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, the gread, Frida Egg, Frida Egg, fridagg Bride Egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off the the.
Welcome back to another edition of the Frida Egg podcast and another edition of The Yoke with Doak. Tom Doak is back today, so it's uh, it's great to talk with Tom again. I think we both have had very busy travel schedules this summer, which has limited our ability to get on UH on Zoom and in talk or be in person together to record some some podcasts, but thankfully travel slowing down.
For both of us.
We got some episodes here and I think we'll get some more around the holidays.
And there's lots to talk about.
Tons of stuff going on with golf design, and it was excited to catch up with Tom about some of his current projects that he's been working on as well as some projects that are coming up. And then we did another part on a lot of listener Q and a a lot of ranging topics, lots of interesting conversation golf design so a quick revider.
We are barreling.
Down on the holiday season. We have the Friday pro Shop stocked up ready to go. We have a ton of print photography in there that you don't really have to worry about with running out, but you know other items we have. You know, I think we've got pretty much all of our holiday stuff up now if you really love something and want a specific piece, just to avoid not having a run out. We obviously have limited quantities.
We can't you know, stock crazy amounts. We're still a small shop, but if you want something, you should go get it now before it potentially could be sold out quickly.
So that's pro Shop dot the fridagg dot com.
We will have a big sale this this coming Black Friday, Cyber Monday, whatever it is. Now, I feel like people are doing entire month sales. It's it's kind of crazy. So uh, Meg and Will from our team have worked really hard to get a large variety in there and some fun new items. So check it out pro Shop dot Thefrida Egg dot com. And now here is Tom do Tom welcome back. It's been a little while. What's uh you've been You've been all over the place, huh.
I've traveled a lot this fall. Yeah, really the last year.
You know, it was about Somber October last year that we that I started committing to new projects. And I didn't you know, I didn't anticipate that there was going to be a boom like there has been, or that some or that so much of it would would involve me in any way.
That they call it.
You know, I'm starting to get calls about the kind of projects that I didn't used to and that's partly that there's you know, there's a big void now in the business that you know, Pete Die and Jack Nicholas and Tom Fazio aren't really designing golf courses anymore, and so so all of the all of the kinds of projects that used to go to them, they're trying to
figure out who to go to. And and you know, I'm one of the people that's getting calls about you know, bigger projects, more corporate projects, just you know, in addition to my little niche that I've always had. And so I've wound up, you know, since since a year ago, I signed up.
Seven or eight new jobs, which.
I you know, I've never I've never been that busy before, and and you know, at the time, you know, once it started looking like, okay, there's a boom, you know, I thought, you know, people were also talking about, oh, there's a recession coming. So I'm like, well, you know, probably not all of these are going to happen, or at least not happen as fast as they say. But in fact, most of these clients, they have the money in the bank, they're not borrowing it from a bank.
So it's not like two thousand and eight. These projects aren't just gonna all go away now. You know, maybe some of them got a little more complicated with permits, so they're taking a year long. You know, like the first two I signed up, I thought we would be starting them right now, and they're still knee deep in the permit battle and it'll be six months or a year before they can get going. So so then when somebody else called, I said, well, you know, I can't
do it next next winter. That's I have all these things pushed back in the next winter. If you could actually do it this winter, we could do it. So I've got a couple of things like that that that you know, we kind of rushed through the permits, so we can get started on them. And so you know, I'm juggling a lot of balls right now, doing drawing plans for like four or five different places at the
same time. You know, the the routings are all done, they have been for a while, but you know, all the documents that they need for the planning permission is what's eating me up right now.
As you said, you're busier than ever.
What what do you think your like capacity is on a on a like what's the ideal capacity and what's what's the maximum amount of work that you could do at once?
Well, you know, back in the day, we never had more than three new projects going at the same time. That was sort of my comfort level based on the staff that you know, I have three main associates. It's like they could each be running one It's better if they're not all at running exactly the same time, so that you know, one of the you know, Eric can get away and come when I'm on Brian's project to help out a little bit, and then they'll do the same for each other.
You know.
Now it sounds like I'm gonna have five golf courses in some stage of construction in May, and of course I have, you know, Angela Moser and Clyde Johnson and Blake Kona, who have worked with us for years. You know, they're definitely to the point in their careers where they can run a job, and they've been they've been excited
to have that chance. And one of the reasons I've committed to more things is because it's like, yeah, it is their turn to run a job, but you know, I'm going to be pulled more ways than I've ever been pulled before, and that's going to be tricky. And then you know, you know, one of the reasons these last few courses have turned out so good is because one of those people were you know, they were number two.
You know, like in New Zealand last winter, Brian Slnik was running the job and he had Clyde and the Angela there the pretty much the whole time shape and with him now they're all going to be on their own things and can't rely on each other so much. So in Wisconsin the last two years we've been like bringing some new interns through and seeing if we can train a couple of them up to be a real help shaping for the next year or two, because we're going to need the.
Help with having you know, three very talented people like Clyde, Angela and Brian on a project. Is is there actually also, you know, advantage to only having one that's doing primarily all the shaping, because as opposed to three being spread out, if one, say, one person shapes all all eighteen greens, could it actually be a benefit to having a rhythm
I you know, obviously I think it could. You could make cases either way, but there might be an advantage also to having one person and having a cognitive like a very singular focus, you know, focus on every single green.
Sure we'll find out.
You know, our answer to that up to now has always been no, we'd rather have some outside input. And you know, whoever is running the job, it's their call. You know, it's their call and my call at the end of the day. How much of that input from the others to take in? But you know, having three or four pairs of seasoned eyes on every feature is a great thing. And you know it's gonna be hard to give that up where we have to give it up.
You know, maybe we're not giving it up totally. It's like, you know, it's not like there aren't other talented people around, and good superintendents involved and all the rest. It's just, you know, we don't we don't have all the same people that we've been relying on for the feedback.
Let's talk about one of the new projects.
It's it's one that we've talked about probably almost more than any other project of yours on this podcast. It's your first project and it's coming back High Point. So I think you know this has been reported in the I think the Traverse City newspaper was the first one to report it. You've been on Golf Channel talking about it. High Point in Traverse City is making a comeback like something of my had.
You know, all the years that we've done.
This podcast, was always like I just don't know why Tom just doesn't buy it and rebuild it, because it seems like he wishes it was back. So Rod Trump, who who I have gotten to know over the years, is behind it. Tell us that process of getting this in when you actually truly believed that it was coming back.
Well, Rod Trump, who's president of Pine Tree Golf Club right now and no relation to our ex president, called me about a year ago right now to ask me if I was interested in reviving High Point just completely out of blue. And you know, we've talked about it a lot. You and I have talked about it a lot over the years. You're not the only one I've talked to about it. So it was a shock to have somebody call and be discussing it seriously. He'd been trying to buy the Kingsley Club when it was up
for sale. He didn't realize that he was bidden against four or five other groups, you know, and he thought he was going to get that job. He thought he was going to get that course, and then it sold to somebody else, and he was like, God, I really love Traverse City, and I thought I thought it was
going to happen for me there. And a couple of local people that he knows pretty well, including Adam Schreiber, who was golf pro at high Point, at what point said you know, if you want to do a golf course in Traverse City, you should talk to Tom about High Point. You know everybody here knows he'd love to redo that if he could. So that's what prompted the
call from Rot. And I was like, yeah, I mean, if that land is for sale and it sounds like the Hops Farm isn't really you know, making tons of money, and they're not going to expand it. They might be interested in selling some of their ground and having a crack at it. So let's try to put this together.
And you know, I mean, I've believed it's a serious thing now for almost a year, but I've been trying not to get my hopes up because I know the you know, the development process is complicated and it's going to cost a lot more than one point three million dollars to build a golf course there again, even though there was half a one still laying there. It's a little different project than the first time, you know, when
I when I did High Point. The first time, the Hayden Z owned three hundred and twenty acres, and everybody used to comment on how different the two nines, where one nine was in like old orchard ground that mostly just kind of tilted to the north toward the road where you came in, and then the other nine was back in woodsier stuff with more dramatic elevation changes to it, and the Hops Farm covers most of the front nine and a little bit of the old sixteenth and seventeenth
holds where they came out of the trees and for the Hops farm to sell us the ground that they weren't using for the farm. That's one thing. They're not really using it. So the land caught. You know, the land costs whatever the land value.
Is up here now.
But to actually restore the Front nine would have cost a lot more because you'd be paying not only for the land but for the crop that they have on it. They tore up that part of the golf course and kind of leveled everything out more in order to put up all the poles and have the hot FM, So you know, it would it would have been hard to reproduce all the greens complex if we built the first time.
Even some of the topography has gone away. I've never really walked through there to see if I can't even recognize exactly what it was like anymore. And we do have interestingly enough, if we do have the lie doar stuff on that they shot it. The oldest lie doar stuff they shot in Traverse City was just before they tore up Highpoint. So Brian Zaeger assures me that someday the Pots farm goes away and we want to rebuild the Front nine, we can, but right now that doesn't
make any sense for Rod. He was just going to have to pay more for that land to do it. And the wild card that he didn't really know about but I did, was that right when we were building high Point, the Haydens bought another one hundred and sixty acres to the east of the golf course and they, you know, in like nineteen eighty eight, they asked me to what if we did a third nine, that's what before the golf before the first eighteen holes even opened, And I did a layout for that and they never
pursued it at all. But I knew that between that land and the back nine that there was, you know, there was the potential for an eighteen hole golf course that didn't get into the hops farm, and that would be a doable land deal, and low and behold, that's what we're going to build. So it's a new version of high Point and only like six or seven of the old holes will still be on the golf course, but they're that old stretch at the start of the back nine that's in my book is a sample of
how to route golf courses. It was my favorite stretch of the golf course. It was everybody's favorite stretch of the golf course. You know, yes, there were some holes in the front nine that were really cool too, but you know, it's like we've got to crack it building a new golf course with some dramatic new land and kind of the best at the old hype, which I think is going to be a really fun thing to do.
I probably should have prepared here.
But is that video there's that great old video of you putting balls on a green? Is that one of the holes that will be back?
Yeah?
That was the thirteenth I thought that was. Yeah, that is That's definitely one of the holes that we're saving. I wouldn't go so far as to say I wouldn't have done the project if that hole wasn't part of it, but that was always a favorite. That thing is it's
just a wild green. And you know Ron Whitten from Golf Diye just to you know, he can't I'd met Ron before when I worked for the Dies, but he came up to visit, like when we were in the middle of construction at high Point in nineteen eighty seven, and he said to me, like several years after that, it's like, yeah, as soon as I saw the thirteenth green, I was like, wow, he's doing different stuff than.
Eight and they else I've seen.
You know, that was the one thing that interested him the most, like, Okay, this is not what what most people are doing. This is going to be interesting. I mean, High Point was fairly well ignored when it opened. It wasn't like a best new course or anything, because nobody knew who I was. You know, That's that's just the way those things are for a while. It's hard to get recognition, especially when you're you know, it's a little easier now because there's not much new stuff going on.
But you know, back when Tom Fazio and Jack Nicholas are turning out ten new golf courses a year, it's like, you know, what are the odds that you're going to be doing something that's as exciting as the best of their ten projects. It just wasn't happening. So you know, this time, this time, we're starting from a different place there.
So there'll be six existing holes, twelve new holes, and so the majority of which will come from the the nine the nine additional nine holes that you routed and roughly like the nineteen eighty eight Okay, so have you gone back, like, you know, is it you're going back?
Like?
I think about it as like when I reread an article I wrote sixty years yars ago, I just I'm like, I might need to start over.
I might need to rewrite this.
When he looked at the routing, I assume it was just filed away somewhere when he looked at the routing. You know what stood out to you about the routing and were there anythings that you tweaked?
Well, luckily I did have a copy of the routing. You know some I mean for a while there. That was very early in my career. I still didn't I wasn't married, I didn't have a I didn't have a home, I didn't have an office. So like like, I had no plans for the Legends in Myrtle Beach. The superintendent there just just emailed me a picture of my grading plan for the Legends. They still had it in their files, so he's going to get a copy of it.
But I didn't have that.
Fortunately, the match for high Point I still hung onto, and somehow it included that third nine that I laid out well, you know which I remember I remembered pretty well how it fits. It's a hilly piece of ground like the back ninties, And I thought to myself, I could probably do a better version of that now that isn't quite as up and down, because you know, the first time I was twenty seven years old building high Point.
Now I'm sixty two, sixty one. It's like, I still walk when I play golf, but I appreciate more that going up a forty foot hill to the tee is not so easy as it once was for me. So I'm like, yeah, you know, a couple of these elevated teas. I need to figure out if I can do something jetler than that. And I did another version of the routing, and then, let you know this, this spring, I went out and tried to walk my new version versus the old and it's like, nope, the.
Old one's better. Really, yeah, the old one is.
Yeah, it's a little more tough to walk, but but there's a couple of holes on it. They're just like, you still want to do that hole that way?
So it is.
So the only real new holes in the routing are there's a couple further south than the back nine. They they somehow acquired the forty acres there that that wasn't available to us originally, and some of it's a wetland, so there's only room for two holes there, but those will go out and back off the back nine. So so you know, the numbering's not all quite the same as before when you add in those two holes, and
then the other change. You know, sixteen and seventeen go away because part of those holes are in the hoots, and then the eighteenth hole was everybody's least favorite hole. But I still got to use that land, and I still got to get back toward the clubhouse where the clubhouse won't be in the same place anymore, but you still got to get through that space to connect the route.
So but now instead of starting the hole all the way back where it did, you're going to be coming off the fifteenth green, which was a part of three
that came down to a bench. So we'll go down the hill from there and basically tee off from just above the landing area of the old eighteenth hole and drive it across the big pond and then go up the hill from there, and that you know, that'll that'll take out You know, you used to have a forced carry on the second shot, and the wetlands and stuff on the T shot made you kind of hedge away from the carry, and then it was a really difficult carry for people, you know, being able to navigate all
that on the T shot. You know, it'll still be the only hole with water in play, but it won't be as frustrating as the original hole was.
I think, if I remember correctly one time on this podcast, I we there's a question about what hole would you redesign or rework?
And that was your answer? Is that the eighteenth at high Point.
Yeah, we wouldn't have kept that hole the way it was, and you know, I couldn't have looked Rod in the face and told him straight that, yeah, it's going to be a great golf course where with this hole A is the finish.
Yeah.
So when you were like when you sat down, how did you start the process of trying a new routing. Did you start with like a blank topo map?
Yeah?
Yeah, I still had I still had the original topo without a golf course on it. Of course, it's hard because you remember, you know, once you remember the old plan, and you know, I still remembered basically how it worked. You know, it's hard to make yourself go in different directions. There's just certain things about it, so that that piece of land runs more east and west from the old clubhouse, and it's only land up here is like forty acre.
Blocks that you buy it in generally.
And so the forty acres is like a quarter mile on each side, four hundred and forty yards. So so these blocks are all end to end, so it's four nuner and forty yards wide and it's a mile long. But the far end of it is too steep for golf. So we're coming in there and the clubhouse will be at the east end of what's usable, which is better because if we'd use the old clubhouse location, you would have played the first two holes straight east into the
new ground. That wouldn't have been so great. Now the clubhouse is on the east end of everything and you're not playing into the sun. But we still had to sort out. You know, it's it's only four hundred and forty yards wide. We need four holes of width through that. There's some serious ups and downs, so you know it's hard to space out the holes exactly the way you want, and you know there's just not if you're going to
put four holes back and forth in that space. There's not a lot of different solutions for how to do that. You know, you can't really if you put a hole going north and south across it at any point you block everything off. You can't really afford to do that in the routing. So so there weren't like a million
different solutions, but there was. There was a steep, narrow valley that you're just kind of hitting across on the old plan, and I tried to figure out playing a little short part four up into that valley, and it just, you know, I never got anything that I thought worked very well compared to the original hole on a high tee. Playing across that valley and down to the west that that that hole that I was trying to not build actually reminds me a little bit of the seventeenth Old
Crystal Downs. It's severe, you know, it's a severe but very short Part four. That's like so you know, we can manipulate the landing area so it won't be like death to both sides. In fact, the problem with it, the other problem with it is if you fan a drive, you're going to be in the hole coming back.
The other way. You know, it's not like the Downs where it's just in the woods to both sides and you lose the ball if you hit it either way.
Is the land how would you compare it to you know, course of the Kingsley and Crystal Downs is probably two courses people have been to Belvidere's and other is it somewhere you know, how would you compare the topography in the in the natural you know features out there?
Well, I mean, you know, anybody that ever saw high Point, the land is a lot like the back nine a high point was. You know, it's the same, the highs are the same elevation, and you've got you know, the difference between the highest point on the new Land and the.
Lowest is probably eighty feet.
So so you've got some serious you know, and you're going to cover that in a couple of holes. So there's there's some pretty big undulations in there and probably a couple of places where we're gonna you know, we'll move more dirt on that nine than we did when
we built the original golf course. Not a ton, you know, not every hole or anything like that, but there's a couple of things that because of where the tea is you know, to to to extend the first hole into a par five, you're going to drive it where you can't see the green on that hole. So we'll probably do some with work on that whole to.
Make that work.
One last question. You built all eighteen greens at the original high Point. Will you be building all the greens?
No, I mean.
I might do the I might do the first version of it, you know. I mean, I'm not the only one who lives in Traverse City. Brian Slanik lives in Traverse City. His wife is the most excited person about us doing this job. He'll be home for dinner.
Uh.
Don Placik lives in Travers City. Bruce Heppner, who lived here for you know, who worked for me for years, said yeah, he'd come build some buckers at high Point.
That would be cool. So we you know, we we have.
A largely local crew to build this thing, you know, and all of those guys have more time on a dozer lately than knee. So I'm probably not gonna shape all the greens myself. But you know, like we talked about a few months ago, one of the reasons I got back on a dozer in New Zealand was you know, one of the reasons was just to you know, get a little head start to make sure we finished on time. But the other was to see if I could do it,
knowing that high point was a possibility. And yeah, I mean I built, I shaped a couple of.
Greens in New Zealand.
So I'm probably gonna do some of the other ones, but I'm not putting the pressure on myself to do them all.
Oh you got, I think you gotta do a couple just you know, to make sure that everything connects back, you know, as much as so.
So you know, what we've got. What we've got is there's six holes that are pretty much done. You know, as soon as we start next spring, we can start putting irrigation in on those holes because there's nothing to shape or very you know, Well, we gotta we gotta dig trees out of the bunkers. Well, and we'll probably make the bunkers a little prettier, but that's not going to take very long. So the irrigation could get going
pretty quickly. And while they're while they're doing that, I'll be over on some of the other stuff starting to play ound. And as long as I can stay ahead of them, maybe I'll get to shape more greens. But once the construction catches up to me, then you know, I'm going to have to bring in the A.
Team to get it finished on.
Time, because we're trying to build the whole thing this summer, you know, And the only reason we can do that is because we have six souls of the head start. It's like they're you know, it's like we shape them this fall. It's if they shape them thirty five years ago.
So so the plan would be for it to open in twenty four.
I don't know that.
I don't know what Rod is telling is respective members. You know, we just seated at green And in Wisconsin the first of September, and by the fourth of July next year, they'll be talking about preview play on that whole you know, is that really ready to open now?
You know?
And plus so it'll be playable in the fall of twenty four, but I don't know if it'll be open.
Now.
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Meridian coming back and supporting the show again. You could go to Meridian Grooming dot com and check out their wide array of grooming products, including their their world class trimmers. Now back to Tom dok, let's talk about Wisconsin Sedge Valley. I personally am kind of excited about this because it's a kind of a different type of new golf course that we've seen at resorts. Where are you guys at in the process there and would have been kind of the biggest takeaways from the summer.
Well Sedge Valley is this fall exactly where Ledo was last fall.
We got thirteen holes at Leedo built in twenty one. We only got twelve holes at Sedge Valley built in
twenty two. But it's kind of the same. You know, next summer fall they'll be doing some preview play on ten or twelve holes of Sedge Valley, you know, and we'll have just finished the last six holes, will build in April, May, June, and by the you know, like this time next year, those will be pretty much grown in, but the greens on the newest holes won't be the same up to the standard of the greens we planted
this year. I've been really you know, that's the concept of building a sixty two hundred yard golf course that I've wanted to do for a long time, and I'm thrilled that I got to do it for Michael. And I mean, the Leado has been a great thing, but a strange experience because it's not really my design. And you know, the one thing I said to Michael at the when he asked me about doing the Lido was well, I'll do it, but I don't want that to mean
I'm not gonna wind up doing another golf course. So if that's actually my design, later on and he said, no, no, no, that's still you know we at the time we didn't think we would get to it this fast, but I'm thrilled that we did, and that I've got a new design of my own to compare the Liedo. In addition to the other golf courses there Sedge Valley.
The interesting thing about it, it's still a big piece of land, like maybe even more than the other golf courses there to some degree, it's it's really dramatic, but but it's a little like I don't want to I don't want to make that comparison, but generally you only see like a couple holes at a time. You're not like you're not looking at the whole thing at once.
Just leaving us hanging with that.
Uh, with that comparison, you know, we're gonna have to in our minds imagine that. I think a lot of people just you know, say, oh, sand Valley is a Mike Kaiser property, but you know, for the most part it's run by Michael and Chris. I'm curious, how is working with Michael different than working with his father Mike, And how is it similar?
Uh? Well, first of all, it's not just run by Michael and his brother Chris. They own it.
Yeah, it's it's you know, Mike. Mike was more involved in helping get it set up in the beginning and when the first golf when the first and second golf courses were happening, But it is his son's project, and they take that pretty seriously, and yeah, they want you know, Michael is he's different than his dad, and he you know, he wants to do great things of his own and you know, he's talking to a lot of people about a lot of different potential projects, and you know, he's
got tremendous energy for it. He's only you know, he's he's barely forty years old, so he's you know, he's much more engaged than his dad is at this point generally. And then you know, he's just brimming with ideas. I mean, just like an unbelievable amount of ideas.
You know.
It's it's been a really I've had a really fun time working for him, and so Eric and Brian Schneider who are running the two jobs for me, and I think we'll wind up doing a bunch more golf courses for Michael in the future, and some of those, you know, it's I'm already talking to Michael. At some point he's gonna boot me out because I'm you know, because because my name is too much out there.
You know.
He wants to hire the Brian Schneiders and Eric's of the world to be the main person on his golf courses someday in the future like his dad did, instead of just going back to me and Bill and David, because we're the same choices his dad made, and you know, it's you know, at the same time, he's like, yeah, that's going to be a hard call because you guys still do great work, you know, and that's what at the end of the day, that's what it's about.
We want that, but we want.
To get new blood involved too and make some you know, and make somebody else's knee. So you know, that would be an interesting transition when it happens, and it may happens pretty.
Soon, or it may not happen for a while. I don't know. What I do know is we've had fun doing that project. You know.
Michael, he's very involved. He's he's out there with me a lot when I'm there. He's out there with Brian and Eric a fair amount, even when I'm not there. I mean, they're very customer conscious. They don't want it to be too severe, you know, they don't want the greens to be too severe.
We've talked about that.
It's like, you know, and you know I always say to him, well, you know, I don't think the greens of Pacific Dunes are that severe, you know, but they've got character to him, They're not just flat, like you know. My only problem with him is he keeps saying the word flat, and it's like, no, I don't want to do flat. You know, there's a difference. There's a wide range between flat and too severe for anybody to have fun. And we've just got to find what edge he's comfortable
with on that. But you know, the thing about said valley is partly because it's short. You know, there's five part three holes. There's a bunch of short part fours. I don't even I haven't tried to count how many par fours there are under four hundred yards, but it must be like half a dozen. And and so you know, with those holes that are like driver wedge for a
good player. It's like we can make those green sites tough, not necessarily like wild, but narrow targets and you know, like you're you know, if you're going for a pin in the back of number six green, you're going to be squeezing it into a really tight area that if you miss, you could make double. And you know, that's the kind of thing that they've been a little afraid
to do on their other golf courses. But they're a little more open to because you know, in theory, you've got a wedge in your hands, and it shouldn't be you know, you should be able to get away with that more when people have a wedge in their hands.
How has it been creating a variety when you have so many shorter holes? Is that has that been a challenge in If so, how have you gone about having variety with a lot of holes at a similar length?
Uh?
You know, I'm never too worried about variety in terms of like the scorecard and the idea that you're going to hit different clubs and for all the approaches. I mean, it's just like I want a variety of you know, skinny target, shallow target, open front where you actually might run it up, cross bunker where.
You can't run it up.
And yeah, again, when you build when you're building short holes, there's more leeway for that kind of different stuff. I've always felt like the short part fours are the coolest holes I design. It's like you can get away with more because they're short. So you know, having five or six short par fours on a golf course is not a bad thing at all.
And you know, the old.
Course has a bunch of short part fours and they're all really different, and I think the ones in Sam Valley are going to be all really different.
Let's talk about a project that we haven't talked about on the podcast, Punta Brava. It will be a golf course in Mexico. Tell us a little bit about the site and what is what's going on there.
The site's just south of Ensinnada, Mexico, which is only like an hour and a half drive south of Tijuana, where the border crossing is. And it's you know the first part of the name if you speak Spanish, Punta. It's on a point sitting out into the Pacific Ocean. It's surrounded by water. I almost want to say on
three sides. That's not quite right, but there's there's a lot of ocean frontage and then there's kind of a mountain on the inside of it that goes up like fifteen hundred feet and blocks it off from the rest of the mainland. So it's just really this this isolated property that you know, if you were hiking or trying to drive, you would never see.
But it is.
You know, I don't like doing the hyperbole thing. It's the most dramatic piece of land for a golf course that anybody's ever showed me. And I some great pieces of land for a golf course, you know, it's certainly
not the easiest place to build a golf course. The closest analogy I could have for it, it's like, you know, if you took Stone Eagle with the rock formations and all this stuff in the steep terrain that's there, and then you just put it right on the ocean on cliffs twenty to fifty feet above the ocean, like Cyprus Point. So it's a crazy dramatic piece of land just off the charts.
It's all rock.
It's going to be really hard to build a golf course there, but it has the potential to be something just really dramatic. And you know, I've worked on the ocean front a lot over the years, and yet even though everybody knows how much that adds to the golf. It's like I was trying to think the other day when I was down in Mexico, like, how many holes have I built where you would actually hit a ball
into the Pacific Ocean? Even as steep down as that one hole is at Cape Kidnappers, it's probably not getting to the water because four hundred feet down, you know, even as steep as that is, goes out a ways and you know, bandon, you can hit it off the cliff onto the beach, be not really hitting it into the ocean.
Uh.
Punta Brava has beat holes and like twelve shots thirteen shots that you could hit in the ocean.
So it's more almost like a Caribbean course, like with the I don't know, I always think of those courses really a butt into the sea.
Yeah, yeah, I mean Kasey de Campo has a bunch of holes where you can hit it in the water. Yes, so yeah, similar to that in some ways, but you know, steeper and more dramatic on the inside.
With it with it being rocky, rockier, you know, just in terms of your can instruction, what type of strain. Does that put on on the on your team's work there. You know, everybody always talks about how much harder it is to build there. What does that mean in terms of, you know, kind of time it takes to build holes, what goes into building a hole, and the you know, length of a project.
It'll definitely go slower, you know, I mean you sort of assume in Mexico things are going to go a little slower anyway, just because you know, when the dozer, when the hydraulics blind busts in the dozer, or or some little thing that makes the blade move one direction gets bent by a rock or something, there's not a guy standing there with another part waiting for it.
You've got to get it across the border. You know.
Every time there's a slow down, the slowdown takes longer to fix. And then working in rock is just you know, it's just you grind and through it. And you know, hopefully with minimalism, we're not having to change, we're not having to reshape everything that much. But as steep as that site is, there's certainly going to be a bunch that we have to do something too. So yeah, it's not going to be a job that goes snap like that and happens really fast. You know, the best cases,
it'll take us twelve months to build it. I wouldn't be surprised if it takes longer than that. And as busy as we are right now, that's like, you know, I can't put Eric on that for twelve to eighteen months waiting for it to happen. So so we'll put somebody else on it who can be there that long, and then we'll come in and get three or four holes done in a stretch and then, you know, let the next part take a while before we get back to it.
Probably you were in Scotland. You were in Ireland Scotland the summer. Obviously Saint Patrick's opening in Ireland, but then in Scotland you're you're working on the new courses Castle Stewart. What where are we at with that one?
Yeah, I've got to get used to the name of Cabot Highlands, which is what they've rebranded Castle Stewart, and I think they'll still call the Mike. I haven't asked Ben Kallander about it, but I'm assuming that the first golf course will stay Castle Stewart and the new course will be Cabot.
Highlands, so Cabot Highlands Cabot Highlands.
So you know Mark Parson and when he developed Castle Stewart originally always had a plan to do thirty six holes, you know, with the other course being to the I guess that's the west kind of the west, and a little to the north from the existing golf course. So when you when you play Castle Stewart, you play the first three holes on low ground, you get out to a little point low against the water, then you play the fourth hole back toward the castle, and then you
work your way back in. So the new course will start up by the clubhouse where the range is now and play down through that space and play its right past the castle. We've got like a short part four like don't hook it into the castle please, and then you know, and then go out around that bay that the third hole sticks out and forms. So the land's
got some drama to it, you know. The inland parts just like the original Castlestart course, they are more farm land and we're going to have to conjure those up and make them feel linksier than they do right now. But it's got a fair amount of water frontage to it. It's got you know, it's got the castle both as something that you play right by in this one hole, but is a focal point for two or three of the other holes on the golf course, and it's really
an excellent piece of ground for golf. And then the thing about that one too. You know Clyde Johnson. You know, Clyde's worked for us for years and he started a Dismal River and he's worked on a ton of things include you know, he's British, so you know he's worked on all the things we've built outside the US. He worked on Tara Edie, he worked on the new course at taya I. You know, he worked on Saint Patrick's, and then he's helped out with a couple other projects
in the States in between. But you know, he's been to the point in his career for a while that he's ready to run a job. And you know, he just he just got married a year and a half ago and they just had a baby, and it's like, you know, when Ben called me about the job for Cabot Highlands, it's like, yes, you know, because that's going to be a great job for Clyde to run. And really show what he can do. And you know, and I've said it to Ben, like, you know, I want
Clyde to get credit for this. You know, I really want all of these associates to start getting more credit with me for what they're doing. But you know, this will be his chance to shine, and I'm excited to see.
What he does.
It's an interesting aspect of golf architecture because all the credit usually goes to the name brand designer, whether it's you or Bill Kore and Ben Crenshaw or Gil Hants or David Kidd. But in almost every situation, I think every situation, the people that are there day to day building most of the features are somebody else.
Yeah.
Then you know the hard part about that is, you know it usually goes beyond that number two person too. You know, like sometimes the person that's doing the really cool creative stuff that you love at the end of the day, you know, they were the third or fourth
person on the job. They're the one who had time to do all the cool stuff while the other guy is like trying to make sure the construction project keeps moving forward and halls are getting finished and grassed, and they don't, you know, sometimes the lead associate doesn't get as much creative time as they want. You know, that's really that's the hard thing when you are running a job is to manage your time well enough that you
can be really involved in the creative part two. And obviously when you've got like you know, when you're not doing too many jobs and you've got a lot of other talented people around, you don't have to worry about.
That quite so much.
With your your staff, like you want them to flourish. Obviously, when they get more credit they obviously have, it makes you more difficult on you too, because then the more credit they get, they're probably gonna like Brian Schneider for example, obviously has been developing name, he's getting more and more consulting work, more and more new work, and he's less and less available.
To you exactly.
And you know, and certainly that was you know, ten or fifteen years ago, that would have been more of a problem.
And you know, what what.
Was happening to us even ten or fifteen years ago was that you know, certain associates like Jim Orbino when he worked for me, you know, people would know, you know, he ran Pacific Dune, so that's the guy we want.
You know, No, we don't want Eric. You know, they didn't know who Eric was.
They knew that Jim had run the job at Pacific Dune, so that's who they wanted. And it's like, well, you know, there's a lot of talented people over here, and you've heard of one of them that it doesn't mean he's the best one or the only one, you know. So yes, it's a problem. It's and it's especially a problem when one or two people are getting the credit and the rest of the people aren't.
You know.
So I'm at you know, I'm sixty one now, maybe I'm doing this another ten years. Most of them will be doing it for longer than that, so they need to get more credit. And yeah, if Brian Schneider gets to the point where I can't put him on a new job because he's got all these things of his own going, you know, I'll really miss him, the same way I miss some of the people that used to work for me. But you know, we'll have to keep moving on. And you know, Brian's not you know, he
still says he really wants to be involved. He's definitely gonna help, you know, he's gonna go help Shape on another project for part of the time while he's still working on Old Barnwell this year, which is great. He just said he just couldn't commit to actually running that job while he had one of his.
Own with I guess you know that in mind, like, uh, do you go with with you know, with Brian, are you gonna go visit Old Barnwell and give him thoughts on that? I don't know if this would be common practice, but would be something and obviously he would have to ask you for your but but but is that something that you would you know, like, is that something you would like to establish with people that you know, move beyond.
It's almost like you're creating like a coaching tree, like a like a college basketball coach you here with like coach K's coaching tree.
Uh, well, you know, the politics of that are really tricky and I've been dealing that with that for years. You know, all Handsome Mike Debrives both worked for me back in the day. And it's like, do I go see their new course and you know, if I express an opinion on it or I write something about it, it's like, you know, if I love it, it's because they work for me. If I hate it, I must just like them, and it can't just be about the work and my honest impression of the work. So I'm
always a little conflicted about going to see that. And it'll be the same for Brian and Eric and all these guys that have been working for me the last few years. It's like, you know, when when we were working on Leedo, Brian had he had the topo map for Old Barn. We were all staying in a rental house. He had the topo map for Old barnwell like out on the dining room table, which we never used, like
for a month or two. And I made a couple of visits and I didn't say anything about it, and you know, at some point he finally was like, so, do you want to have a look at that? I was like, not unless you ask me. You know, if you want to just run with it on your own, that's what you should do. If you want my two cents worth, I'll look at it quick.
You know.
I don't mind doing that.
And it's good, you know, so I did, and I kind of, you know, the things I question were like, that looks pretty severe. Are you sure you want to do it that severe or or are you gonna move more dirt to fix that? Or are you trying to build something really dramatic? Is that what your client wants? And you know it'll be the same whenever I go see the golf course, you know, Am I gonna do that this winter?
I don't know.
I mean, you know, not unless Brian asks. And if he does, yeah, I'll come out. And if he doesn't, I'll wait till the golf course is open and I just can go play it like everybody else. And yeah, for sure, I'll tell him what I think about it once it's an open golf course, but other than that, it's up to him.
All Right, We're going to move on Part two of this podcast. We'll be back in a few episodes with Part two and we go through more question and answers from from listeners and kind of a free ranging topics. But Tom, thank you for your time and coming back on the pod to talk about some of your new projects.
Thanks Andy, thank you for listening to another edition of the Frida Egg Podcast and the Yoke with Doak.
Thanks to Tom.
For setting aside some time to talk to us, and thank you to Meg Atkins for editing and producing this episode. As always, Meg does an awesome job with the team. A quick reminder reminder announcement. We've produced a large documentary project on YouTube called Teaching Turf in the sand Hills. This is all about a internship program at sand Hills and bally Neil. Thanks to Toro, we were able to produce this. This is a kind of a look behind the scenes at what makes sand Hills and bally Neil tick.
Extensively features the golf courses, but what goes into maintaining them as well as this unique internship program that they have at these two courses where college interns will spend half the summer at sand Hills and half the summer at bally Neil. So it features superintendents Kyle Heglund and Jared Kalina and it's gotten a lot of positive feedback from whether you're super into turf grass management or you're just.
Interested in golf alike.
This project wouldn't have been able to be done without Garrett Morrison and Cameron Hurtis. Those two have been absolute superstars putting this series together and I'm really proud of their work and what has been You can check.
That out on YouTube.
It's called Teaching Turf in the sand Hills and if you go to our YouTube page, subscribe and watch it there. Those two have put, you know, months of work into this project and I'm really proud of it. So check it out there if you haven't yet, if you just listen to this podcast, you.
Don't know about our YouTube page. We got a lot of cool stuff.
I think personally I'm very biased, but I think it's really a lot of neat golf course stuff. And if you like this podcast, you probably like some of the stuff we have on our YouTube page. And this series is definitely, you know, probably the thing that I'm personally.
Most proud of that we've done at the Frida Egg this year. So go check it out. It's Teaching Turf in the sand Hills on our YouTube page.
Thanks, and we will be back next week with two episodes of the FRIDAYGG podcast. I'm super excited on Friday should be a really fun episode.
I just finished recording it. As of recording this outro where we do look back at.
Some of the iconic golf clubs of the nineties, two thousands, and eighties.
That was really, really fun.
I don't want to spoil it too much, but I can't think of a pod I've had much more fun recording in recent memory. So we will be back next week with two episodes, and everybody have a great Thanksgiving