's inspiring. Again. He had a nice bank roll and we would all but still I'm not sure.
There was no television either, and the tour wasn't occupying fifty weeks of our lives.
That is correct, that is those were all key points. But I think it was a diversification of interest, you know that he could he could go from the roses to the catching these these amazing fish off tuna. Yeah, and then the Tuna Club and all that and and what and you know, which was part of the movie Chinatown. The albu Core Club was inspired by that. You know, it was an amazing time at Catalina. You know, Bobby Jones had a tournament out there and Wrigley and the
Billy Bell did the course out there. That's that's a mess. That would be cool to see restored as well. But yeah, just an inspiring life.
Like there's just a heap of Billy Bell and Thomas courses in southern California. Yeah, that are just just getting there.
Yeah, it was a dark time. We had a lot of people come through and not not get the uh get what those two guys were about. And we're getting there, but it's still compared to other parts of the country. We're we're not quite there. But the I think, you know, with the US open coming and and all that stuff, it'll it'll keep we'll keep chipping away.
All right. Well, thank you and uh we'll talk to you soon.
Thank you, Andy. I appreciate you giving me the time to talk about the Captain.
Thank you for listening to another edition of the Frida Egg Podcast. Today's episode was edited by Meg Atkins. Thank you, Meg. And just as a quick reminder, we have a terrific three day week newsletter. We're talking about newsletters a lot. Jeff's is the Quadrilateral. Ours is just the Frida Egg newsletter. If you go to the Frida Egg dot com you can sign up for it. It comes out every Monday Wednesday Friday. Will Knights writes it. It is covering some
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