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 frid Egg Friday Egg, the dreaded Frida Egg Friday, Frida Frida Egg Bride Egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the hump.
Welcome back to another edition of the Friday Egg podcast and a new year. We had podcast up earlier this week with Garrett and I, but this is the first time I'm doing an intro, so I hope everybody had a.
Great holiday season.
Uh.
We have a podcast kind of almost almost an emergency podcast. I wouldn't call it that, but we had been Tom and I had been planning on talking before his ravel ramp back up, and he had a big announcement this week with the news that he will be designing the tenth course at Pinehurst, so a new design that I was anxious to talk to him about, as well as
some other stuff. We have another episode of the Yolk with Doc coming next week, but this is an episode all about his new golf course at Pinehurst, as well as just some talk about Pinehurst area in general and Pinehurst Number two and just some other stuff. So, without further ado, here is Tom Doke on his new golf course at Pinehurst. All right, Tom, New Year, I think I asked you this last year. Any New Year's resolutions.
No, I mean, I'm just I've just got I just got to try to keep up with everything.
We're doing, organization, staying organized. It's the way I kind.
Of saying no to more people. You know, I'm gonna have to I'm gonna have to go back to being good at saying no to people because all of a sudden, we're really busy and there's still calls coming in, and you know, I just gotta, you know, for this year and next year, it's like, I've got to be as efficient with my days as possible or I'll never be home at all.
How hard is it to say no? And like, are there things like is there certain things that you just can't say no to? Like, what's that like when you're at a point right now where you're you're pretty booked.
Yeah, you know, it's very hard for most people to say no. And honestly, on a personal level, it always has been for me too. And at the same time, you know, I've always understood that, like a lot of your reputation is not doing the things that they're not for you. You know, if you if you take you know, if you take every job you're offered, you're gonna wind up in the wrong fit. A lot of times where you don't you're not on the same page with the client or the land is it doesn't suit your style
of what you want to do. And the best thing to do is just say no to those opportunities and not worry about them and let somebody else do that and maybe it'll fit them better, you know. And most of my career I was always good at that, but you know, that's part of how I got the reputation I did. You know, I wasn't very good at saying no, and I would like you know, and plus I would hold off on saying no because you know, you at the end of the day, you're trying to do the
best things you can do at any given time. You know, not you don't have a bunch of tens lined up to build every year. So is this thing that's going to be a seven or an eight? Is that the best thing that I can do next year two years from now, I don't know. And what other things are going to come up after I hang up with this guy. I have no clue there might not be any there might be a lot of better things. So I would try to put off the decision until I needed to
make it. But that frustrated people, and if I, you know, and when I'd say no, I'd be pretty abrupt about it, and then they think, oh, he's an asshole, he was leading us on or whatever. But it was really just my discomfort. I mean, I knew all along I did I wanted to say no, and I just didn't know how to deliver it very well.
Saying no is extremely hard.
I struggle with this too, and I think, like what you said really resonates with me because what I like to do I like to procrastinate, because it's not I don't want to say no. I want to do the thing, but I know, like in the back of my head an less like something else like falls apart. There's no feasible way for me to do it, you know. And I think that you run into that, and I, you know,
that's I joked. I've joked with some of my team and some some of my close friend that this year is like the year of me saying no, because I found myself last year like completely run down and like gone for twenty straight days and like what am I doing? You know, I'm it's I've spent three weekends in a row away from home and this just doesn't seem like a smart thing to do.
Right, And you know, and you're not you know, you're not saying yes or no. You're not you're not thinking you ought to say yes for other people so much. Yeah, you know, when you've got a payroll and you've got some guy. You know, for most of my career, my guys are like we could handle more, we could do more, and I'd be like, yeah, but I can't. And now it's like the shoes on the other foot. They're you know, they're like, oh no, how are I signing up so many things?
Yeah, it's it's hard. It's it's hard.
I think the hard thing for you too, is like you you don't have the capacity to do a lot, you know, like I could go see thirty courses, forty fifty courses next year, Like that's something I can do. And you know, the volume of yes I get to say is much greater than you doing the you know, you're like max capacity three four projects at once.
Well, I don't know. I mean, it depends on how much time I want to spend on the ground working on the greens. The routings actually come together pretty fast these days. Not that you won't change your mind and refine it if you go back and spend another three or four days on the site between you know, between when you first do it and when you get to construction. But you know, that's really efficient and and a lot
of fun. But you know, it's the commitment to going back several more times for construction that's the hard one to make because you don't know when that's going to be, and you don't know how busy you're going to be when you have to do that. And you know, I've the one thing I've changed about how I do in the how I'm doing business now is I'm putting in the contracts. You know, after all the planning work, I'm getting paid per day that I spend on site, so that if I get real busy and I don't have
you know, I just don't have. I don't have twenty five days to be at all these different places. I only have twenty or sixteen or whatever. That's what they're paying me for, and they can't really you know, I didn't promise that i'd be at all of them thirty days, and you know, whether I really need to or not, I don't know. You know, I mean, letting Eric and Angela and Clyde finished Saint Patrick's a couple of years ago and me not going back, that was a tough
decision for me to make. I you know, I nearly always go do that, but I just let them do it and it turned out great. You know, I'm gonna go I'm gonna go back to New Zealand next month and see what happened after we shaped up a bunch of greens in March and April last year and then I left and I go back, and I you know, I kind of feel like it's going to be really good. And you know, there's probably going to be a couple of them that are a little different than I thought,
but they might be better. So, you know, I'm trying to get more comfortable with that because at the end of the day, somewhere here in five or ten years, I'm not going to want to go do all those follow up visits or I'm only going to do them if like nothing else is going on. And you know, I'm getting more comfortable with that, and you know, I just I just have more faith in the people that are doing the work that they're going to do a great job.
You know, you're describing like the difficulty of scaling a business, you know, where you have to let go of things and everything because you know, the thing that I find interesting is really like I think one of your big differentiators early on was how much time you spend on site. And it's not like you're not spending time on site now, but it's you know, you can spend a ton of time on site when you only have one job.
Yes, and you know, and you know, and some of that time isn't very productive. It's a it's a cool thing to a point to have. You know, I got a lot of time to think about this, but you know, at some point you just become indecisive about what you should do and you know you can't. You're not very
good at keeping things moving along. And there is you know, golf course construction there you know, the process of construction does teach you to you know, keep going, and that there is you know, there are certain decisions that have to be made, and you just can't put this off in definitely, although it's funny. Sometimes it's like, you know, the contractor will insist we got to finish this hole this week, and it's like, no, you don't. I mean
we could go I'm not comfortable with this today. You know, we could go finish those two holes. Well, I'm still thinking about this, and you know, you don't want to be doing that for all the holes all the time. But sometimes that's the thing to do, is just say now, stop there, let's go do this and give me more time on this.
It's interesting.
I remembercalling right now a conversation I had with Bill Corr last year on the podcast where I think one of his big takeaways from COVID, and it was I think it was with regards to Tari. Yeah, was how how competent and how like how good the course turned out with how little he was there because of COVID. Like he was like, I think I think Riley Johnson, I can't remember who else was there. He was like, yeah,
he's like those guys did such an amazing job. And I'm walking around and I'm like, I don't know if it would be any better if I spent so much time. And I think, I mean that goes to like having the best people working for you is an extremely important aspect of if you're going to take some time away as having people that you trust in those positions to take on.
Absolutely And you know, and and Bill's the same as me. We've we've had those people for the last twenty years, yeah, twenty five years. And it's like, you know, some people know who they are, but you know, everyone as long as we're kind of in charge, everybody just assumes at the end of the day, you know, we're the one who made all the cool decisions. And no, a lot of times we're just like, you know, we gave that
guy room to run over there. And you know, like I mean, if you go to Saint Patrick's, what are the holes at Saint Patrick's that people have talked to me the most about. One of them is the eleventh. It has a really wild green. It's got like a trough in the middle and a shelf on the left and a crazy little high shelf on the right. And that's not mine at all, that's Clott And you know, when I you know, when I got back and saw
what he'd done. I kind of dipped my lip and I was like, man, that's that is really severe, and I'm going to get chewed out for this. And it's you know, it's not even my idea. But it's cool, you know, I just got to get comfortable with it's playable and we'll take the heat for it. And you know, and the other one, you know, one of the other ones is the sixth the part five that has a little it has an elevated green with a little ridge
just in front of it. So it's really hard, you know, downwind you have to land it short onto an upslope and get it to screwed up there somehow, you know, into the wind. Maybe you can fly it on the green, but you're not getting home in two. That's the one green that we couldn't finish when I was there because we had all the stockpile of we were screening materials there for the whole job. So Eric had to build that one after I left. And it's nothing like I visualized,
but it's a really cool green. And and again it's like, you know, I saw it when I went back and my first you know, it was done at that point, you know, they're just getting ready to open. And my first impression was like, oh, man, that's really severe. We might have to tone that down a little some way after you in a year or two, and you know, but I was like, I'm not going to overreact now, you know. Let's see what people think of it. And
people love it. Most people love it. Some people think it's way too severe.
Oh that's good. It makes people feel different things.
Hey, let's talk about a new project just announced this week of this week of recording Pinehurst number ten. You will be designing a new golf course at Pinehurst and it will be, from what I understand, in habit a little bit of a course they had years ago called the Pit, but then mostly beyond a new property that hasn't been built on before.
Tell us a little bit about the land.
Yes, it's actually on two different pieces of property. Part on the the Pit was a Dan Maples course that was kind of like Tobacco Road before Tobacco Rode, except it was a really narrow version of that really narrow version. And so after Tobacco Road opened, it kind of floundered. I mean, all of a sudden, it was like, you know, why would you play this instead of going to that.
It's all so much a bigger scale and it you know, and then two thousand and eight hit and it faded pretty fast after that, so that you know, the resort wound up. You know, it's two miles from the resort. They were obviously the ones who wound up buying that. But the other piece of land was something if I understand the history right, Robert and Jones owned it for years and the family sold it to the resort on a condition that one of the Joneses would do the
golf course. And in two thousand and one they started doing that golf course. Rhys Jones had started building a course on part of this property and they cleared. They didn't get very far and then nine to eleven happened and that shut it down, and it's just been sitting there for the last twenty years. You could barely to I honestly, I was shocked when I heard that they cleared some of it, because when you're walking it, it's
just thick woods. And actually, you know, the part that they cleared, it had twenty years to grow back, and it's the woods are thicker, you know, the trees are smaller, and you can tell now, you know. Once they told me that, it's like, oh yeah, this must be something they cleared and has grown back because the trees are just super thick and not very big.
That makes sense because there's there's not as much like when the trees get tall, there's only so much can grow under it. But when they're really small that yeah, there's just a ton right And you know, I.
Mean all of that land is like logging land. So the older stuff has been thinned out a couple of times, but the newer stuff they really hadn't done much out there for twenty years now.
So what's the site like in terms of how how would you compare it? Obviously, I think one of the things that's unique about Pinehurst is a lot of people have gone down and played a lot of courses down there, and I'm curious about the topography the land and how it compares to other courses and properties in the area.
Right. Well, I mean, and you know, it's a little hard for me because I haven't seen there's a there's a bunch of fairly new courses there that I haven't seen much of, but like I've never been to Forest Creek. Is it the two Fassio courses. But so the first thing is the pit. A good portion of the pit was on this like old quarry works that with a bunch of ten fifteen foot piles of material. That is not the part of the pit that we're working on.
That's they'll do another golf course on that land, you know, five years from now or something like that. But so, you know, the part that we got, the first few home of the pit were kind of over more gentle pineers, kind of parkland stuff, and you know, so we've got three or four holes in that land, and then we're across on the other site where there's you know, much big you know, big tree, big pine trees, more elevation change, a couple of little ponds that I think they might have.
I think they actually might have built the ponds for the Rhys Jones course, but they're you know, they're kind of they're not really big ponds, and they're in the woods,
you know, just surrounded by big trees. So you know, the cool thing is at this point they don't really look like a golf course pond that you'd have built too much, you know, because it's it's all naturalized around them, and you know, and we're being pretty careful when we play, you know, kind of our fifteenth and seventeenth holes play with those ponds in play, and golf is only kind of on one side of the pond, you know, it only touches the pond in one or two spots, so
it doesn't feel like your typical golf course pond where there's fairways on both sides, you know. Overall though, I mean, it's there's more elevation change than any of the resources
courses that I know of. I've never seen number eight, but there's something like ninety or one hundred feet elevation change from the highest point to the lowest point, and it kind of works, and it kind of works from the clubhouse up the hill, so the turn is it's not like straight out and straight back with the turn is kind of about the farthest point from the clubhouse and up the highest point and from up there, the three or four holes that play up there, I think
you're going to have like some great views across part of the rest of the golf course down across the valley, so you know, I think that'll give it a different feel than the other courses at Pinehurst. You know, with that much elevation change, you know, we're still working out like how much how much of this open sand look can we have out there, because you know, open sand on flat ground is fine, but open sand on steep
ground is erosion and problems. So you know, I don't I don't necessarily think we're you know, we're not out to try to make it look like tobacco road or or you know, it's even hard to really you know. You know, if I said I wanted to do Piner's number two again, which I'm not trying to copy Piner's number two obviously, you know you couldn't really do it
on this site. You know, those those those sandy open areas on number two works so well because it's fairly flat and the water doesn't keep running and keep making an erosion thing. There's just a bunch of little puddles that go down into the sand really fast.
Yeah.
I was recently out at a course that you had a part in the tree Farm and it's a it's a pretty dramatic site and I was out there when on a during a heavy rain, and one of the cool things that it's not finished yet in terms of all the native planting in those open sandy areas, and you could just see the erosion issues that it presents, like the sand and open because the water is gonna go. And it's amazing how you know, how water just can rip across a dramatic property.
So what type of things can.
You do to create a you know, that type of contrast and aesthetic but prevent erosion.
Well, I mean the first thing is the more the more of it you leave in kind of the native state, you know, pine straw underneath trees, kind of breaking up, cushioning the blow sort of. You know, there's there's not a lot of erosion out there right now on the raw land. It's when you clear a fairway open and you get all the water that's raining on that fairway coming down one valley. You know what, as soon as it leaves the turf wherever, that's where the problem is.
You know, on the turf, it's probably gonna be okay, unless unless there's concentrated water coming from another hole up above. So you know, so we'll have to do more, like you know, we'll have to do some big drainage work to stop you know, to stop stuff where it's either where it's coming onto the hole or where it's going off.
So is is that like making you know, if I understand that right, like doing earthwork outside the hole to divert water different directions.
Yeah, sometimes, but you know you can't really. I mean, if water is coming down toward the fairway of a part four, it's there's no way, you know, it's not easy to divert it all the way around that You're going to have to handle it somewhere. So so you're just you're kind of making a pocket there, and it's probably not above the hole, you know, it's probably kind
of at the edge of the hole. You're catching the water there in turf, and you know, just letting the water you know, either putting it a pipe and taking it to a pond or or just letting it settle out right there and dealing with the problem at the edge of the hole and not letting it come ripping across the middle of the carara.
So that's that's kind of how you would avoid having lots of like basins in play right.
With it.
With it we talked a little bit obviously the sthetic, you know, the elevation the land will be different in the sense of design, you know, especially with number two.
Obviously that's like the elephant in the room whenever you talk about Pinehurst, how do you go about making a course that has a different feel and and is it feels unique from a design standpoint at at a resort that has our a nine golf courses and surrounding area that also has you know, midpines, pine needles, Tobacco Road as you've talked about, how do you go about making a unique design in an area that is very rich with golf.
Well that's a sixty four thousand dollars question, isn't it. I mean, you know, you know, and it's going to take you know, exactly what we're gonna do, I can't tell you yet. That's what the next two months are for, is kind of figuring out, you know, what are we doing to make this look a little different. But you know, the interesting thing about Pinehurst is, you know, it's not like it's all monotone at all. I mean, pine needles
and mid Pines aren't exactly like number two. But you know, there is sort of a you know, I mean a certain part of it is just the environment. It's sandy, it's these certain things grow in this area that you know that wiregrass is like fairly unique to Pinehurst. You're not going to have a golf course in Pinehurst without some of that. But you know, but you know, most
of those golf courses were designed by Donald Ross. So if I'm looking to you know, you know, if I'm gonna say, well, my my greens are going to be like some other architect from the past. If you don't pick Donald Ross, you're off to a really good start. You know, anybody else It's like they don't have much of that there. You know, one of the things I really looked for on this site because Number two is famous for having those those raised saucer greens, and I
thought about the other courses I've seen there. It's like, you know what they don't have They I can't except for maybe Tobacco Road, none of those courses have a green kind of in a bowl, even a little one. So we've got three or four, you know, I found these little these little places, and you know, it had to be kind of like right, it had to be a place where not all the drainage goes into that bowl. It had to be kind of in a saddle. And we managed to find three or four really good ones
that you know. There's no green sites like those on any of the other Pioneers courses, so that's a good start.
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Tom Doak with regards to number two. I'd love to hear I don't think we've ever really talked about it on the podcast, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on what makes it great a great golf course and also, you know the importance of Bill Core and Ben Crenshaw's restoration there were in terms of golf golf course architecture.
Well you know, I mean I always had that as a ten and The Confidential Guide is one of my favorite golf courses, and that was probably of all the of all the courses I rated at ten, that was the one I would get the most flak back from people like, oh, I don't understand why you've got that rated so highly. It's like all the greens are the same, they're so severe, and no they're not. They're not the
same greens at all. I mean, the conturing of those greens is it's all why you know, none of them are easy, but there they've all got their own character. That's why it's such an interesting golf course. And you know, part of the interest is that that sort of evolved over time. I don't you know, those greens weren't that high and that severe when they were built. That kept evolving as they get top dressed more and and but you know, that kind of evolved with the rest of
the game getting easier. So they they just that the greens evolve and be more difficult to balance that out
a little bit. But you know, to me, the best what's so great about the golf course is, first of all, there's just a ton of short game interest and most critically, you know, the short game stuff is like, you know, it's hard anywhere you miss the greens, but if you go around any of those greens, it's like, okay, I can maybe you know, make par at least get my ball back up on the green if I miss over here. But if I miss over there, I'll be lucky just to get the ball back up on the putting surface.
So you know, now there's a lot of strategy to it. It's like you got to think about where, you know, if you got to play a little defensively and think about, okay, where can I not miss and that's you know, that's really hard to do without thinking negatively. You know, you
can't be thinking that way in your mind. You have to be thinking about I'm playing the left front of the green because that's the one place I can get up and down if I if I miss and and you know so and the other thing about the golf course generally the best place to miss is short, is
short and straight right in front. You know, if you're if you're right in front of the green and kind of chipping onto the length of it, you know, you mean, you may never you may not get it close very much, but you're you know, you're less likely to be playing hockey back and forth across the green.
I think. And that's what makes it so playable, for like playable.
And that's also what you know, that's what makes it a great golf course. Is you know your mom can do that. Yes, as long as she hits it straight, she's rewarded for that consistently. Anybody that hits it straight is rewarded fairly consistently. It's missing a green to the sides, it's gonna hurt you. And like, you know, the better you are further away, you're trying to do that. That's kind of a good solution to that problem of you know, how do I keep it interesting for the better player.
It's like, no, there, now they're you know, they're they're taking that risk from two hundred and thirty yards on a par five.
Yeah, I mean great players.
I think like the better the iron player is, the more dialed in they are distance control wise, where the way they miss is right and left. Yes, So if you're if you if there's a golf going, and that's what I think pine I think Jeff Ogilvie said on this podcast. He's like, you could put me in the middle of the fairway on every hole and I'd be really happy if we were sitting at the bar afterwards.
And I hit twelve out of eighteen greens.
And I think that and he's and I think that's kind of the magic of it is that you know, I played once with a like a twenty plus handicap. Is this old guy I hit it down the middle the first three or four hole. This guy like was just dinking it along and he was like one under and I was two or three over.
Any guy. Ian Andrew tells his story about you know, going there with his dad, and his dad just kicked his ass and he was all frustrated about it afterwards, and his dad's like, you're not learning anything, are you. It was, it was, but that's you know, one of the stories I remember about it when they you know, I think it was the Tour champ when they first started the Tour Championship, they played it there for.
They used to have a eight round tournament there.
No, that was, yeah, I know about that, but no, like in the in the nineties I think, or maybe the late eighties, they they used it for the Tour Championship the first couple of years, and so there's only like thirty players in the field at the end of the year, and basically if you weren't in the top eight or ten, you made the same money. You know, everybody was making money for showing up. And the prize, you know, the prize money was stacked to the top because it's.
Last nineteen ninety one. In nineteen ninety two they played it there.
Okay, yeah, that makes sense. So so those two years I was, I wasn't there. I was just some A friend told me that like the last two days of the tournament, the guys that weren't in contention. They just deliberately played to the front edge of the greens like all day so they wouldn't embarrass themselves. It's just like I'll just get to hear a chip up and make par and get out, you know, and not shoot seventy eight.
It's amazing.
It was Craig Saddler and Paul Aziger won won those two tour championships, and obviously then Yeah, so in terms of that restoration, you saw that course. I remember you saying you saw it really early on in life. And then you know, obviously before and after that Core and Crunchhaw restoration, you know, you already had thought of it as a ten before the restoration.
Yeah, and yeah, for years. I mean I loved it. And you know, I took a bunch of the people that worked for me there over the years. I took kill A Hants the first time he was there was with me, and you know, and I still thought really highly of the golf course. And then and like like I think before though, at whenever they had the USA Amateur there back in two thousand and eight or nine or seven, somewhere in there, I don't remember exactly where
I took one of my interns there. We went there and Tobacco Road, and you know, at that point they'd
had the US Open once or twice. They were getting ready for the USA Amateur and they narrowed up the you know, they narrowed everything up for the tournaments, and they'd never moded back out to its width, and like it was just bermuda grass everywhere and most of the most of the the wiregrass and stuff was gone and out of play areas, and I just was like, I felt really bad about it, and I I I was on Golf Club Atlas the next week and I wrote
it was really sad. I mean, it was like going to visit your favorite uncle and he's got to mention he doesn't remember who you are. And Tom Cashley was the president of Pinehurst. He was, he was, he worked for them, but he wasn't the president at that point.
He read that that, he said I read that that morning, and I was like, He's like, I spit out my coffee, like, oh my god, you know, and it was you know, and that was that was right about the same time Bill and Ben were they were working on Dormy Club and they'd come over and Bill had very gently tried to say the same thing I said much more abruptly.
But you know, the two of us saying it at the same time kind of was part of the impetus for them to start working on it, because up to then, frankly, they were just thinking, you know, we're hosting the US Open and the US Aner, and everybody says it's that. You know, all the pro say it's their favorite golf course, So you know, we're doing everything just right.
That's the thing, right, if it's a pro's favorite golf course. I don't know if that's necessarily a good thing, right. I saw that there's somebody posted something about tearing out the best golf courses on tour, and we say, there's some comments from tour pros about how low certain courses with a preponderance of bunkers and thick rough all over
the place, we're on the listing. So it's an interesting thing with like, you know, it a lot of I think a lot of golf courses that host tournaments fall into the bucket of like, well, if the tour pros like it, that's good, and that might not necessarily be the right thing, and especially that it seemed to happen a lot from really nineteen sixty through nineteen ninety.
Yes, that's true, but I you know, I mean I don't really think that's ever been the case for Pineher's Number two, where the guy where the guys loved it because it was growing in and getting more predictable, you know. I mean you asked all the you know, the old timers that played in the north and South, they all loved the place. They just thought it was a great golf course. And you know, the younger guys, they maybe
never saw it like that. You know. I mean I remember it more vividly because I saw it when I was like twelve years old, fifty years ago. It was one of the first things I saw and it really made an impression, and it was like, boy, they're really getting away from that, and so it was it was great to see him, you know that they they not only went back to that, they went back past that. You know, they went back further than that to really tune it up.
What are some of your other favorite I know you haven't seen everything in the area. What are some of your other favorite courses in the Pineers area and at the resort.
Yeah, I really haven't, you know. I mean, you know, I've never worked around Pinehers I. You know, typically I will only get there for a couple of days at a time, and I'll go walk number two again and then I'll go see one other thing. But I you know, I haven't really played that many other courses around Piners obviously. You know, I'm a fan of Tobacco Road. I don't think it's one of the best golf courses in the world.
I think it's a really cool piece of work, and I love going to see that, and you know, and we'll I'll take Angela back there to'll like look at certain things there both, you know, plants they're using around the bunkers and how he made the bunkers look so dramatic. But you know, but I don't I wouldn't want to build that eighteen holes for the resort, and I doubt the resort would want me to build that eighteen holes
for the resort. I only I never saw Midpines until after the renovations, you know, and from from my limited experience, that's my next favorite golf course in town. You know. You know, Pine Needles is a little seemed a little more conventional to me. I know they've done work there since I saw it, so I don't I can't really comment on that. But and you know Rand Morris that took me to Southern Pines several years ago. He loved it when it was just the Elks Club and a
really simple golf course. So I haven't seen that. And what they've done with that, I've heard it's pretty pretty severe, like, you know, the kind of thing I might have built when I was thirty. So you know, whether that's whether I'm gonna like that or not like that? I have no idea.
What do you say you severe like you'd build when you're thirty? Can you expand on that a little bit? How how you know your I guess severity and and you have have evolved with with experience and age.
I still like building difficult greens here and there, and you know, some projects more than here and there. But I don't. I guess I'm just I'm just I'm just more conscious, you know, when I was more involved with actually shaping them and creating them. You know, you get
more attached to everyone. It's like, oh, yeah, that's that's really cool, and that one's even cooler, and you know, now I'm a little you know, there's other people contributing to that, and I'm a little more of the editor, so I can step back and say, yeah, these are all cool, but you put them all together and it's too much, you know. I just I don't want to
play eighteen greens like that. So so that's that's the hard part is, you know, especially if you're doing a lot of the work yourself, is to like take a couple of steps back and go where am I on this?
You know, And and it's really hard in the middle of a construction project, you know, when you go and see somebody else's golf course that's already that they just built, and you know, and you go, you know, if I go see Southern Pines, I'm going to go see it after working on my own thing, going to see Pinehurs number two, going to see some other really great golf courses, and then I'm going to go there and I'm like, oh, that's that seems really you know, that impression is going
to be way different from if you were building it. You'd be spending almost every day out there, and after about three or four months, you start to lose touch as to how severe is this. You know, you need somebody else to be tapping you on the shoulder going are you sure you want to be doing that? And you know a lot of people don't have that or
they don't want to listen to it. When somebody does tell it, you know, they and a lot of you know, a lot of guys, especially if they're if they're younger guys, they're good players. Like all their friends who come around are like, Oh, that's cool. That's the coolest thing I've ever seen. You know, you should do the next one. You should do like this, And all the encouragement is for it to get harder and harder, whereas, like, you know, working for Mike Kaiser, it was the opposite. It's like,
do you really have to do that? That's important? Sometimes the client could provide that for you. Sometimes the people that work for you can provide that for you. The Pete Daya's wife provided that for But if nobody's providing that for you, you will do stuff. You know, generally, I think most people will tend to are doing it too severe instead of too dull. But I mean it could go either way.
Do you think this is something I think about?
A ton is do you think that the actual Like everybody, I think the natural instinct is to say, oh wow, look at this crazy green. I can't believe the guy that this architect had had the confidence to pull off such a wild green. But is the actual confident thing to do? The thing that requires more confidence is to build an extremely understated, subtle green.
You know, I suppose that. I mean, it really depends on your own tendencies. It's like, you know, if you for me, yes, I think you know, because my tendency is too I've seen all these cool greens that are probably some of the wildest greens on the planet. You know, you'd love to build something like that, and you know, to get to to to keep that in check is a hard thing to do, you know. I mean, I've already talked with Angela about this. For for Pioneer's number ten.
She's gonna it's the first time she's had to run a job for me. Uh. You know, she's been ready to do it for a while. They're just been like three very talented people ahead of her on the totem pole. And you know, but right now, you know, they're all committed to something this year. You know that they'll help her out some shape and stuff. But you know, they couldn't run that job because they all have to get
back to their other things by April. So, you know, so I've said to her, you know, I know she's thinking, this is her chance to do something really cool and do really cool stuff. And you know, I've said to her, you know, no, I mean this is you know, It's like, yes, it is. But at the same time, this is the time you're gonna have to learn that you have to take a step back and let some other people do some of the cool stuff, because that's that's the progression.
You know.
You go from you go from just wanting to build one cool green to you know, being able to do that at will, to running a job and realizing that's not what you need to be doing.
Everybody always talks about how great it is to build in the sand hills and how great North Carolina sand hills are. What's actually like, what's the challenging? What makes it hard? Is there is there something hard that's about building there?
Uh? Yeah, it's not really as sandy as everybody says, or it's not. Depends from one side to the other, it's different. But the sand is not as deep everywhere, as you know, it's not sand twenty feet down like Sand Valley. So you know, if you're doing more work, you know, the more work you're doing, the more complicated it gets.
You know.
I've seen, I mean, I've seen several things. I've looked at there in recent years. You know, I was there a couple of years ago, and it was really rainy and like there were a lot of puddles and wet areas, and not on Pioneer's Number two, but on some of the other courses. Resort and Tobacco Road got torn up by the rain that I'm talking about because of the
things we were discussing earlier. It's hard to do that. Look, you know, it doesn't stand up that well to a big storm, and it's just like how often do you have that here? You know? Pineer's Number two is the opposite, you know, I mean one of the people that's helped us, that's helping us build going to help us build the new course, but it's helped us, like, you know, get all the permits together to do you know. So they call me about this project eight months ago and and
I was like, Wow, I can't turn this down. But we're really busy. You know, I don't know if I can do it, and I you know, I said pretty quickly, well, you know, I've got some other clients that they've been talking about building stuff at the start of twenty twenty three, but now they're realizing they're not going to get there and it's going to be twenty twenty four. So my problem is I could build a golf course in twenty twenty three, but I've already got a bunch of commitments
that pushed back into twenty twenty four. I don't think I can do it then. So is it even possible that you could get it together that quickly? And you know, when I said it, I'm like, I don't know that they can because like in all the projects I've ever done, there was only one that it was less than twelve months from when they called me until we started building it, and that was Stonewall. And they, you know, they got permits with Tom Fazio's plan, not with Monk, you know,
but everybody else. You know, when Julian Robertson or some billionaire calls you, they think, nah, we can make it go super fast. Now, It's never that easy. There's always you know, it takes a while to figure out what you're gonna do, and then there are there are always hoops to jump through in the permitting process, and it's just going to take some time, no matter who you are, how much money you throw at it, anything else, you know, But it helps that Pineers is obviously they're a big
deal in their local community. That helped. But more than that, they've got two guys on the payroll, Bob Farren and Kevin R. Robinson, who have built a bunch of golf courses and rebuild a bunch of golf courses, and they know how that stuff gets done. And then they you know, in there. You know, Kevin was the superintendent and number two for five or ten years. He's been working there since he got out of school basically, and you know, and you know, and he's the one who explained to
me how different the soils are. And you know, guess which course in Pineers is on the best?
Number two.
Yeah, it's the highest ground there and the deepest sand. So you know, they never get a puddle there, they never have any erosion problems there. But as you move away from that and you're moving down the hill a little bit, it gets harder and harder.
Yeah, I mean it sounds so simple when you really take a step back and think about it, but like high ground is so important, and you see it at places like one that jumps to mine in Chicago. Medina obviously has three courses and the course nobody ever plays really is number two, but that one sits on the highest ground on the at the place and it's got the firmst conditions day and day out, and it's like, well, you know, why is this course always in the best shape of all of them.
It's like, well, the rain goes right.
Off and onto all the other courses, right, So that's uh, that's exciting. So that what's the exact timeline on the project. Yeah, you're going to start working twenty twenty three and uh and when when are they expecting to not exact, but when are the when is the hope for golf.
Wee We started clearing already. There will be an army there before the end of January. And you know part you know, our goal is to finish it would be done with the golf course and have it all planned in September and open next year. That goes back to you know, I'm going to be too busy in twenty twenty four. And and the resort, you know, that was music to their ears. Now that they've got permits, they'll have a it may not be open yet, but they'll have a done golf course. When the US Open is
in town in twenty twenty four. You know that you'll be you'll be playing it in the summer of twenty twenty four.
If you go to the they get a cash in on all those media members coming to town.
Absolutely they do. And you know, and especially you know, my other projects right now are all you know, Sedge Valley. We're going to get back to the first of April. You know, we could actually probably be working there today because it hasn't snowed much yet, but you can't plan on working in January, February, and March. So we start up again there the first of April. We start high
point the first to April. I'm not sure exactly when we're going to get going in Mexico, but it's not not right now, It's not for a couple of months yet. So so for you know, until the first to April, I have all of my talented people available to go do some work at Pinehurst and you know, knock out as much of it as we can before everybody goes off and they're doing their own thing, and you know,
we're hoping to take real advantage of that. I'm going to go for a week in February and a week in March, and I think we'll have a whole bunch of green shaped and holes half done by That's exciting.
It's excited up so well.
It'll be fun to follow this and talk more and more as the course comes together. But Tom, thanks for coming on and chatting about Pinehurst.
It's a fun place. Thanks for having me.
Thank you for listening to another edition of the Friday Podcast. Today's episode was edited by the great Meg Atkins Meg Editing. We are taking the editing keys away from Meg, putting it on some other stuff and Matt, who's going to be editing most of the pods this year, is on vacation this week, so begs back in the saddle back edited. As a quick reminder, today's episode was brought to you by Club TFE.
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