Welcome back to part two of Golf Course Architecture one oh one on the Yoke with Doak. If you miss part one, check it out on our feed, on iTunes, Stitcher, or on our website. And if you join the podcast, please give us a review and rate us in the iTunes store.
Tom Dok is back and as usual, he's not holding back, but don't toss the yolk and the famously candied Doak doesn't pull any punches.
How do I make natural looking contour? Hire the biggest pool in the village and told.
Him to get flat first?
Overrated, underrated, rough, terribly overrated over the years.
So you've mentioned front to back sloping greens a couple times, and Tom w had a question. He says, I think that front to back sloping greens are challenging and interesting. Why don't we see more greens that slope this way?
There's two reasons you don't see those more. One is that they're hard to see from the fairway.
You know, if you're playing a hole that's just running straight down a hill and then the green keeps running down the hill, that's okay. That's just the same as having a flat hole with a flat green. You still see the same stuff, but if the hole's not really playing downhill, and then you've got you know, the green is kind of above your eye level a little bit, and it goes away from you. You don't see any of the surface of the green, and most golfers don't
like that. They're very uncomfortable with it when they only see the flags sticking up behind the bunker and they can't really see if it's ten feet on the green or fifty feet on the green or whatever. So you know, and then the other reason is a green that goes away from you doesn't hold as well, and you've got a ton of players just immediately I hit a good shot and it didn't hold the green.
That's unfair.
So really it goes back to those two reasons. Make greens running away from you not popular. Doesn't mean it's not good design, but it means you're not going to get a lot of love for doing a lot of greens that go away from you. And you kind of have to balance that out when you're designing a golf course. Is how much do I care about that?
You know?
I know the more of this, you know, I know this is going to make the course more challenging and more interesting. But I also know it's going to turn some people off. So how far am I willing to go on that? And you know, I've done it a lot on some courses. Keep Kidnappers has a bunch of them because they're you know, keep kidnappers. Everybody thinks of it as a pretty flat side overlooking the ocean, but the real the whole thing is on you know, a
decent tilt. It's like a tabletop, but it's a tilted tabletop, so the visibility is not really a problem. Basically, every hole that plays toward the ocean is playing downhill and the greens going away from you.
It's kind of like the first hole at Oakmont, and that's a perfect example of where the best players in the world all of a sudden have to think about where they're landing the shot and how much it's going to roll out.
The first hole of Oakmont is you know, that's like a perfect example of what's good about a hole with a green running.
Away, because.
The part of the hole that people don't understand or don't get through their thick skull is if you're going to miss that green, miss it over the back. Yeah, that's that's counterintuitive to most golfers. But you know, if you go along, you're chipping back uphill and it's not so severe. The worst thing you can do is try to sneak it onto the front of the green and either.
Be short or miss it in the rough.
Short and now you've got a terrifying little chip to a green that's still screaming away from you. Is you know that costs you, Like a that's usually a full shot. You know, you try to sneak it on the green and miss, your next shot is going to be at the back edge where you would have been in two if you had just taken more club. That's why I think those holes are worthwhile. And yet those are the ones that people people, the average golfer would scream about.
The first hole at Oakmont, really long part four to a green that's really falling away from you is about as hard as it gets for most people. And they don't think, just rip a shot through the green, it doesn't matter going back and go from there.
The course.
I grew up playing this little Muni and it is built in a floodplain in the sixties. This hole is someone The longer part fours and notoriously, the contractor built the green upside down, so it's built up in the front where it would have been built up in the back.
Okay, and then it goes.
I was thinking gravel on top that would have been really bad.
But it runs away and it gives everybody just fit. I mean, I remember that was where my high school team played, and that hole was always the toughest hole because you're if they put the pin back, you're hitting to this green that runs away and you always end up over. But it was, you know, in terms of the holes that I think of, despite the build up
in the front, the super unnatural. It's like one of the holes I remember the most about that first and I think is one of the best holes there and it's dead straight your your first hole at Stonewall North has got that pitch running away.
We were thinking about the first green at Oakmont when we built that hole.
So uh, here's another question from Gordon Collins. I don't understand how to know what makes for a great green complexes. I'm starting to recognize whole strategies and why the architect can put certain features in those locations plays in different ways to play a whole but appreciating a good green complex versus a bad one is not something I grasp.
Really good question, you know.
I think it's it's a microcosm of what makes a good golf hole.
In the strategy of a good golf hole.
I mean, when I'm building courses, I spent the most of my time, you know, when we design a green, it's not so much for what the putts are going to be like, it's what the recovery shots are like around the green. I spent a lot of time, Like I remember sev when he used to play golf. You know, he'd be like he wouldn't have a club in his hand.
He'd just be visualizing the shot and kind of making a little swing, trying to figure out, Okay, where am I going to land this ball so it stops dead to the hole, And I almost do the same thing. It's like, okay, from over here, who you'd be really dead to that pin placement and over here and not so bad. So to me, a really good green complex is just one that there's a variety of difficulty around
the green. There's a good side to beyond and there's a bad side to be on, just like there's a good side of the fairway to be on and there's a bad side of the fairway to be on. So you can do that with a lot of different things. You know, you can have a water hazard on one side and open ground to the other. You can have just you know, one or two really nasty bunkers that are a bad place to be. But you know, usually what's going to make it hard is the tilt of the green.
That no matter.
You know, if the green's tilted and there's a high side and the low side, usually you don't want to be on the high side. You want to be pitching or chipping uphill. So you know, sometimes that could be side to side in the greens. Sometimes it could be front to back like we were talking about. Traditionally it's back to front. You know, we try to mix it up so it's not the same for eighteen holes and you can't just say, okay, I always want to miss
short and that'll be the easiest chip. But a good green complex is one where there are good places and bad places to be.
That's so with that, you use a ton of short grass around the greens, How does.
That not necessarily we like to use more short grass around the greens, but it's the same. You know, if
there's rough surround in the green. You know, Wingfoot has rougher bunkers surrounding every green, but there's still bunkers you can be in and have a place to get up and down, and bunkers you better not be in like they you know, in the US Open, they used to talk about short sighting yourself all the time, Like the greens are pretty small and if you wind up, you know, if the pins on the tuck right and you miss the green right and the rough, you know, you're trying
to hit a little touchy shot out of rough and you've only got ten feet of green to work with before it gets away from the hole. That's another example. I mean, even though there's no short grass around the green, you know, good player looks at that and goes, no, I need to miss to the wide side. And usually that's true. The only exception is if you've got a
green this crowned. You know, we like to play with that too, where where you're bailing out and you think it's going to be an easy shot from there and it's not.
Yeah, crown greens are are nasty.
They well, it's there it's that they're counterintuitive, you know, the you know, good players tend to if in doubt, they play toward the middle of the green, and then all they have to do is miss it a little to the one side, and they're putting over the crown and they're they're so focused on avoiding short sighting themselves that they don't realize there are holes where that's the right place to miss.
Yeah.
I almost try and never short side myself.
Right, but on a crown green, that's the place you want to miss usually as long as it's not real severe what's over to the right of the green side.
The crown greens also get the ball rolling, which, yes, like that's something I hate when I see the ball rolling.
It's like most people don't have a choice that roll.
Yeah, I think that's a it's a that's a difference between the you know, the average Like the ball rolling for a beginning player is like the best, most beautiful site, and the ball rolling for a tour player that's like when they've lost control.
Yep, you're right for the most part.
So Justin Anderson uh wants to know where does where do you draw the line between an interesting green complex and a silly green complex.
That line's different for everybody. You know, I'm a ten handicap now or twelve. At best, I was about a five, but the strength of my golf was having a pretty good short game. So where I draw the line is probably a little farther higher up on the scale than where somebody else would draw the same line. But you know, the only thing I think is really unfair on a green, well, there's two things I've seen there that are unfair on
a green. If you've got to play, you know, if there's enough tilt where they're put in the hole that if you try to put it up to the hole and it turns around and comes.
Back, that's unfair. That's you know, you know, that's silly.
You know, if you're above the hole and when you're putting, you know it goes aways past. I don't think that's unfair, you know, that's that's one of the few things you can do to challenge a good player, and you're you're telling him, don't get above the hole.
You know.
But as long as that pot from the other side of the hole will stop where it stops so you can go up and tap it in, then I think that's okay. The other thing I don't I think you have to be really careful of is having agreen with a lot of contour next to a water hazard. You know, every the thing I learned from Saint Andrew's more than anything else, was that all the crazy contourors out there, there's a good side and.
A bad side to every one of them.
And all the things that you complain about is being unfair. That contra is in my way and I have to put over the hole and it won't stop. If you'd have missed to the other side. That was a backstop for you, and it's your fault for being in the wrong place and having to deal with it. But when you add water to the mix, you know, if you put the water in the place where the bailout should be, then there's nothing you can do. A hole that I like to criticize a lot, just because people are familiar
with it. Fifteen at Augusta. You're hitting You're hitting a second or third shot off a downhill lie. There's a pond right in front of the green, a shave bank going up to a shave short grass bank going up to the green. A green with a fair amount of tilt that's not really deep, and then it goes over the back, so you have to, like, if you miss long, you have to chip up over a slope and down
toward the water. You know, that green really isn't it's not the most difficult green at Augusta by any stretch, but there's enough tilt to it that you really don't want to be chipping to.
The downhill toward the water.
And yet you can't leave yourself on the low side because there's.
A pond there.
Yeah, so there's you know, that's the kind of hole I try to avoid.
Building m HM, where there's where there's no real safe bailout right.
It's kind of what we talked about.
Every shot, every shot around the green is a hard shot. There's no easy side. It's just all.
Hard that that makes a lot of sense that you should have one spot you can go, but you're giving up the especially on that whole a par five, you're giving up if you bail over there. You're giving like to say, there was a safe spot. You bail there, you're giving up your like easy look at a birdie or a chance at a birdie if it's your third shot, or a chance at an eagle if you're long enough to get there in two right.
And you know, I've never really thought about it much in this discussion, but you know there there wasn't a pond to start with. It was a little stream going in front of the green and there was a little more room to the right by the bunker. So the original design of the hole it wasn't so bad. And you know, turning the stream into a pond really took away. You know, when the stream was there, Even if the stream was right up against the green, you could kind of chip over the stream.
But with the pond there, you.
Know, missing short means missing forty or fifty yards short and then having that downhill lie to hit that little shot over that's that's that's the hardest thing. I'd rather be in the water if I could drop somewhere that I didn't have to hit that little shot.
Yeah, that half ledge from a downhill lie to like a shallow green is pretty tough for every type of flair.
That's right.
So here this kind of plays into our discussion. While John Wills asked, why do green surrounds an aprons always seem so scripted? Why can't the short grass and closely moan turf be more like you're bunkering, don't you know, like the I guess the short turf around, you know, and like artistic bunkering shapes.
It could I mean, you know, I think that's one of those things that there was probably a lot more interest in the mowing patterns on approaches on old golf
courses has just been lost over time. You know, Tommy, who is the superintendent for a high point, the first course I did when you sat Crystal Downs, I asked him one day, do they like teach you a class in chure school about you know, narrowing up the approach to the green, you know, like bringing the rough in toward the green so it looks like a you know, narrows down to like a neck and then widens out
to the green. Because it seemed like everything I saw did that, and I was pretty sure that on original golf course it wasn't like that.
And he said.
It was just a subconscious thing that that he'd seen so many holes like that that he just naturally did it without thinking twice about it. And you know, sure enough, over time the golf course had changed because you know, superintendents imitate what they've seen in other places, and unless there's unless there's some pretty detailed map of how the golf course was supposed to be, things tend to get rounded off and more normal over time. Yeah, it's like
like Chicago's a great example. You know, there's a lot of different architects that worked in Chicago, and they had all different kinds of bunker styles. But when I first saw courses in Chicago in the seventies and eighties, the bunkers on every course looked the same. They all looked like Madna because Madna was the great course in town and that's where they played the big tournament. So everybody
just sort of subconsciously started imitating with Dinah. Even if, you know, even if it was a Langford course with a steep bank in front of the green that was all grass, they would start flaring sand up the banks because that's what it would take to make it look like the great course down the road.
Yeah, I think about the short knacks that I mean, I had never thought about that, but now that I think, it's, like, God, how many golf courses have that, like that narrow neck going into the green.
It's and it's one of the worst things you can do.
I mean for the average player, you know, they need to run the ball into the green and you're always catching them up at the edge before they get there. Yeah, you know, and it's not you know, the good player is not worried about that at all. You're you know, you're flying over at ninety nine percent of the time, so you don't care. But the average player, it sticks
them up a lot. And then the other thing is, you know I talked about, you know how you're trying to build bounces into the thing, and it's the bounce. You know, whether the bounce would help you onto the green or make it bounce away from the green. It takes both of them away and the ball just stops right in front of the green every time.
That's it's one of the thrills.
Like so many times, there's contours around the edges of bunkers, and the thrill of golf is like having your ball right on the edge of something and see if it goes in or out.
Yes, And you know, I probably never would have realized that if it wasn't firstpend in that year in the UK, right out of college, because you didn't see mowing patterns like that I.
Mean it was.
You know, the earliest golf courses were kind of grazed and there wasn't you know, nobody was deciding exactly what part of it to mow.
How but.
Over time, you know, they they just didn't. You know, nothing about golf course design or maintenance was very.
Very formal back in the old.
Days, so you know, making kind of a symmetric approach was just not something that they were ever thinking about.
Yeah, they just they just mowed the grass as much as much grass as they needed to mow, or the sheep ate it right, or the sheep.
Joshua Robi wants to know how do you feel about trees as a safety feature.
Trees as a safety feature are usually a bad idea.
You know, if.
Two holes are close enough together that you've got a safety problem. I, as a golfer, would rather see the ball coming or at least know that there's somebody hidden in my general direction. And if I'm the one hitting the shot over there, it'd be nice to know I need to yell for because there's somebody there, Because you know, you will have situations on golf courses where you don't realize there's anybody there at all, and they're in a
dangerous spot. So you know, the ironic part of that is when you're consulting for club, if you take a tree out and then somebody gets hit, there might be a liability suit over that, and there's going to be the assumption that the tree might have saved the player from being hurt. But I find that's not the case. You know, that's saying about trees being ninety percent air applies to incoming as well as outgoing.
Well, yeah, a tree could ricochet, of all, and it could hit somebody that wouldn't have ever even been in the right in the area.
That is also true.
It makes me think about like six through eight Aposa Tiempo and all those trees.
Yes, and.
I'm not sure if I should say on the record, but the reason those trees are still there is because years ago a golfer on the eighth green was killed by a snap hook off the seventh t So that's one of those instances that me telling them to take out all the trees would open up a huge can of worms if anybody ever did that again.
And that's why those trees are still there.
Even though that those golf holes were certainly designed to all be one big space where you could just you know, on seven, you could he had room to miss left or right instead of hitting a tree on either side of the fairways.
It's where it being a course that gets forty thousand rounds a year instead of like a ten thousand round exclusive club really kind of hurts sure as a golf course.
And that's what.
You know, if Alistair McKenzie had a weakness as a designer, it was that he didn't visualize those courses ever. Being that busy, you know, he would try so hard to take a natural feature like a wash or something and get it into play on two holes, just one, and.
That would put the holes pretty close together.
And then so a lot of times when you look at some of his older courses that aren't so well known, that's the problem because first there are these two holes that were too close together. They were both cool holes in isolation together, they were kind of too close, so they planted trees in between them to keep people from it in each other.
And then, you know, and that took.
Away the feature that the holes were routed around, so you it went from two good holes to two bad holes just because they were a little too close together for somebody's comfort.
Yeah, I think everybody, every golfer should just have to be a sign a liability for him if I get hit, like, I'm not going to sue because like you know, you're going, You're choosing to go play golf.
Put a lovely concept.
There's a lot of golf course architects that would support that, but there's a lot of trial lawyers that wouldn't.
Sean wants to know your views on hidden bunkers.
There's very few people that think bunkers a hidden bunker is a good idea, and I've used them very rarely in my own work, even though you know, I'm a huge fan of Saint Andrew's and a bunch of other links courses where there are bunkers that are really hard to see.
From the tea.
So you know, I would never dismiss them as being okay, because that would mean I'd have to take out some of the coolest bunkers at St. Andrews because they don't apply. And of course, when you talk about hidden bunkers, it's like from anywhere do you have to be able to see the bunker from any place you've driven it, or just you know, do you have to see every bunker you could possibly hit into from the te one of the few hidden bunkers that I could think of that
that I really loved. My first golf course, High Point, had a little short part four on the front nine, and it was a three hundred and twenty or thirty yard hole and the green kind of sat on this slight crown in the ground, so you know, it was it was kind of built. It was a shallow green, kind of long from left to right, and it sat up a little bit and then it fell off in the back and there was a there was a little hollow in front that you could see and it was
all short grass. But behind it I put a pop bunker maybe the I don't know if it was the deepest pop bunker I built on any course, but it was.
It was very difficult and it was really small, kind of like the Devil's asshole at Pine Valley.
Not that severe, but severe. The golf pro at high Point when it opened said what is that thing? And abandoned. Well, so that's what we called it. It's beat existence. But to me, that was a great hazard on a short part four like that, because the player that knew it was there, was scared to death of it.
You know.
It was like if the pin was anywhere near the back of the green, near where that bunker was, you didn't remember exactly where the bunker was, so you had to be extra careful. And of course I gave you plenty of room to miss in front. You could miss in front all day and then trying not to three pot but hitting it back there was really nasty. And by the same token, you know, ninety percent of golfers never miss long with an approach shot.
Yeah, I mean they might skull one occasionally, but you.
Know, bad golfers, even reasonable golfers, they always picked the club that if they hit it perfect, it'll just barely get there.
So you know, the odds that.
They're gonna miss ten yards or fifteen yards past the pin are pretty small, especially on a short on a short shot, So I figured that bunker was really out of play for everybody but the better players, and it was.
It really got in people's heads. So never say never.
In general, yes, you'd like to be able to see where the bunkers are, but there's an exception to pretty much every rule.
When I when I was when I grew.
I grew up caddying for like twelve years, and I always just like I would just hand people like a club or two extra. It's so funny how you say, like, I would always bank on them not hitting them ball solid and over clubbing them so that that that they be on the green.
And actually, now that I think about it, one of my best lessons about hidden bunkers was from a couple months that I caddied in Saint Andrews. There's there's one hole in particular Saint Andrews. The twelfth is the short part four, and there was like three, three or four bunkers in the fair way that you can't see from the tea. They're really kind of all built for when the when the hole used to play backwards in the
old days. And the first few times that I tried to caddy there for better players, I would try to describe where the bunkers were, but it's hopeless to try to. You know, you're looking at it as at a sea of fairwehead. It's like, well, there's a couple bunkers kind of in the middle at one ninety, and then there's a couple of bunkers out there at two forty and you know, and then they just top it off the tee because they were made them scared to death. So
you know what I learned from that. I learned from that that you know, when you caddy for somebody, you have to be positive. Yeah, and you just you know, don't tell them about the things that they can't see. Just try to point them at somewhere where they can avoid it. And you know, if they if they happen to hit one in the bunker, you can apologize after. But but you know, the negative thought is the last
thing you want to put in their minds. And I you know, and because of that lesson, it's like every time I watch the every time I watch the tour and they've got the mics close to the guys. Their caddies are so good at positive reinforcement. It's like the last thing they say to him is that's the perfect club.
You know.
It's not like it's not like swing extra hard at this or there's gonna be trouble.
It's I've never thought about it, but caddying is actually kind of a because when you caddy for beginners or like the average golfer, like it was, I was always about like getting people around the golf course and like
avoiding hazard, like avoiding bunkers at all costs. But then for good players, you're like you learned, hey, take this line like get you you want to you want to take this aggressive line because like, you know, you you get these good players that could actually take advantage of things. But for like you know, everybody else, you're just navigating him around the course of the easiest you know kind of path.
Yep.
And you know, caddying is part psychology. Playing golf as part psychology. Architecture is part psychology.
It's maybe we should, you know, instead of former PGA tour players becoming caddies, they should be their caddies, or becoming architects that should be their caddies.
I did.
I had to give a speech in Saint Andrews a few years ago, and that's one of the things I said. It was I got to play in the Dunhill Links thing one time. I was really out of my comfort zone playing a pro am with a bunch of pros. But it was kind of a gift from the client that Sabonic, who was good friends Johann Rupert, who runs Dunhill, was also one of the founding members of Sabonic. So so the two of them let me play in the pro aram without paying, however much a cost to do it.
And you know, the caddies I had at Saint Andrew's and Kingsbarns especially were so good that I when I was given my talk at dinner, I was like, the two caddies that I've had the last two days.
Would have been really good architects, you know, if.
They could figure out how to make the land conform to what they do, because what they what they were doing was you know, looking at my game and trying to figure out how to navigate me around the golf course, which is you know, that's the weakness of a lot of players, is you know, and you know I've noticed playing that when I play with people I've had, you know, I have tons of people say, oh, that's one of the best rounds I've ever played.
And it's.
You know, it's partly because I'm helping steer them around a little bit, and some of it's not reinforcing the negative, but some of it's just you know, trying to simplify it for them because in their own heads it's way you know, it's way more complicated and they don't need to be thinking about all those things at once.
Mark Stevens wants to know why there aren't more courses using micro contours in the fairway that lead to non level lies.
Unfortunately, the reason for that is because a lot of people think it's poor work. You know, the contractor would look bad if he didn't make the fairway look perfectly groomed, or the superintendent would look bad if if you couldn't mow all those little bumps just perfectly.
It's funny. We did a you know, we've been working on.
Woodhall Spa in England and there's a hole there that I had him clear out a bunch of trees to the right of the hole and restore some fairway to the right. And you know, we did all the work in the dirt last winter and I hadn't seen it with grass on it. And I went back it was
I just came from there. We've been doing the second phase of our work this winter and I just once walked around the six holes that we did last year and I walked this fairway and I was like really rugged and even, and I was like, oh man, they didn't spend a lot of time finishing the fairway that I added, and then I looked over at the rest of the fairway and it was exactly like that. I was like, good for that. It would have really looked
out a place if they'd done too much. But the high point the fairways were very uneven like that, and everybody thought that we just did a crappy job. They couldn't imagine that we wanted to leave some of that stuff in to be more random. It's really hard to it's really hard to do. It's really hard to get
everybody to accept. And certainly the more you know, if you're if you're working with a piece of ground that it wasn't by trees and you didn't have to reshape it very much, then there's a lot of that natural wrinkle in it, and maybe it's saving you to not
take it out. But in most cases it seems like, you know, if you're if you're having a clear trees and clean up the fairway, or or you're having to shape the fairway, then it's it's hard to make that kind of little wrinkle in the fairway and have it look natural at all.
Yeah, it's I think those little contours are another thing that, like we've talked about with a couple of things, like that's something that gets in good players' heads. And you know, the fifteen twenty handicap doesn't really even recognize, you know, if there's like a just a subtle side hill.
Yes, and you know, and and the more extreme versions too.
I mean, one of my favorite holes in the world is that is a par five at Crystal Downs, the eighth hole, and if you're playing it into the wind where most people will drive the ball as down in a bowl and there's all these bumpy conters and you know you can get it's about fifty to fifty that you'll draw like an awkward stance with the ball sitting on a downhill and a bump pretty close in front of it, and it's like, you know, you're on a par five and you're a long way from the green
and you're thinking, I can't hit a forewood here. You know, it's just gonna hit right into that bump. I mean, I got to hit like six iron or seven iron or something to make sure I get it over the bump. And then if I do that, I probably won't even be able to reach the green. In three and you know, so that's the kind of thing that most guys would say, well,
that's completely unfair, but no, that's just random. And you know that could have happened to your opponent instead of you, and you wouldn't be complaining that.
Yeah, that whole On the next shot, there's all the kinds of contours too on the up by the green, which is really cool. So this is uh, I get to use quotes and use a profanity like we were talking about before we got on the podcast. So what is one feature you implement in your design that gives you the most personal joy when you look back upon completion? And by joy I mean the inner chuckle that says, huh, that's gonna fuck with them.
That's from Ryan Gilbert. Okay, he wants to know the pain.
It's funny how so many golfers assume that architects are trying to screw them, and you know that that we're all sadistic in some way, and you know, every every little trick we put out there is to hurt you instead of maybe help you. And you know it goes back to what I said about the old course. Every contra out there has a good side.
And a bad side.
So yeah, as much as that little bump that I put at the back of that green messed with your shot, and I get the only reason I get a chuckle out of it is because I know that you could have done something else. You know, if I really didn't give you anything else to do, then the joke would beyond me. But I think it's you know, for me, the joy is the little subtle stuff like that more than the big stuff.
You know.
By the same token, I've worked on some beautiful pieces of land, and I think that all of the guys that work for me, you know, what we're best at is.
The esthetic part of it, and.
The composition and making everything look like it fits and like it's been there forever. And people get really emotional.
About it in a good way. You know.
Sometimes they get emotional in a bad way, they get really angry that some.
Little contra affected them or whatever.
Sometimes they get really emotional in a good way, either because they get a good bounce or just because.
They're they're.
Excited or thrilled to be out on a place like Pacific Dunes and just take it all in.
You know.
I heard from a couple, well, I heard from one of the players who played in the I think it was the women's mid am that they had there or the publics.
I think it was the publics.
One of the players said she she came off the third green and went down to the fourth tee and came around that corner for the first time and looked down the fourth.
Hall, and she cried because it was that beautiful.
And you know, I don't think there's Architects don't talk about it that much, but there's you know, one of the reasons people like golf deep down is because it's a place where.
It's safe to let.
Your emotions out a little bit, you know, yell and screen for a good shot or curse at a bad shot. And you know, there's a lot of places you can't do that anymore. I mean, golf is one of the few places left. And I think that the good courses, you know, dial the knob up on that for both sides of the question, both giving you places that you
curse and places that you get really excited. So I can't say that we think about that every day when we're building stuff directly, but I think our courses have done a pretty good job of doing that. You know, for every little trick we're playing on you, we're also giving you something to be joyful about.
Yeah, there's always, yeah, there's always the opposite side of every opposite side of every contour is such a it's almost like something that should be on a sign for every bad side of a contour, there's a good sign.
There's there's a few contras I've built where it would be good if they were labeled for people. You know, if you are reading this sign from this direction, you made a mistake.
So let's get some general kind of course and architects stuff to wrap up this GCA one oh one. We got tons of questions I think could be in another segment. We'll repurpose for different segments here. But so Panther Mike asks, outside the old course, what course slash architect has had the most significance on the game.
You know, anytime people ask me questions.
About the best or the most or anything, I'm always afraid to answer because because once you because when you've really seen you know, like I've been influenced by so many things that just picking one or two and saying that's the one, it's.
Really hard for me to do. Like in Australia.
There's no doubt that Alistair McKenzie going down there and working on Royal Melbourne had a huge effect on all of golf in Australia. You can point to that one guy on that trip just completely raising the bar for what architecture was. And he wasn't there long enough to
build all that stuff. I mean he you know, he spent six weeks there and he spent a lot of time with two guys, Alex Russell who was a club champion at Royal Melbourne and kind of became his design associate for all the Australian work, and the greenkeeper, mic Morcambe, who was the guy who built most of that stuff. And you know, everything they built reflected what they learned from him, and everything that's come after in Australia is
based on the impact that they had. But can you pick can you pick something like that for the entire world of golf?
I don't know, you know. In Japan, irony of ironies.
The most influential single moment in architecture in Japan was that after World War Two, when the Americans were over there sort of making sure that the war was really over the best clubs in Tokyo had real problems growing grass. I mean, Tokyo's climate is like Atlanta. It gets cold in the winter, it's really hot and humid in the summer. Growing any kind of grass that will survive, that will
survive both extremes, well, it's hard to do. And this general that was stationed over there said, well, in Georgia, we have a few courses that have like all alternate greens. One's bent grass and one's bermuda grass, and so in the winter you can play on the bank grass green. In the summer, when it gets too hot and humid, you can take the traffic off that and go on
the other green. So some of the clubs around Tokyo did that, and then when they had a golf boom, everybody looked at the best courses around Tokyo and they had two greens. So they start building two greens on every golf hole, on every golf course for years and years, just because that's what the best course had.
So I guess I've ducked that question.
Yeah, you know, you know, you know, besides the old course, I guess the answer, the really answer to that question is old Tom Morris had the most impact. You know, some of what he designed was pretty simple and he did it in a day, and some of it he spent a lot more time and doesn't get enough credit for. But he was really the first golf course archety TechEd where it was somebody besides just the players deciding where
the holes should be. And he worked on a lot of beautiful sites in Scotland that have influenced everything else.
Yeah, he had a lot of influence.
He's the he's kind of at the top of the tree where everything goes down from, you know, Sean Martin, he's uh, he asked another question of a similar nature, and we're just going to take the number out of it. Okay, what are the most influential designs in US history?
Pine Valley certainly, you know, it had a tremendous impact on the architects of its day and sort of like raising the bar and also raising the bar on difficulty a little bit, and you know, everybody respected that course so much. And then it's had its influence again in the last thirty years, you know, being number one in the rankings of golf courses for most of this last twenty or thirty years has a tremendous impact on all of us as designers and what we're trying to do.
Like one of the cliches about Pine Valley for years was that it's so cool that you can't see any other hole from the hole you're on, and that wasn't true. When Pine Valley was built. You could see not entirely across it. But you know, there's ups and downs, but they had cleared most of the trees when they built it, and the trees have grown back in between the holes
in the years since. So in the twenties it wasn't a tree lined and you could never see another hole, but by the seventies or eighties it had become that way. So you know, there were a lot of courses built on the premise that, oh, we want to isolate every hole from every other hole. Not necessarily a good influence. Like you know, it's not necessarily a good influence.
The idea that.
That every single hole on the golf course, you know, needs to be spectacular. It needs to be something you can make a postcard out of. You know, every hole on the golf course should contribute something to the hole. But there aren't many pieces of land like Pine Valley, and there aren't many courses that you know, can make their market be exclusively about single digit handicappers are the only ones they have to worry about getting around this
golf course. We don't want other players. So you know, Pine Valley is not the best model for everybody, and yet it's been hugely impactful as a model for people today. You know, if you want to answer the question of why are so many monern courses too hard, Pine Valley is the answer. It's number one. So everybody thinks that's what they've got to do.
For people that aren't kind of that don't have access, what are some courses that you would recommend them to go play that are open to the public, that could, you know, really be great architectural experiences.
This is from Justin Hulahan.
Are we talking about are we limiting those to the United States for purposes of this discussion? Obviously in the UK most of those courses, I mean, the best single thing you can do is go to the UK for a few days because you can get on those courses. You know, all you have to do is go to gullin North Barrack, Saint Andrew's Carnousti you're going to see more good public golf in a short span than you that I could get you driving back and forth across the United States.
Kill Spendy too, spend.
You kill Spindy.
They wouldn't find you wouldn't turn down that little lane.
As far as you asked.
God, it's hard for me to think about the whole US. And you know, I mean.
There's there are underrated good golf courses in every region. I've written a book about that, partly about that. But it's a hard question to answer because a lot of you know, anything that gets a reputation for being great, the price goes up accordingly, Like you can go play all the courses at Bandon Dunes. There's a really good answer, but they're not so inexpensive to play anymore, or Pasa Tiempo, which we've talked about.
Tough ticket.
Now, any of the courses that make the top hundred automatically price goes up. So you've got to look past that, and you've got to you know, a good way is just to look for like lesser known courses by any
architect that you raid highly. You know, some of them are terribly maintained or don't have the money to do anything with and some of them are really overgrown, but underneath usually there's a good product there for people to see and it won't cost a lot of money because that's why they don't have a lot of money to maintain it.
Yeah, that's it.
That's why I usually do when I go to a new area, I either read Tom's book It's the Confidential Guide wherever I'm going, or I or I look for like little uni courses that were designed by you know Ross's website, the Don Ross Society as a full listing and you can almost always find one of those.
Or I don't know, you know, I don't know if the old Cornish and Witten book the I think they renamed it to the Architects of Golf, you know, that had full biographies of architects and lists of everything that they worked on.
You know.
That's how I found Crystal Downs for the first time. It was just you know, reading a list of Alistair McKenzie courses and it was on there with no other information about him, Like where is that? And why have I not heard of that at all? Because I had the first time I ever saw the name. So yeah, there's I don't know that there's any more hidden gems out there that I would think are tens.
On my scale.
But there's still a lot of quality that gets overlooked because somebody's not taking care of it or it's.
Just in a place that people don't go.
Yeah.
With that, it's a segue into I forgot to write down the name of.
This who asked this question?
But anonymous?
Anonymous, Yes, anonymous. It's a great curve of your enthusiasm when the guy, you know, he talks about anonymous donors. But who are the architects that every golfer should see in their lifetime? And we'll keep this us like if you're gonna I think this might actually be a better quest than your top one hundred quests is going to see. I'm going to see the work of these architects.
So how do you are we saying like a group of architects that will represent different points on the spectrum, or you know these two or three particular architects tip done a lot of good. You know, you can spend your life going and seeing Donald Ross courses. Yea, And I think I read something the other day there's some guy that's played like three hundred and fifty Donald Ross courses out of I think the list was that he only did just over four hundred, and I'm not sure
if that's true. It's hard to imagine that three hundred and fifty of them are still open. That's a pretty good record, but for a variety of different things. You know, it's so easy to name all the traditional great architects Ross and tilling Hast and McKenzie and McDonald. I mean, you have to see a McDonald course or a Seth Rayner course to see the template holes they built and
how distinctive they are. If you've seen you have to see two of their courses to understand that they did use pretty much the same concepts from one piece of land to the next. I'm a huge fan of McKenzie's work, obviously, and there's not many McKenzie courses in America that you can go wrong and have it not be a really great course. So that's a pretty easy pick.
You know. George Thomas did not build very many golf courses.
But they're very distinctive. Those three courses in La La country Club and Riviera and bell Air where we're working now, there's so many holes on each of them, that are really distinctive and you've never seen anything like it.
So he should definitely be on the list. Perry Maxwell should definitely be on the list.
I mean, lots of architects get credit or blame for building severe greens. Maxwell was the master at building greens that were so distinct and made so much difference in how you played the hole that he almost didn't need to do a lot else. He didn't build a lot of fairway bunkers because he knew that was just like window dressing. You know, you still wanted to be over on one side of the hole, whether there was a bunker there or not, so you didn't really need something to amplify that.
You know.
Among more recent architects, you have to see a pet Die course and.
You know.
To appreciate the severity of it, and at the same time, you know the they're very angular. Maybe the angler is not the right word there. You know, there's very soft curvy lines to those hazards that make them tough. You know, I think you have to see a Mike Strants course. I mean, Mike was Mike was really an artist. He could draw, and some of the things that he built almost look like caricatures of golf holes more than real
golf holes. I mean, they're really exaggerated versions. But you know, he was also a real sculptor when it came to building hazards. I don't know that many people have ever built hazards they'll look better than his. I don't know how many you want me to list. That's a good short list of seeing some really different styles.
The uh yeah, they it's all great architects with very distinctly and unique It's a good variety amongst that group.
I can't remember who I had on.
I think it might have been Mike Devreese said that Perry Maxwell's career was hurt most of anybody because of the Great Depression is when he had finally reached his peak.
Which yeah, for sure, you know, I mean, most of the other famous Golden Golden Age architects, you know, made hay and the boom in the twenties, but Maxwell was just getting started really in the mid twenties. He only built a handful of courses before the Depression hit. He was lucky that, I mean, we wouldn't know anything about his work except for in the depression. One of the few areas that wasn't hit hard was like Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas because there was still.
All money there.
So that's when he built southern hills and prairie dunes and colonial.
He redid colonial. That's what funded his best work.
Yeah, well, you know we got Richard here, and this is kind of maybe I should have asked this before, but what would what is the summer reading that you just signed before your golf course architecture one on one class, if you were a professor.
Summer reading, you know, there's four or five old books on golf course architecture. You know, lots of architects write books because it's a good marketing tool and you want to get your ideas out there, and they do lead directly to jobs. The most the first example I can think of, sitting on the table right in front of me, is Robert Hunter's book The Links, which I think I think Hunter's book and Tom Simpson's book The Architectural Side of Golf are the two most fun.
Books to read about golf course architecture.
They don't try to explain the details and draw a bunch of golf holes and and sell you on their style as much as some of the other architects, did Hunter, You know, he was only kind of a golf court. He worked with Mackenzie a little bit, but he wasn't really he was not trying to establish his career by writing this book. He was writing it to try to
explain it to everybody else but Hunter's book. The guy who the guy who developed Crystal Downs when he did the when he laid out the housing plan, he built a little nine hole course to go with it. That's mostly where the front nine is now and the tenth and eighteenth holes, and he just did it himself. And
then a friend of his. Hunter's book was published in nineteen twenty six, so it's like the year after this guy built the little course himself and a friend of his gave him a Hunter's book and he read it from cover to cover and he was like, I think I screwed up. It sounds like there's more to this than what I knew. So he wrote Hunter a letter and said, I built myself a golf course on this really nice piece of ground, and I don't really think I did very well with it, you know, do you
have any advice for me? And Hunter wrote him back and said, well, Alistair McKenzie is is out here in California working on a couple of things, but he's going to go back to England in the fall, so he's going to take the train past Chicago. So if you want, I'll get him to stop and come up and see your land. And that's how Crystal Downs came to be, or the Crystal Downs that we know. Otherwise it would be a little nine hole course by the guy, by
the founder. So that was kind of a tangent. But Hunter's book and Simpson's book, you know, they're more about the fun of golf and how architecture interacts with that. They're not the how to books like George Thomas wrote, or like my book The Anatomy of a Golf Course. McKenzie's is sort of in between. You know, he has his bullet points of that he wants to make and and how important it is to hire a good golf course architect so you don't have to keep changing things
over the years. But there's a lot of fun little anecdotes and stories in it too, so it's a fun read. I wish I could write something that engaging.
It's the thing I find amazing is like how these guys like the way they wrote like these like short quipp ads that were so you know, simple as like you know, like Hunters and it's still funny, like Hunters is of one of his quotes. It is like, you know, long par four after long par four is kind of like a cup of watery soup.
You know, it's uh Mackenzie's.
Mackenzie's is like, you know, how do I get how do I make natural looking contour? Hire the biggest fool in the village and tell them to make it flat, which apparently I learned later was about a specific person.
In England that he had dealt with a smart guy.
Let's we gotta do a couple overrated, underrated, and then we're we're wrapping up g c A one on one. We'll have to do one uh two to one in another pod. All right, first, overrated, underrated.
Rough terribly overrated over the years. I'm not sure if it still is, but overrated.
It's coming coming back to the to the pendulum.
All right, a music one the doors.
I'm not qualified to answer that one. I know a little of their music, but not.
Enough to say.
All right, I'm gonna say underrated, okay, and then so I'll listen to more of their music and get back to you on.
That next one.
Golf in Ohio, I want to say overrated. There's a lot of good courses in Ohio, and but you know, Columbus, partly because Jack Nicholess comes from there, partly because Pete Die some of his early career was around there. Columbus is very well known for having five or six great golf courses right around there. But hell, Philadelphia has twenty five and New York has fifty. So Ohio has gotten a lot of credit for those five or six really good ones.
All right, that's a wrap. We'll be back podcast too.
We'll be coming out in a couple of weeks and it'll be on seth Rayner, Wili and the Sony Open.
You've been listening to the Egg podcast.
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