I Think. Welcome back to another edition of the Fried Egg Podcast. Today's episode is powered by TD Ameritrade. Every stroke counts on the scorecard and every penny counts in the market. That's why tdamerior Trade is committed to straightforward pricing with no surprises, so you're free to swing with confidence. Visit tdomritrade dot com, slash Fria Egg member SIPC. Today we welcome on golf writer, author and historian, also podcast hosts of the Renovation Report for turf Net, and the
executive director of the Seth Rayner Society, Anthony Piapi. Anthony joins to talk about the history being made this week with the US Women's Open being hosted at the Country Club of Charleston. It marks the first time that a US Men's or Women's Open has been hosted at a Seth Rainer designed golf course. With no rain in the forecast and the best women in the world teeing it up. The golf should be fantastic this week and highly recommend watching. It'll be on FS one. I know Fox does a
ton of coverage. I'm really excited for it. Anthony talks about Anthony goes in detail about Seth Rayner and where the Country Club of Charleston fell in his career template holes him much more so. Without further ado, here's Anthony Piapi on Seth Rayner.
I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset. When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset. And when I find my ball in a brid egg Friday, egg Frida egg fridayg fridagg bride egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off the course.
It's kind of surprising that this is the first Women's or US Open at a Rainer course.
I'm stunned by that. I mean, I knew this years ago, you know, we started looking at it. It's just amazing when you think about it. They had to get somewhere right, and the answer is no, they never did.
Yeah, and it's like you can't even get like so, you know C. B McDonald gets the design credit typically from magazines of Chicago Golf, but Rayner did the complete redesign. There sure sure letters that say stay out of his way. And even then, you know, Chicago Golf didn't host anything after he redid it.
A Walker cup that goes to the Walker Cup in what two thousand and five or two thousand and six. But you're right, that's absolutely it. You just thought somewhere along the line something had to drop onto one of his courses, especially the stuff on Long Island, and it didn't.
I think the thing that I'm most fascinated about it for this week is that if you look at you know, the women and the distance they hit the ball today, it's about, you know, the same as the distance players were hitting it in the late twenties when Rainer was really in his heyday.
Yeah, this course is going to set up absolutely perfect for them. You know, when I talked to Frank Ford about it, the longtime member, he was saying that if it gets windy, they're going to move teas around, you know, they have that kind of if it's firm and windy, the USGA wants to kind of mess with these holes. So they're playing different yardages and the fourteenth might be was it, the fourteenth might be drivable, you know, all that kind of stuff. It's going to be really fun.
It's going to be hot. As you see the temperatures for the week, it's all it's nineties.
Yeah, very very warm. I'm hearing right now that it's extremely firm, and fast, so roughly the rain holds off and it can stay that way because I think that when you get that conditioning, you know, the rainer contours, especially out there is so many elevated greens, really the architecture really comes alive.
Right and and it would be so cool if you know, if they start playing the ball on the ground. I mean, that's going to be the most fun is going to be if people start doing that. You know, it's so firm, it's down wind. I guess the not I guess, but the Frank Frank wod told me the prevailing wind is into your face on the second hole, so it's kind
of crossing quartering, crossing against you on the first. If they get the prevailing wind, they're going to be able to play some down wind shots and some up wind shots keeping the ball on the ground. And that's going to be great to watch.
Yeah, I think this is I think I think Charleston and I'm curious, say, you know, you're the obviously executive director of the Rainer Society, and few people have dedicated as much time and energy into researching you know, a man that's got very very few records about him, Seth Rayner, but you know, where does Country Club of Charleston fall in the rainer kind of timeline? What what stage of his career is the nineteen twenty five design.
You know, Unfortunately it's at the end. He dies and he dies in late nineteen dies in January of nineteen twenty six. So this, you know, it's the it's at the end of his career, which his career was exploding at that point. I mean, Camargo is under construction, Southampton's under construction, Fisher's Island is just about finishing up, and the second Course at this point is still going to be built. Yale is Yale just opens. So he's at the height of his you know, his creativity at this point.
It's all the great courses. Blue Mound is another one. You know, he's he'd gone and laid out Wili and Mid Pacific. He was he had done the work in California that never got built, you know, because he died. He's at the he's all over the country and he has these amazing designs.
Yeah, it's and so at Country Club of Charleston. He that the site in terms of you know what the topographical interest, I think it would it would lend itself on the lower end, but obviously it's very beautiful right there on the Wapoo River and the marshland of Charleston, very close to the city center. How would you compare Country Club of Charleston to some of his other designs.
So this, to me is one of the classic examples of you watch what he or another great architect does on a flat piece of land. Right at a place like Yale and Fisher's Island that has massive amounts of movement and even some something like Wantam autonomy, there's not a lot of fairway bunkers because he's going to create
hazards and preferred angles of play using the topography. But here on the flat round at Charleston, he's going to put his bunkers in places that force you to think, that create the optimum roots, that that make players seek out angles to play greens into greens on certain conditions. He you know this is this is him designing on
a flat piece of land. Uh. And it shows to me his brilliance in that there's some holes where it's important to be very precise off the tee, and there's other holes where it's very important to be precise, precise on the on the approach shot, and so he kind of spreads that, spreads that out, you know, and it's it's it's a course that it's of course what he created. That he created the angles and the with with the use of hazards, and it's fantastic.
Yeah, I think I think that too. I think, like you know, I'm a Chicagoan, like there's it reminds me a little bit of Chicago golf, where you know, the the interest is much more created than you look at some of his sites you mentioned Yale and Fisher's Island, like Short Acres is a perfect example in Chicago where he had a ravine scape, this unbelievable natural topography to route the course around and right, you know, far fewer
bunkers and much tame or greens at Shore Acres. Then if you go down, you know, across town to Chicago GoF you'll see some of the most epic green complexes and you know, a lot more bunkers comparatively.
So it's interesting and another course I think that would have fit into that, but it's been changed so much as Country Club of Fairfield. When you see the original drawing and you see the foot of the nineteen thirty four aerial. You know there's bunkering all over that because again that's for the most part a flat piece of land. He's right on the water. I don't think he looked thinking about it. I don't think he had the acreage to do the massive width you know that he might
have wanted to do in some holes. But he creates all his strategy with bunkers, and it's fantastic how he does it. And like you said, it's sue acres. He uses the ravines, it doesn't need bunkers.
Yeah, it's it's something I've thought a lot about. And it's like, you know, these guys, especially the Golden Age architects, they just understood what the right level of interest and challenge was. And you see at short acres like the very boldest greens or features like the cross bunker on one or the burrits on six come on the very flattest land right out there. And then you know, you look at the same way at at Country Club of Charleston.
You know, the really bold bunkering, you know, like the you know, the the leaven hole fourth, the you know, the par five fifth come on like the flattest least interesting land, right.
And you know when Ron Forest did a lot of work at Newport Country Club in Rhode Island, and we were talking about that's a very flat piece of land for the most part, there is some elevation change. But he talked about how telling has had for what we would consider placid greens because old greens on a windy site didn't make sense because even in the days day when it opened, it would have made things crazy. So here are these kind of placid greens again in the
context of killing ms, not pleasant greens. But then he takes in bunkers that property, so that you have to the strategies created by him with these bold bunkers. And it's like you said, it's the Golden Age. Guys understood that they let if the land was there, they let the land do the do the talking, you know.
Yeah, exactly. It's so Seth Rayner's career, I think is from with respect to the other Golden Age architects, most of them came from, you know, a great playing lineage, and Rayner it was definitely kind of the black sheep of them. You know, for our audience that might not know that much about Seth Rainer, who was Seth Rayner before he met CEB MacDonald.
He was the city engineer for the town engineer for the town of Southampton, New York, and he was brought in to do to drag the chains and do the surveying of the property that that National was built on. And he had no background whatsoever in golf. He had been on the when Shinnacock was expanded at one point his dad, who was also a civil engineer, had done that work. And Rainer had been on that golf course. But that's it. And he didn't play prior to getting
into the business. And when McDonald hired him, there's no indication that he was ever thinking of anything beyond just that one job. And Rayner did such fantastic work that he kept him on.
So he gets on with National and then he starts he's McDonald's guy, and you know the next course, you know, kind of how did that progress?
Well, let me back up just a second. I have a theory, and there's no way I can prove it, or I don't think it can be disproved. McDonald wanted to build a golf course, right, he was going to be the first guy in the United States. Maybe in the world to create a golf course. He was going to make greens to certain sizes, right, he wanted him so high, so wide, so long. He needed somebody who said, if you build this, you need x amount of soil to do that, and then here's where you can take
them from. If you build these five bunkers, you want to build this big, we can take that soil and build that green. And so after that, I think that this kind of hits McDonald that he needed that person. And the second place they go to his piping rock, you know, and that was a million bunkers at that place, and there's a lot of elevation change at times. A lot of elevation changed there. And from then on, however,
many courses McDonald designed after that. Somewhere around fourteen or fifteen, no matter what he was doing, Rayner was the head of construction. He was the guy on site. Even later in his career when when Rayner had his own design career, which started in about nineteen fourteen nineteen fifteen, he would go back and lead the projects for McDonald. Yeah.
One of the most interesting things I've found when I was doing research for the US Senior Women's at Chicago Golf last year was a letter from McDonald to the club that it was saying, you know, Rayner had designed golf courses from Saint Louis to Maine, which you know is like, oh, you know, in essence, McDonald's kind of saying Saint Louis is you know those Rainers the design.
Really, I think he was really good at promoting Rayner. When you when you read Scotland's Gift, McDonald's biography and you see some of his other quotes, I think he was really really good at at promoting Rainer and giving Rayner credit. You know, he calls he calls Leedo a Reino golf course, right. We know that, we know that Yale is unequivocally we have the there's board minutes and all that stuff. It's a Rainer golf course. But he calls Leedo a Rayner golf course. And I think that
could be disgusted or or argued. And you know, he says in the in the book that Rainer designed three hundred golf courses, which he didn't do. He never designed a golf course in Maine. We know that, you know, for sure, unless something pops up.
You know, that's right, one of the things I'm gonna go. I want to go on a quest to see if they're visit every course in Maine.
Well, you know, I've had the discussion with a lot of main people about is there any you know, is there anything there that would make you think, oh my god, this is Rainer. And now with all these newspapers getting digitized, you know, we can look into small town Maine in the nineteen twenties and nobody's come up with any I mean, it would be fantastic. We still don't know how we get to the squamakin and did that work there?
Yeah, tell me a little bit about, you know, your research on Rayner, and I think people are you know, genuinely interested, like a is a historian and you know you've written some club histories, You've written your book Finest Nines, and you know, tell us a little bit about, you know, the process of of tracking down Rayner, who was notorious for no not having correspondence notes or anything.
Right, right, And we should really put that in the context with that virtually every other Golden Age architect wrote at some point right, wrote about architecture, and Rayner never did that. And as far as we know, He was interviewed once by the Olympic Club for of course he designed for them that was never built. We don't have all the other quotes we have from him are secondary. Rayner said, at you know, this will be the great greatest course ever. It's somebody from the club talking. It's
not Rainer saying to a reporter. So you just kind of do this thing where you start looking through club you know, you try to get you get in touch with clubs and see what they have, and you talk to them, see what they have in their files. You try to get the club history books and see that, and you find mistakes. You know, it's it's interesting. They have him in the one of the early histories of the history books from Rasquamicket. They have his name spelled
wrong and they don't even know his first name. And that book came out in nineteen ninety six, I think. And then you know, so then you just get on digitized newspapers and you just start searching out SETH. Rayner or SJ. Rayner, which he signed his name a lot or Seth J. Rayner. The problem with that is Rainer is a very common name on Long Island and now into New Jersey and Seth Rayner wasn't an uncommon name, so you bump into more than one Seth Rainers even
in that time period. And then the other thing, and I give a talk to superintendents on how to track the how to discover the architectural history of your golf course. One of the things you have to do is learn to spell wrong. You have to learn how how would rainer be misspelled in a newspaper? And R A Y N E R is one of those ways. We've actually
found some good stuff spelling it wrong. And the two big biggest websites right now that people use our newspapers dot Com, which you have to pay for, which is fantastic, and chronic it's called Chroniclingamerica dot gov. It's run by the Library of Congress. And because some of these newspapers still have copyright, they're only up into the twenties of what they're allowed to if they don't get permission from the paper to use. So we're not into the late
twenties yet. We haven't seen like twenty three, twenty four, twenty five, twenty six, and a lot of newspapers, which is we know we're going to find some more rainer stuff. But you just kind of start doing something like that, and it's really kind of strange how you bump into it, because you'll find you'll do something like I found that it's much better or not much better. But you always
would search the word links besides golf course. And always make sure that if if you're searching out, say country club at Fairfield, you call it Fairfield Golf Club in a search, because somebody's gonna get it wrong along the line. And sometimes club change, clubs change names, and you do that kind of stuff, and you just go down a rabbit hole and you look up and you've been spending four hours doing that, and you found some cool stuff.
What's spend your favorite SETH Rayner Discovery Wow.
So I did the book for Sure Acres and they had had a club house fire in the nineteen eighties. Then they thought they lost every thing, and I asked them just to check to see what they could find, and they found an old what am I thinking? In a bank a safe deposit bucks that had five or six letters in it, and some of the letters are
directly related to hiring Rayner. And then they hire Rayner in nineteen sixteen and nineteen seventeen, they stopped the project because of World War One, and then they come back and they restart the project in nineteen nineteen, and there's some letters between the founders talking about bringing Donald Ross in. Maybe they could get Donald Ross to draw a plan and then they'll decide which plan they like better. It
sounded like they didn't want to pay Ross. And one of the references in the letter is we could something along the line, and we could do what they did at Old Elm and locked them in the room together. And then it was Colton Ross, but locked Rayner and Ross in the room together and have them battle it out. And it's just stunning that they even thought that. And there's no history that that Ross was ever involved. I've talked to the Tough's Library, the Donald Ross archives down there.
There's no there's no record of him ever being involved in Shore Acres. But for a second they were gonna they were gonna pause the Rainer Planet bring in Donald Ross.
How about the idea of just putting two professionals in a room and letting them duke it out.
Yeah, as if what happened at Old Elm was okay, you know what I mean? Like that like that was a good experience for everybody involved. I know it was really kind of it's really kind of crazy. I mean, you bump into some funny things. I found out that I found out that Rayner was robbed when he was down doing the Gibson Island project. We know that he was in a train he was in a train accident
where the engineer got killed. We know that he lost his vest one time in Southampton and some indigent person returned it and was given a reward. I can tell you what car he drove for a few years. I know what his license plate was for a couple of years. Wow. Yeah, I mean you can bump into some crazy stuff. And and Rainer's grandniece, uh is still alive. So she never met Seth, but she knew her aunt was Ara Minta or they called her aunt Minta, but Seth Rainer's wife.
And so there's a you know, a direct connection. There's a direct connection to him through his through this grandie. And that's great to hear that.
Now for a quick word from our sponsors. This episode is powered by td Ameritrade. Great Players Change the Game and Teda Marrior Trades' innovations have always been game changing for investors, from being the first brokerage to let you trade on your phone to being the first to feature voice trading on Amazon Alexa, ted Ameritrade has always led the way with breakthrough technology that brings the market to you. Visit tedomritrade dot com, slash Frida egg to learn more
Member SIPC. Now back to Anthony Piapi. If you could ask him one question, what would your question be?
What they he What did he suddenly realize? You know, he was an engineer that didn't understand anything about golf when he looked at those template holes and McDonald showed him what a good golf hole is like, what did he grasp right away even though he wasn't a player? Because he has artistry to his work. He doesn't repeat holes from golf course to golf course, and I'll argue that on a lot of his golf courses, the best holes out there are the ones that he created.
I completely agree with that.
My favorite hole at Fisher's Island, and I caddied there for three years, is the short par four to seven. There is so much chada right and if you understand the wind and you understand the contour, and the angle of the green in relation to the small pond. I think it's a genius hole. What is it? Three hundred and forty yards, three hundred and fifty yards. It's a genius golf hole. And you can have sandwich in your
hand and make seven in a heartbeat. And you can have six iron in your hand and make a tap in power and walk to the eighth hole.
So this, yeah, I'd say the same thing with like Shore Acres, Like eleven and fifteen might be the two best golf holes on that on that course, and two of the best holes in the world, and they're they're they're completely his own original holes.
Right. You know, in the world of art, you kind of look at somebody's career, you look back to see when they you know, they're they're different time periods and when they got good and when they made certain changes. The same thing with musicians. To me, when you look back at Rangers' career, Shore Acres is this thunderbolt that says, this guy knows how to route a golf course. He's got five ravines on that piece of property, and he
uses them in every way possible. You play alongside of them, you play over them, you play to them, you play away from them. It's just amazing. And that's one of the first golf courses he ever wrote.
It you play over them, into them. It's unbelievable.
Yeah, yeah, it's that.
I wrote a whole article about that, that cadence of the routing. How and it's always different, you know, in different spots. It's incredible. That is one of the greatest routings in all of golf history.
Oh, I think so too. I mean, obviously I'm biased because I'm such a huge Rainer fan, but when you walk that, I've never sent anybody I've never known aboudy who's playing that golf course? That just didn't come back stunned. I mean, what is it? How far is it from the back teeth? And you'll use every club in your bag because there's places you want to lay up, there's places you want to be bold. There's these angles you have to play. You hit balls to certain spots and
it turns out that's wrong. If you play a hole and boy, if the flag was on the other side of the green, I would have this would have been the perfect angle. But it's on the right side, So now I have to play away from the flag. I mean, that's he routed that in nineteen sixteen. It's among the three or four first courses that he ever routed.
It's unbelievable and you think about it in that context, and right, I mean, that's why it's a great, great first question. And I was gonna say so, so templates have have come and in vogue in the last I'd say, I mean, really, I think the Evangelist probably was like the first, you know, kind of key domino in this, you know, and then the Internet obviously with people being able to find information and everything, you know, in terms of get steering. This a little back bit back to
Country Club of Charleston. What it's you it's in your sense, what are the most impressive template holes that we'll see this week at the US Women's Open.
I have a problem with people who who who rank I don't know if you do this, but rank the best of I hate that because it's they're not the same. It's really difficult to rank the best short hole and the best I agree with, Like, you know, you get to you get to someplace like Hodgkist School and you play this downhill Eden Part three and it's supposed to be a slightly uphill hole, and and the green works so well on that on that whole. How how do you put that up against the Edens, say at country
Club at Charleston, right or at Yamen's Hall. I don't understand. I just think it's a great hole in the setting. So I like that. The hole that stunned me at Charleston was that that the road hole, which is what three hundred and ten yard par four. It's usually a stiff par four or or a par four and a half. And he really created the strategy using the road hole green.
Even in the day when that when that with the with the longer, longer grass and balls even burned out, probably not running as far, it's still a drive and pitch hole. The strategy that's there because of the of the the bowing of the fairway. Balls run off to the right, balls run off to the left. You get yourself in these situations. You're staring at this the hell bar, not the hell bar, the road bunker right in front of you, you know, and you're just kind of sitting
there like what do I do with the shot? And you realize you're holding a sandwedg in your hand. You know, and you can really, you can really make a quick five or quick six there with one bad swing. And when I was talking to Frank Ford about this, you know, here's this, here's this guy that won the you shot sixty two there, he won the Azalea Invitational six times.
He said, you get off of eleven, which is this ridiculously difficult reverse for Dan, and you let down because you're saying to yourself it's just a three hundred and ten yard hole, and you make a bad swing with the driver and you're in a lot of trouble. Yeah, And I think that's an amazing, amazing strategy that just revolves around you know, this convex fair way and this road and classic road hole green.
Yeah, and that old tree that sits there. Yeah, you get a little over zealous that you're like, your ball's definitely get to hit that tree. You know, you get
trying to take off a little bit more. And then the green site, like we talked about, like the you know, on such a you know, modest piece of land from terms of movement, that green, the way it sits there, with the way what you talked about with that fairway slope, how if you if you play safe over left, it's just going to keep trundling down into the left in that green. It sits on that subtle little knoll that they have, you know, those three greens that you know twelve, fourteen and sixteen on.
Yeah, I read your arkd about that. That's that's really interesting observation that he put. He found that knob and he built those three greens on it. The other thing that's amazing is that when people see the eleventh the reverse for Dan, that was a natural outcropping that was just some in this on this flat piece of land, was this huge amount of soil earth and he just put he put a green on there, and that's pretty amazing. But you're right, I mean, he found those that little ridge,
he places those three greens on it. They're all amazing. It's a very cool, you know, it's very cool. But the other thing about that hole is it is an easy hole. If you play it right. Maybe you lay up off the team, Maybe you hit a wedge into the to the green and give yourself a twenty footer and you take you know, problems, all the problems away, and you make your two pott and you go to the next hole.
It's that's a hole where you know it. Mcdonn MacDonald talked about this with the Haskellball in his biography about how, you know, certain holes became infinitely more interesting and how some great holes became you know, very average, and you know these average holes became great. And I think that twelfth hole with the longer drives has become actually more interesting because you get all those odd little half ledges
up around that tiny, skinny little green. You know, it's just it's a very very good hole in today's modern setting, and you know it might be better today than it was fifty years ago.
I think you're right for the average player, and I think it will be that way for the women too. From what I understand, the guys in the Azilia not just driving it up next to the green, you know, they're hitting it three hundred and ten yards and just
rendering the architecture obsolete. But I can see that happening this week, coming up with somebody sitting there and just you know, even thinking that they've laid back further enough and now you have this really weird little numbers sixty four yards to a flag that's just right of the bunker in front of the green. I mean, what do you do? You know you're not You're not gonna be it's not gona you shut you're comfortable over you know, you're just gonna you're it's not gonna feel right. I
agree with you. You can, you can you get a good drive and being an awful spot.
That little knoll back there. I mean, I'm kind of bummed out. I had a late minute, last minute conflict that I can't go down this weekend. That would be just such a fun spot to sit and watch golf.
Yes, yeah, I agree with you. And you know, the seventeenth is right there, and that's a really good short hole and the green is a lot of fun and they're going to stand there and play it somewhere between like one forty five and one sixty, and you know, comes Sunday, it's gonna have you know, depending on where that flag is. You you hit into that green and you hit it in the middle, and that means you're you're putting out of the thumb print. There's no easy
puts on that home. Yeah, I grean unless you fire at the Unless you fire at the flag, and you don't want to do that because if you fall off an edge. You know, you're in those bunkers.
So that's that's the I think Raiders Part three, the short designs with the thumb prints.
Yeah, I mean, it's just it's.
What made him so brilliant was how subtle the challenge was, but how difficult it was at the same time to like, so hard to make two, but oh absolutely not really that hard to make a four.
No oh no, oh no, I've made a lot of easy fours on his short holes. It's really you know, you could, I can three putt from anywhere because you're going through the thumb print a lot. Yeah, you know, but you're right.
It's like nine thousand square foot green or seven thousand square foot green and one hundred and forty yard shot and at first look, it's like, oh, this is really easy.
I played in the Connecticut Foe ball at Yelled a couple of years ago, two years ago, and it was an off. It was soft and wet and whatever. We made one birdie and I burdied the short hold and I wasn't trying to burd it. I was trying to get a pot away from the So I had a two footer for par and I pushed it, and it's like, I think that might be the only birdy I've ever made on a raider short hole.
It's yes, it's They're very, very difficult, and they almost get more difficult over time because they get in your head.
Oh because you know too like you know, you get a shot and you're like, if that flag's there, I can't be here because I'm going to have to put through or around or over, you know, and watch the pros deal with it when they played it, when they played Greenbrier, I mean it was they have difficulty with it.
So we talked a little bit about some of his early projects, and Country Club of Charleston was one of his leaders. How would you say Rayner evolved as an architect from his early work to his later work.
That's interesting. The problem I had with making that make you a comment about that is so few of the golf courses are exactly the way he designed them, do you know what I mean? So I'm really hesitant to say he did this or or he did that. I think, jeez, that's a good question. I think he really got into understanding bunkering a lot more later on. I think in some of his later courses, it's when you see a lot like with with Yeman's and with Country Club at Charleston.
But I think he really understood, he really understood strategy and early on, and I think he just get better and you know, better and better at it. There's a I don't know if you ever saw the letter at
Chicago where he went out to work there. He had never been to the plains, and so in the nineteen twenties, Wheaton with this golf with Chicago Golf Club is is the plains, and he sat in a tower for two days and just looked out at the planes to kind of get this absorb this feel of what was what the landscape was, and so he could design a golf course that fit into the landscape. And that's astounding, right.
Yeah, yeah, like just taking in the nature to you know, I think that's something that so I would say, I'd classify Rainer as Golden Age maximal.
That's an interesting way to put it.
I mean, but like, so Golden Age maximal meant like move dirt where you absolutely have to, you know, to generate interest, which usually came at the green sites, right, but for the most part, just so sympathetic to the to the land because you can couldn't afford to move changed the way or or feasibly do it. Changed the way a fairway moved, right, I mean.
And you're absolute right in this. I mean, look at it. One of the misnomers of rainers that he moved a lot of dirt and he didn't you go to a place like Fisher's Island. Do you go to a place like Wanam Autonomy or Hodge Kiss or country club with Chelsea? What did he move dart for? He created teas and greens, right, that's it. And bunkers, that's it if the land did if the land didn't need bunkers. He didn't create bunkers. He didn't move a whole lot of dirt.
Golden Age Maximall right, I'll go with that. Yeah, that's like the right you know, I don't know. That's my thought is like it's kind of you know, the right way to do construction. Now, it's like Golden Age Maximumill move it where you have to, but for the most part, be extremely sympathetic to the land.
Yeah, yes, I agree with you, and it just you know, I don't like this whole full minimalism thing where you move six hundred million square yards of cubic yards of dirt and tell me that it's foe that's minimalism because it looks minimalism. I don't like that. I mean, you can do some good stuff with the land without without having to create all this stuff. You don't make as much money because you don't move as much land, move as much dirt. But I like that. I agree with that.
I mean, you go again going back to Newport Country Club. Look how much earth out there didn't get moved, and what a fantastic golf course that is?
Right, Yeah, it's it's so true. It's like it's so Garrett Morrison, who he edited the Country Club of Charleston article, and like the first thing he said to me after reading you know, my art, he was like, man, we need more golf courses like country.
It's absolutely true. I mean, you just kind of what's the word. I mean, you you meander, you know that kind of thing. It's you don't go on a hike, said that you meander, you know, you kind of wander. You just kind of wander through that property. It's just so nice and it just flows so easy, and you know there's all these bunkers but they're not offensive, and they're not flash sand, and they're not taking your eye away from nature. They're not taking your eye away from
the golf course. Yeah. Yeah, it's all brilliant stuff.
I agree. And it's like, I think one of the big things with like Country Club of Charleston is when you look at it at a bigger scale, like I'm a say, I'm a county that has a you know, a modest piece of land like Country Club of Charleston is a taint of attainable for every county in America, right, Like.
Every county course this way. You don't need greens that size, I absolutely agree with you. But other than that, you could have a strategic, fun golf course and not have to move a lot of dark. Yeah.
It's like, you know, like that's the thing that I think, like everybody, you know, it's like what we see with Augusta Nationals. Everybody seems to take away the pristine conditioning and doesn't look at all the other great things, like the other great things that Augusta National has.
You know, right, you get you get caught up in all of that stuff. Yeah, well we know that. I mean I've said this for a long time. People will drive by really good, low well nine hole golf courses for sure, to get a great nine old golf course to get to a mediocre eighteen whole golf course. You know, it's just but you're right. To get to your point, Yes, municipality could get one hundred and forty hundred and sixty acres and build a fantastic golf course with very few bunks.
Is just make it, just make it a fun layout, you know, and go from there.
Yeah, so a couple a couple kind of quick uh quick hitters, and we'll do you know, we'll have to do another one of these on a on a grander scale one of these days. You know about mister Jagger, Yeah, it's like my favorite, my favorite fact about Seth Rainer.
Seth Seth Jagger Rainer.
The middle name is Jagger.
He has to be related, right exactly. He can hear, he can hear somehow related.
He's got gotta be Okay, So most what would you say, what what do you find to be of years of studying what's your What do you think is the most overlooked aspect of the brilliance of Rainer?
I think what we said before is his his own golf holes. When you get to a golf course and you find the non template holes and you realize how good they are, I mean, it's it's it's really quite amazing. The thing is. And I don't know if this is his Charles Banks is his project? What did he teach Banks? Banks knew nothing about golf design. He didn't even played golf in high school or in college. He was he was a baseball player and he was a he was
a track star. What did what did he what would he be able to impart on on Banks to make Banks such a great designer as well?
Yeah, that's I mean, I his stuff and that's him. And Langford and Moreau were like the evolution of McDonald Rayner.
You know, yes, yes, I agree. Have you ever.
Uncovered any connection with Langford, Moreau and Rayner?
No, No, I'm trying to think. I think it was Ron Forst told me that there was absolutely like two eras of Langford Moreau design. Yeah, he has a theory that somewhere Langford saw or Rainer or McDonald golf course and what, okay, this is what I have to do.
I wonder, well, there was Langford before Moreau? Right, and then Langford after Moreau and Langford before Moreau is so subtle but like really good strategically. I always wonder if he went back and played Yale or something, right, because that could have been it.
Right. Oh yeah, And he's out in the Midwest. Does he see Saint Louis, Does he see Chicago?
I mean he had.
Milwaukee, right, Carmargo. Does he see those golf courses? Because if he does, you know that's gonna that's gonna change him. Yeah.
Yeah, it's crazy, I mean because they're like a very clear evolution in my mind.
Right. But the other thing, but the other thing about what you say about Banks is that's fascinating is he's more McDonald than Rainers. I mean, I find his green complexes to be boulder and you know he does stuff like puts a spine in the middle of a reverse for Dan at Forsgate. But he also wrote he's like McDonald,
he wrote, Rainer didn't write Yeah, it's yeah. I mean, it's just you know, Yer raynerd never as far as we know, right wrote one newspaper article, had a diary, had more than you know, the interview for the Olympic Club isn't isn't in depth. He doesn't. The interviewer talks about how Rainer doesn't doesn't want to reveal anything, doesn't want to talk. Yeah, yeah, and then you get and then you get Banks, who goes out and writes a
seven part series. Four was an American golfer about golf course design and it's fantastic, had seven part series.
He was just a surveyor, you know, he was a surveyor from Southampton.
Yeah, yeah, But Banks was an English teacher and a fundraiser at the Hodgkis School.
But he was an English teacher, English and engineering. There's two different two different wavelengths.
All right, all right, I'll get you. Okay, so the English part, we can get the writing. But where does he get to design stuff? Right? That's right?
Very cool? So, uh all right, last last question here, Yeah, what's uh give us your your your favorite little known Rainer fact that you know you like to drop that that most people, most schmucks like me, wouldn't know.
All right, So, je you took away my Jagger one because nobody knows that his middle name is Jagger, right.
Right, I'm thinking about just calling him Jagger from.
Now Jagger Rainer. I think the funny the thing that I found out about him, you know, when you see all the photos, he seems to be a be a very stoic person, almost unemotional. And from what I understand, what I've found out from his grandiees, is that his wife, Minta was was a card. She was really funny and full of life and always bubbly. And the four or so photos of I have of them together, she's laughing or doing something in every photo. And she traveled with
him later in his career. She went everywhere with him. So when Banks wrote this piece a year after McDonald, excuse me, after Rayner died about being with Rayner at Lookout Mountain which was then called Ferry Lane Golf Club, and and she was with him and and and when they spent a week there, and Banks stayed at Lookout, And according to Banks, Rayner went to Cincinnati, which was ben Camargo, Milwaukee which is Blue mount He goes out to California, he goes to Hawaii. Ara Minta's with him
for that whole time. So he's working sun up to sun down at Lookout and she's doing her thing on the mountain or going into Chattanooga or whatever, and you just see these photos and she just looks like such a funny person. And and and Mary Cummings, Rayner's granny, said she couldn't wait to see Aunt Minta, that she was always always fun and always great to be around, and she just seems this opposite personality than than Seth Rainer. But I think it's it's a huge window into who Seth Rayner was.
Do you think he was more like his wife than than the photos which suggest or do you think this is an opposite attract situation.
I think it's one of those ones where he really appreciated that, do you know what I mean? Like I'm guessing, I don't know, But she's just when you see the photo, she just looks like like she's up to no good, Like she's gonna crack a joke, like she's giggling about something. You know, when he's standing there, like he looks like a statue in one of the famous photos, and you're just like wow, and he's he was like, this is the person I want with me when I go cross
country on these crazy train trips. You know, to get to California from from Tennessee, you had to go where Omaha change trains there, you know, and then go to Sacramento and change trains there to get down to you know, San Francisco, and then take the steamer to Hawaii.
And she was with him that the travel is just wild to even think about. And I'm sure the train cars were like had some, had some and against going on.
Yeah, and you know about one of the good There's two other guys who do a lot of research with me, Brett Lawrence, who's a member at Hodgekiss, and a guy named Nigel Islam. And you know, Brett Lawrence pointed out to me that there wasn't a cross country train. You didn't get on a train in New York and end up on the West coast. You were changing in Chicago and you were changing in Omaha, and it's like this wasn't just get on the train and I'll see you and we'll be there in five days. There was a
lot going on. So it's quite amazing. And he traveled with her.
Is there any notes in the clubs about Rainer actually playing golf at his courses?
Nothing that we've ever seen, And I've never known him to be on site of a golf course once it was completed right, Yeah, I mean right, but even like you said, in those days when they're they're they're building slowly, some holes would be grassed and playable by the time the last holes are being grassed. And you never hear that.
I don't know if that's the crazy other crazy thing think about with Seth Rainer's like, you know, arguably the architects most deserving to be in the Hall of Fame.
That's not you know, without a doubt, without a doubt, right, And.
He may never have never really played golf.
Right, right, we know, right, it seemed like he picked up some clubs every now and then, and he said at some point or he was quoted as saying that he didn't want to get good at the game because then he'd start to design for himself for his game, and he didn't want to do that.
See, that's that's a fascinating thing, because you see it with almost every architect. They are blind to their own game, whether they like.
It or not. Right, and didn't Jack Nicholas finally admitted that right that all on his courses, the high fade was the best shout to play into all his greens. He finally admitted that a lot of people knew that before, before he knew it.
It's like McDonald's it all America was doomed from the start with golfing architects, you know McDonald with his with his fade, when everybody, because the clothes were too tight, designed a golf course with like ten holes on out of bounds, left, none without of bounds right.
Right, you know. And to get back to a question you asked me before and maybe surprising things about Seth Rayner, I think it's really interesting. He's one of the few golfers, a few architects that I can think of, that doesn't necessarily open a course with an easy hole because you know, in those days there was no practice, you had no range, so you went out and they kind of eased you
into the round. And you think about something like the first hole at Yale, or the first hole at the country club at Charleston, and the first hole at Hodgekiss right away you have to golf your ball. Yeah, you know, he had other and but he didn't follow those patterns because then you could go to other courses where the first hole wasn't difficult. You know what, the first hole
was a manageable part four or part five. And that's one of the other things I found out about, you know, is that he did he did things as the site dictated, not by following any kind of structure.
He really loved two shot radance.
Too, and he's the guy that I think he's the guy that invented it. The author in that piece for the Olympic Club refers to a two shot radand he actually uses that phrase in that article, and that's nineteen eighteen. And I'm not sure that anybody else came up with that came up with that phrase or I've we've never found it before then, you know, but you're right, and it's a wonderful strategy. It's a wonderful hole because even if you knock down your drive, you can still play it.
I played holes that are two shot short holes that don't work because you have to lay up. Yeah, but with a two shot radan, you can knock down your drive or be well back and still play that ground game and get it to where it's supposed to go, or at least get it onto the green. Yeah.
I mean, obviously, like one of the best ways to combat wedges is with a green that falls away. And that's like what makes two shot redance, so good. Now it's like, you know, twelve at Fisher's won it one and uh one at Chicago Golf. That's kind of one. And you got one at Fox Chapel. You got I mean, they're all over the place.
One eight at Yale, Yeah, one at Hodge Kiss. I'm just trying to think.
Of eleven at Yale.
Two, yes, eleven at Yale. Right right, so you have two of them there, right.
I don't know how to one. I don't know how to explain eight at Yale. That's like a cape reverse, Dan, Dan.
It's a it's a cape, I would yeah, I mean Banks refers to it as that green side is as having cape properties in Banks is in McDonald and Rainer's mind, the cape was all about the green They had nothing to do with the TA shot.
Yeah, can you go into that. This is kind of one of my pet peeves.
So somewhere along the line, people came to came to believe that a cape hole involved a bite off T shot. So you kind of played out to a peninsula as if you were playing from Boston out on to Cape cod But to McDonald and Banks and Rainer, the cape aspect was the green, that the green was what was sticking out into the hazard, whether it be water like the hole at mid Ocean, or whether it be surrounded by have sand on you know, two sides like the eight at Yale or this.
Week's two at country Club at Charleston.
Correct. Correct, And so the cape has absolutely nothing to do with the tea shot. Rainer and Wigga, I mean McDonald and Wigham co. Wrote an article about it, and they refer to it as just as the green. And when Banks writes about Yale for the Yale Daily or the Yale Alumni Magazine, he talks about the green having cape qualities. It's never, never, never about the tea shot. And there can be bite off te shots, but that's not the cape aspect of them, all their whole designs.
When they refer to poles, they're talking about the green. That's why when you look at something like the long gone nine hole Ocean Links, they refer to the Is it the second I'm going to get confused, but I think it's the second hole they refer to as shore Acres, and there's no hole at shore Acres that ever look like that. It's the green of that hole that mimicked the green or or was patterned after green at shore Acres. That's why it's called shore Acres. And so so for them,
the concept of cape is all about the green. Yes, you can have a bite off T shot, but it's not required. The second hole at Yale is referred to as a cape. It does not have a bite off T shot. We know who the original t's are, we still play them. There's no bite off T shot there.
Yeah, And there's a lot of times they create that that with a cross bunker or Yale you kind of have you have like the chasm down the left, you know that mimic, but it's not the yeah exactly, you know, like the bunkers they usually use, or you know, shore Acres has the ravine. There's something that protects the ideal line on all of them, but it's not that's not the fundamental part.
Of the whole right and and and the problem is for the player is if you take the conservative route, that's going to cause you to have an approach shot that requires you to play kind of across the green or diagonally into the green, rather than down the fall line or i mean down the access of it, not
down the fall line. Down the access of it. And that's that's I think where people get the strategy wrong is and they and they miss why they missed the whole Cape concept is they don't understand the importance of placing the T shot.
Yeah, yeah, exactly, I think. I mean, I think that's a good way. That's the you know last Uh we'll give people a little bit of you know, education here. It's one of my like pet peeves when I hear, like you hear it on telecasts all the time, Oh, this Cape T shot. It's like this not a thing.
Yeah, it's not a thing as far as we know. I mean, it's not a thing for McDonald, banks and Rayner. I mean that's not how they think of k Pole, which you're absolutely right.
Yeah. So, uh well thanks for coming on. Uh well, we're excited to watch Rainer on display. I'm sure you're you're really excited.
Well, yeah, I mean it's great, right, we get to see Rainer, we get to see Brian Silva's restoration of the golf course, we get to see the work to Kyle Franz did it's we finally get to see Rainer and you know USGA Primetime, The PJ tours had in primetime. But I love this golf course and I can't wait to see it. I can't wait to see the women play it.
So uh yeah, it'll be awesome. I hope for good weather and I think we're going to see a lot of relevant architecture on TV, which it doesn't happen every week.
Right, and being played like we talked about before, being played the right way. Right, we're going up. We hope, we want to. We hope to see the ball on the ground running onto these greens and that that would be fantastic.
Yeah, so thanks so much and we'll talk soon.
Thank you for the invite. It was a pleasure. You've been listening to the fried Egg podcast. We do the digging for you.