I miss the green, for example, I'm already upset. When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
And when I find my.
Ball in a fried egg Friday Egg, the dreaded Frida Egg Friday, Frida Egg Egg, Frida Egg bride Egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off.
Of the Welcome back to another edition of the Friday Egg Golf Podcast. I'm your host, Andy Johnson, and welcome to another episode of our series with golf architect Tom Doak.
I was excited.
I made a last minute decision to head to Traverse City for one of our events at the Kingsley Club and was able to catch Tom up there while I visited, So we recorded a couple a couple episodes. This one will be out now. The second part of this conversation will be out in a couple of weeks. This podcast is going to kind of center around a wide range of topics, but mostly Tom playing Sedge Valley for the first time. Then we dive into a bunch of different
topics there. So this was super fun. Thanks to Tom for the time as always, and enjoy this podcast. Before we get to Tom, let's talk about our partner club champion Club Champion is I think the best.
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you travel so much? You've traveled so much in your life. What is your what are your tips for Australia and New Zealand? Can you make it a trip together? What's what's your You know, people are always now I feel like it's becoming more and more popular as more direct flights are available to these places.
From you know, all these cities. Can you do both at once?
You can? I mean there's certainly more people going down there than they used to do for golf and and you certainly can go do both. I mean I used to stop through New Zealand a little, you know, most of the time on the way to Australia because Air New Zealand is such a great airline, and you know I could fly in, stop for a day or two and go on to Australia, but you know, it's kind of like trying to do Scotland and Ireland on the
same trip. I mean, just have faith that there's plenty to see in Australia, or there's plenty to see in New Zealand, and to try, you know, to try to cram in both because you think you'll never go back over there as foolish. You know, once you go to one, you'd be like, oh, now we want to go to the other. So I would never try to put both together. I did the very first time I went. It was
in the middle of building high Point. I had the winter off with nothing to do, and I went down there for like over March, my birthdays in March, and I was in Australia for like three weeks, Melbourne, Adelaide, Sydney. There wasn't anything in Tesnan to go see then, and then stop through New Zealand for a week on the way back, and I felt like I saw most everything I wanted to see on Australia, but I felt like I didn't even scratch New Zealand. I didn't get to
the South Island at all. And like, you know, people in New Zealand will tell you you're here and you're not going to the South Island? Are you stupid? You know, that's that's their idea of you should spend all your time down there if you could.
That's in researching New Zealand. Like most of the almost all the golfs on the North Island that you have to see, But then you look at the South Island and you're like, well, I want to spend like two weeks there playing very little golf and doing all the other stuff, and it's like, I mean, it looks like.
Just an amazing place.
Yeah, and New Zealand is it's tougher to travel too, because it's bigger. You know, it's like the whole West coast of them. You know, it's like trying to see all from Vancouver all the way to San Diego or
a Baja on one trip. That's a big trip. And you can there's good little commuter flights, so you can bounce around and see some things, but nearly everything you're going to want to see is a four hour drive or a six hour drive away from the next place, and you know, you just spend a lot of time in the car, which is not really how you want to experience New Zealand.
I hadn't planned to ask this, but how would you prioritize regions of the UK? Like, is there if you were on a golf like you wanted to see the greatest links courses in the world. Is there like an order that you would go in if you were if you were thinking about it, if you had, you know, think back to like I'm twenty five or I'm thirty, or I'm thirty five, I'm really into golf architecture, but
I've never been there right where? How would you kind of like lay out the next thirty years of your life of like taking a trip every couple of years.
Instead of doing it all in one year. Like just you didn't win.
The Drill Award. You don't get to do it all in one year.
You have a you have a life and you're just trying, like how would you prioritize you need to go here, here, here, here, Like how how would you do?
Think it's a lot easier when I didn't have a life that I have plenty of time. All I mean for me and I think for a for most people, the starter trip is go to go to He's Lothian in St Andrews, you know. That's that's the big first step and the heart, you know, and then after that, probably the most popular thing now is to go north to see Dornick and Castle Stuart and Cruden Bay and all those places, and the West coast kind of gets
overlooked a little bit now. I think that. I don't think, you know, it's it's not really that far from Saint Andrews. But if you're if you're only going for a or you know, ten days, including a weekend, I would not I don't think I would go. I don't think I would do Saint Andrew's in all of East Lothian and then try to go to Prestwick and True on the same trip, even though it's only like a couple three
hours to get over there. So that's one. I hadn't been back there in a long long time until I took Brian zaig Or a year ago when we were over because I wanted to Prestwick had the twelve hole original course set up then and I really wanted to see that. But it's the first time i'd been back there and walked around. First time it seemed Turnberry in like thirty years. So that's three separate trips. I think those are your first three. No, maybe not the first.
I mean to do all those before you go to Ireland at all, or before you go see anything in England. I don't know, probably not. You know, if you want to, if you want to get a sense of the variety, you either do the north part of Ireland or the southwest part of Ireland before you cross all of Scotland off your list, because you know, some people enjoy Ireland more.
It's definitely a different style golf, like a different I feel like it's just like the culture of golf's a little it's just a little different in Ireland than Scotland.
The culture of golf is a little different. The courses are different, they're not as different. You know, the north of Scotland, Dornick and Cruden Bay, those are a little more like Irish courses just because there's views. You get up in the dunes and you can see the water, whereas traditional links courses you really don't very much. And the Irish courses are the opit. You know, they're just spectacular. They're they're up in the dunes and falling off a
cliff into the into the ocean. So you know what order you do them in. I don't think it really matters that much. And then you know, there's a lot of little areas of England that I have I have not gotten back to a lot of those places at all in the last thirty years because I've had work in He's Loathing, I've had work in Ireland, I've had work in the North of Scotland, and I just keep
going back to them. But honestly, you know, if you told me I how weak right now, I'd go back to Rye and I go back to West Sussex and all that stuff south of London. There's some great golf there, and I just, you know, it seems like that's the most overlooked thing to do. You know, you said links golf, and if you're talking about links golf, that part of England is just Deal and Sandwich maybe Princes. I don't know what they've done with it. I know they've changed
Princes since I saw it. And Rye and those are about the only links courses down there that you're going to think about. Seand but to get to do some of those hands, some of those Heathland horses, that's a great Trip's that's like arguably as good a trip as any of those other ones that I talked about, and people do not think about that.
I think they're a little bit less promotional.
Oh way. You know, there's there's there's an Irish golf tourist board almost and you know, Scottish golf. Scottish tourism promotes the heck out of golf. It's their main thing, and that I don't even know if there's an English tourist board at all. They certainly don't promote golf in England, which is you know, most of those clubs will accommodate overseas visitors, but it's not their main business. It's not how they make most of their money like it is in Scotland and Ireland.
It's almost like a hybrid there of like the American and Scotland model, where you have like the clubs are a little bit more exclusive, but they still retain some playing abilities.
But you know, it's it's kind.
Of like it's just it's almost like the evolution of golf is Scotland clubs, Scottish clubs, Irish clubs to English clubs to American clubs.
You know, Yeah, in terms of the structure, and you know, some of it's just economics. I mean, clubs around London can can charge more than eight hundred pounds a year to their members without you know, nobody's going to complain about it down there the way they would in Scotland or Ireland. You know, in Scotland and Ireland they're very spoiled on never having paid a lot in greens fees.
You know, back in the day they subsisted on that and the golf courses weren't in great shape, but it was fine because that's what you know, it only costs as much. Nobody complained about the conditions, and very importantly, you don't complain about the conditions if you play match play all the time because the other guy's doing the same exact thing. You know, it's much different once once you're keeping a card.
H Yeah, that's completely true.
One of the other things with the England that I'm kind of I think probably lends to the uniqueness of it is the different eras of golf design, right, you get kind of that. You know, it would coincide a little bit with American Golden Age. It probably is the golden age of their design period. But then you also have kind of the old links courses, right.
Yes, I mean you know all the links courses have such a long pedigree. You know, a place like Mirrorfield. Colt worked on a one point, Simpson worked on at a one point. You know, old tam Ore has worked on a one point. You know, not many people go
there and try to pick that apart at all. It's just like, well it's old, you know, it's it's it's an old thing and it's evolved, and you know, nobody and nobody would ever think on those links courses of trying to restore them to Simpsons version or Colts version exactly. It's like, you know, we think we've made improvements along
the way. Whereas you know, around London or some of the only examples of like Herbert Fowler's work, or Simpson's work or or Colt's work that are just still pretty much their original work and they haven't been changed very much. Is very different for over there, they don't. Golf architect are not as revered and and golf architecture is not so precious to them because most golf courses have been
most links courses have been changed several times. That's just part of the part of the deal because they were all built for hickorys or for something before that.
Even you just finished a couple of days at San Valley, you got to play Sage for really the first time. What were your takeaways from playing the golf course?
And what.
As an architect, what are you what do you think about when you're playing a golf course that you built for really the first time.
Well, first shout out to Michael Kaiser who sent the plane over to pick us up in Traverse City and go over there. It's funny, you know, between Lido and Sedge, I drove around Lake Michigan through the up like about ten times over three years. And and you know that's a seven and a half hour drive if you don't take a break, and.
It's it's a pretty drive, but I could it's a.
Long, pretty drive, but it's a long drive. And my body's getting older. And you know last week we jumped and jumped in the plane and we were we were in Wisconsin rapids in thirty two minutes, and it's like, ooh, this is easy. Can't get used to this.
But it could become a pilot and you could get like just assessmin.
No as much easier when they just pick you up, take you, drop you off, don't have to worry about any of the other stuff. So, you know, it used to be one of the first ten golf courses I built. The biggest day was the first day the superintendent coy holes and we got to go play the golf course because one of you know, usually there would be four of us play in and one of us is going to have the course record, might be seventy nine, but somebody was going to have the course record. And you know,
nowadays I'm almost never there for that. You know, the client sneaks out with somebody to do it first so they can they can do it, and I'm not in town, so instead of that, you know, it's not usually you know, usually I'll have gone and played the golf course once, like right about when it opens, like we did for a media day in Pinehurst this summer, but then I
won't have played. That's the only time I've played Pineers number ten so far until we have the Renaissance Cup on it in November, and usually that's when all my crew gets back to see it for the first time and play it, and that's a lot of fun. But to take the whole crew to Sedge for a couple of days and just play, just just us was really special, and we hit it perfect weather midweek it wasn't quite as busy as normal, so we you know, we weren't really waiting on any big felt like we had it
to ourselves. Even though they did about one hundred rounds a day for the two days. They space the tea times a little further apart this year to just you know, kind of throttle play a little bit because because a lot of times they're putting so much traffic on fescue fairways that first year, it really does a lot of damage. And I'll tell you what the difference between twelve minute tea times instead of ten minute tea times is you just feel like you have the course to yourself. You don't,
you're not waiting on anybody. It was amazingly different. But the superintendent was like, yeah, it'd be nice if they kept it, but we you know, we've calculated that's about a million and a half dollars and tea times lost, you know, not having one more tea time every hour all season. There was a lot of money, so it's probably not gonna stay there for very much longer, but it was great.
I'll never forget. I did a Michigan trip.
This was like shortly after college, and we played you know a lot of places.
It was Arcadie, it was Arcadia Bluffs.
I mean, this was like two thousand and nine ish. We played up at Belvidere. We played, and then we came back and we played. On the way back, we stopped at Harbor Shores and the they did fifteen minute tea time intervals and after like after like five or six rounds of golf on like ten to eight minute intervals, that fifteen minute it was insane and it was like, why can't And it's.
Like, well, there's a drawback to that.
You deliver an exceptional customer experience, but it comes at a cost.
Yeah, and if you charge, you know, you could charge more to make the experience better, but pretty quickly after that you'd be like, well, we could just charge more all the time.
So it's like the Pebble Beach conundrum right where it's like they charge a lot, they charge a lot for everything on property, but people are aligned enough to do it right. So what were your takeaways on the on the golf course, like what I guess we could start with like the the general stuff, but then I think, like I'd love to hear if if there were things that you weren't necessarily sure of that worked really well, or things that you might have thought didn't work great.
Well. You know. I mean, I've been asking people all summer if they say they've gone and play to like, how is the pace to play? I don't realize they had the ta tons spaced out as much. But you know, we've been We've been a little concern from the beginning about having those you know, five through eight on the front nine with a lot of part threes. And I haven't been too concerned about it because it's like, yeah, it's gonna get held up somewhere, but it can't get
held up everywhere. You know, You've only got so many people out there. If you're you know, if I'm waiting on the sixty and then those guys because I think I might drive the green and then those people go up to seven, I'm probably not going to be waiting on them there so so and no sign of that at all. You know. I've asked a lot of people did they feel like it was a shorter golf course. Did they miss not having the par fives? Never thought about it playing the golf it. Never didn't think about
that for one second when I was actually playing. It's just like one good hole after another, and some of the flatter or more subtle holes that we built turn out really good. Number two's a great hole. Number nine is a really cool hole when they move the pin around to different spots. The tenth green is pretty wild. Eleven is a really good par five. Pretty tough hole, but there's a lot going on there. You know.
One thing with ten that I didn't realize until I was photographing it, And I think, like one of the things I think about a lot is like everybody's always on me about like you shouldn't be doing the drone photography. We have like two wonderful drone pilots, Matt and Cameron, who do a great job, but I still do a lot of droning. And one of the things that I tell people is like if I drone and photographic golf course, I understand it way more than if I just play it.
One of my big takeaways how amazing that it's flat and nobody would think of it as an amazing green site. But that tenth green it backs up on the ridge like it abuts that ridge that's above what is that the seventh green eight green that when you move that pin back, I haven't played a backpin there it. I mean you fall off the face of the earth behind it.
It's like a pretty epic like back green site. And it's like you would think of it as a flatter part of the property, but there is a really nice ridge at the back of that green when that pins back.
Yeah, and now that you mentioned it, the pin was fairly far back one day, but we still we probably still got more trees to take out back there, so it's really more stark that you know, you don't see anything behind it except somewhere over on the other side. But when we were building it, I thought absolutely that's part of this hole is that you have to be a little careful going into.
That back there.
It's just like a kind of like a walk. It's like you're kind of like walking a plank out in the back. And I would never have thought about it based off that I've it three times now. I never have thought about it until I saw it from behind.
Right. It's a little like putting a you know, it's like putting a hidden bunker behind a green. It's like the first couple three times you play, you don't even think about you know, it's like it's not there until you hit it over the green once, which a lot of people typically, you know, typically the average golfer is, you know, planting hitting there five n one hundred and eighty yards and it goes one sixty five and they never see what's behind the green.
Yeah, So, so the flatterholes, I agree with eleven.
And then what what else? What else did you think?
You know, we we all played twelve so bad the first the first day, and they told us, though, the people lose a lot of balls on the right, and yeah, and we did too the first day. It's because it's hard to see much of the left side of the hole and see see that there's a lot of room up there, and some of it's just there's a lot of like quote unquote native stuff in weeds growing up right at the edge from the native to the fairways. So we're gonna like thin that out and cut it back,
but it's hard to see. You know, you don't see much over there, and then you see even less and there's some gnarly grass around the edge, so you're like you just start looking at the flag and then hit your usual left to right ball and wind up down
in the crap along the right hand side. But then the second day I hit a really good T shot and I was like they had the pinned back on that last shelf and I was up on the shoulder on the left and the shoulder on the left, you know, was too much on my line to play off that shoulder end down in and get it within twenty feet, and I'm looking at the green like there's been a
long time looking at it. And then I tried to chip to the right, like there's a little slot between where the back plateau comes up and the little thing on the right, and I got it just in the perfect spot. It didn't It made about a hairpin turn off of that and came back and like missed the hole by that, and the caddy was like, I'm gonna have to spend more time chipping around these screens. It was like, I didn't think you could get that with it twenty feet. I was like I wasn't sure I
could either, But that was fun. I love that twelfth hole.
I one of the things I like.
About it is how left if you're if you hit it at green distance, like you kind of run out of real estate left where it can run into the native. But I just love that shot from left. It's just it is you can hit so many different shots. You can look at that the bank on the right play it back depending on those but that that running shot that kind of like uses the slope is such a fun shot to hit. I I that it's just such a neat little ridge. I always think about what you
said it might have been. It might have been like the third or fourth episode of this podcast with us talking but you you said, I wish that we could have a sign on contours. I said, if you're reading this, you're in the wrong spot because left there feels like that depending on the pin.
But there, like you're like.
This is a little bit of a spot a boxer versus like if you're if you're right of it. A lot of those you have that ridge that just funnels the ball back in.
Yeah, yeah, And you know, I just enjoy playing those shots. You know a lot of people talk about Drivable Part four US and that they're playing that whole like two hundred and seventy yards and I don't even think we were playing a two hundred and fifty the day we played, but I don't. It's still like a it's a really
skinny target. Not that people are not that many people will hit it on the green, but I like, you know, instead of what they used to call a drive and pitch hole or a driveable hole, I've got this thing in between. It's like a drive and chip, you know. And I do it on hard fives too. It's like, if you can get the second shot up, they're close. I just want to get it close enough up there to the green, like within forty yards, I'm chipping that instead of you know, I don't have five wedges in
my bag. I'm still carrying eight clubs in my bag. But you know, I love those kind of shots, and there's lots of that in Link Scoff. There's lots of that on a bunch of my courses that are you know, the fairways are tight and there's a lot of short grass around the greens and you can do it. I don't see holes like that very many other places.
I think that's like one of the things that I I feel like as a golf course architecture society. I think this is the Honestly, I think I might blame it on the tenth hole at Rivera in the how popular it's become over the last fifteen years television and maybe ten years on television, and like the idea of a drivable par four has become like it almost feels
like people like need it to be. But oftentimes I find the most enjoyment, the most mental stimulation when it's extraordinarily difficult to drive it, like it's almost impossible, and it's more about where do I want to rice this ball? Do I want to push it up? Because like the common statistical belief is get it as close as possible, But there are some really clever designed drive and pitch holes where getting it close as possible is not always the right the right idea.
Right, I mean yeah, one of my good friends says, the key to your short purforce is never go for it at all, no matter how much I am tempted. Don't do that. That won't work out. And it's not necessarily that I'm deliberately doing that, But but usually when I'm like dangling the carrot, like okay, this you could drive this. It's like, but there's trouble if you try. And you know, to your point, I mean, everybody talks about the tenth of Riviera being a driveable part four.
It's impos It's exactly the drive in chiphole that I just talked about. I mean there's like, is there like one or two guys in in four days at the tournament they actually hit a ball that stays on the green. It's just almost possible.
They just roll on to the front. It's not like they can get everywhere on the green. It just like trickles on to the front. Not many do that, yeah, very few.
You know, they're all aiming like twenty yards left and if they if they hit one on the front, it's a mistake.
They're aiming at the bushes on the left and hoping they don't hit it where they're aiming.
So so yeah, I mean, you know, I talk with people now, you know, back in the day, a short part four was like three hundred and sixty yard drive and pitch hole. I talk with people now, they ask if I have any or perforce, and they think a short part four is a drivable part four, Like there's no other kind.
Yeah, That's that's what I kind of like amazed about. It's like it's like we have three drivable part fours. It's like, well, what if like you had one drivable one that you could really drive and like two that are like you have to think about what you're doing, and sure you could push it up and maybe in the right conditions get there, but really the thought is like do I want to leave this at like one twenty? Do I want to get it? Push it up to sixty? Do I want to push it up to eighty yards?
Like where do I want to leave this? And what part of the fairway do I want to leave this on?
Because like one of the beauties of like to me, that's missing in just the it's not missing this is the wrong word, but like the it's almost like the the characterization has become this drivable thing is like the idea like I always like, I kind of like the idea of like you're hitting a fore iron and then you as an art architect can demand a certain precision where it's almost becomes like I'm playing a long par three to a short par three, Like my landing area
is like hitting a long par three shot right and then it's a short part three in a perfect a.
Like I used to play, like I still try to play seventeen A crystal Downs. I mean, I never think about hitting driver up there. I'm not I'm not long enough to even think about that, because if you don't get it all the way up there, it's going to roll back forty or fifty yards. So but yeah, I used to play that two hundred yard shot one hundred yard shot, and they both had to be really good
shots or you'd make six. But you don't see a lot of holes like that that that you know, almost encourage you to hit an iron off the tee instead of driver. And of course, you know a lot of our clients don't want anything that tight. Gonna be too many lost ball, it's going to slow down play too much. So so can we just make it a little wider?
And we do? And you know, Sedge Valley has three in theory three driveable part fours, Like seriously, we're we're a plus handicapped guy does have a chance to hit it on all three of those greens. But I feel like the holes are pretty different. You know, six is you know you've got kind of a you know, there's a lot of fair way there, but there's only like there's only kind of a circle in the left center of it that gives you a nice easy shot into the green.
The hard one I thought.
I thought I pulled it off, and then I was in the left bunker. Tell everybody you don't want to be in the left bunker because it's like this, and you got down a downhill bunker shot to this extraordinarily narrow green.
I was like, I don't know if I can even hit this on the green.
Yeah, it's like, you know, I try to do that as much as I can. Okay, you thought you were going to drive the green, and you were that you were not close, So now you have a fifty yard bunker shot. It's like the one thing that most people are like, don't ever give me that. And then twelve, you know you can drive it in that little pop bunker and not even be able to get to the green. And that is a very skinny one too, And that one is like, you know, you don't to me, it's
skinny in a different way. It's like you know you can use the slopes around it, but you also don't you know, the closer you drive it to it. The harder it is to use those slopes because you get now you're at the wrong angle and the pin is on the same side of the thing as you are, and now you're going to have to be really clever to play it off a bank on the other side or something in order to get it close. And then
eighteen a little longer than the other two. You got to carry it a long way if you're going to do that, I mean, unless you're playing down I guess a lot of people play that from down below and it is easy to drive if you're there, but from the from the realty, it's like, no, that's too much carry for me. But again, the shape of that green
makes me think about where should I go? You know, I was playing I played left there two days because that's the way I played the whole up barn Google most of the time, and I wanted to see if it played the same. And my crew were you know, Eric's trying to hit driver up there over the shoulder close and the other guys are like down in front of the big bunker and just hitting. You know, it's a blind shot in, but it's a better angle to the backpin.
I like that hole with the backpin.
What I think is cool about it is you can hit an almost perfect driver.
I've done this.
I've had that backpin twice where I hit an what I thought was a perfect driver and I ended up on the front part of the green finished, and and then the next time I remembered that and I just like shaded five yards left of where I hit it the first time, and I pulled it off and I ended up with like a very but like the idea of accomplishing it but not being done because it wasn't quite perfect.
Right, he made the carry, You thought that was great, and you still left yourself for really wait.
A second, like I'm gonna do I chip this like I thought this, I'm on the green, like we're you know. I think that's like one of the other things that frustrates me a little bit with my with with a lot of like modern ideology of around golf is like the idea of like, if I've hit the green, I deserve to be able to easily two putt. It's like, well, no, you didn't hit the right part of the green, you know, right.
And so so the one thing that's different about that whole from the fourth at barm Google is it's about twenty yards longer. And you know Barboogle, you're always playing you know, ninety percent of the time you play there, you're playing into a twenty mile an hour wind and Sam Valley, the wind can be behind you, it could be from the left. So but it wasn't going to play consistently longer. So we thought, okay, we have to. You know, we were using the light our data to
get the bones of the hole in. But you know, we but we we did. The one thing we didn't want to do is make it. If it was the same length, it would have been too easy to drive. So you know, we struggled with, well, where do we make Where do we put that twenty yards in? Because if we if we keep all the green complex and all the fair way the same and we just have the t twenty yards for the back, it's going to be a twenty yard more carry to get over the bunker.
I was like, I don't know about that. You know, that's going to be that's going to make the carry like really hard for guys. So so we act actually put it in kind of between the green and the bunker. There's a little more of a space there, and that's the extra slope that kicks your ball to the left. If you don't get it all that, you know you can get it past the bunker, but you still didn't get it to the part where it goes down into the right side of the green and everything just kind
of feeds left instead. So at bar Google, if you get a day where it's not real windy and you can drive it, it's more receptive up there. But you know, most days you don't even think about trying to hit that shot because there's so much trouble.
Right I you know, it's a fascinating I would you know, we just talked about this with the drive and pitch hole versus the driveable.
To me, it's almost more.
Fascinating for a strong player when you can't quite get there what you do because it's like right left, Like I, you know, to be completely honest, I have never even looked like I people. I've had people tell me left just the way to play, and I just like when I'm playing golf, I don't even look at left like it is just you know, I'm going to hit it
sure at the green. But like if I played into a strong into the wind, like all of a sudden, then all of a sudden that all the bunkers and that right side, how the it kind of moves on an angle, Like I think about the right side and the angle of that and how I cannot bail, you know, like it almost helps me that I can't bail with the with the right the way it is that it
makes me be more committed, if that makes sense. But if I was playing into headwind, then all of a sudden, I'm I would look like it's it's again, like or I'd love to go play it with like a hickory set and like in that hole becomes alive and it kind of talks to the to the topic we're just discussing, Like I think that hole is actually more compelling for a shorter hitter.
Yeah, and it's not, you know, for a shorter hitter. I mean, part of the great thing about having short part fours is they could be tricky for a good player, and they're very straightforward for a shorter hitter, Like you know, like I mean, one of the best short part fours I've ever built, a six Ali Pacific Dunes, and like I love that, you know, all of the really good players I know, if you ask them, what's what hole at Pacific Dunes are you afraid of, it's that one.
Yeah, the green's just so small, it's it's such a skinny target.
But you're actually thinking about driving the green, you know, like I went and watched the Curtis Cup there. None of them are thinking about driving the green. And it was a very straightforward drive in pitch hole for them. And they you know, they hit pitch shots straight, so that was no problem at all. And they've you know, they were always somebody always made three in those matches. It was kind of crazy, just like, Okay, you take out the temptation part and this is a very simple hole.
So the same. It's the same with the eighteenth that said valley, Like if you can't go for it, you know, you can think really hard about it. Should I go left? Should I go right? You know, if you're not afraid of a blind pitch, it's just like hitting it short of the bunker, and hitting a blind pitch into a big bowl is definitely the way to go. You'd make four there like ninety percent of the time.
That's the thing.
The amazing thing about the whole is like you're offering someone a short west shot into a bowl. I think that's one of the things that I.
Like.
To me, one of the great ingredients of a short Part four is when you offer someone something extraordinarily enticing, like a really good player, something extraordinarily enticing, if they pass up the temptation of going for it, where it's like I'm giving you a wedge, Like a lot of cases like it's even just like I'm giving you a wedge. A lot of courses you work on have great topography
a wedge from a flat lie. Like to me, that's like the interesting thing with the way the pros and now play three at Augusta National is that they all drive it into that gully short of the third green and then they have this pitch up, you know, twenty five feet to a green that kind of runs away, and it's like, if you just lay back on the ridge, it is maybe the only time outside of a par three at Augusta National that you get a dead flat lie and the only time that you have a short
wedge in your hand with a dead flat lie like that.
It's just something you never get there.
And it's kind of amazing to me how that the evolution of analytics has led to this, like and you watch some of the guys that have played there forever I remember, like up until like till he's not exempt anymore. But Lee Westwood just like everybody's bombing it down there, He's still hidding the iron to the top of the hill. And you see the older guys still believe in that mentality. But analytics has really changed where they push it down into this very undesirable place.
Right. But and you know those the analytics are general, yes, and I don't know if they're you know, they need to look at their scoring average on that whole because I don't think it's doing in many favors. I see a lot of guys missing that hole up every years.
It's a fascinating thing about this analytics.
It's like you know, they there's been this, and I believe, like I'm a big believer of like analytics is like the what it's done for, like accelerating the golf IQ of young golfers is like extraordinary, like stuff that I learned when I was twenty seven, after twenty year or almost twenty years of competitive golf, I had light bulb moments my late twenties, Like these kids are learning at
age sixteen and like, that's the value. But so much of the analytics is based off of golf played on golf courses with like and I don't want to but like pretty run of the mill design in conditions that do not have you know, implications for where you miss, you know where being twenty yards.
Out, Yeah, the whole fairway is flat, so it doesn't matter which part you hit it too, You're going to have a flat lie instead of like, no, I got to get it there and thirty yards further up it's not flat anymore and that's.
Harder or what you what I think? Eric Iverson said in an early podcast that we did from bel Air, he said, my first day on the site with Tom, he had me he said, I was supposed to build a green and he said, build me a green that when you're on one side of the fairway looks completely different than the other side. A lot of golf courses, if you go from right side of the faraway to the left side of the fairway, it looks the same.
Like when it looks different, that presents like a completely different situation which are going to have drastically different analytics and results from right.
Yeah, I mean that you're right. The analytics are just it also seems to me that you know, I mean even analytics that are that just digest everything off the PGA Tour. That's all the guys playing good, bad, and indifferent all week instead of like, you know, when you're in one of the last groups on Sunday and you're playing as good as you ever can, you can take more chances. Your your window has gotten smaller that you're
going to hit. Your circle that you're going to hit that ball in is smaller because you're right on your game and some of them don't play like that. Yes, you know whereas you know Tiger Woods, he understood all that, but when he was playing good, it's like, yeah, I'm gonna hit a little fade into that and make it skip once and stop. That's not on the analytics thing at all. But you know, he knew he was playing, he knew he was comfortable with that shot.
That's the thing is, like you your performance, you have statistical variants of your own right and understanding where you are. I think that's like the I think that there's going you look at what saber metrics and baseball where they were twenty years ago, when like the moneyball a's were you know, revolutionizing the sport to then it became a
common adopted practice. Everybody's using these statistics, and then there was a there's now a next level of statistical analysis that has gone way past where it was twenty five years ago. I think golf like we are on the baseline of like understanding statistics because like and I think like some of the players are like starting to like they have their own coat. They understand that they're their statistical profiles way different than the paint by number.
It's very much like I mean, the part of baseball that relates to is like the pitching coaches now they're like, don't throw the slider anymore. That you're getting killed with the slider. You know, develop another pitch and and use you know, make this pitch better. You know, stick with that fastball, don't try the other fastball, and then don't be throwing this except as a throwaway thing. You're getting killed on that. And that's you know, golfers need that
level because that's really changed some pitchers. You know, you see pitchers go to Houston and all of a sudden it's like they pitch a new way and they're better.
It's yeah, I think all sports are seeing this, Like there's like a whole revolt with that this year because the defenses have finally adapted and are like game scorings down because the defense is finally caught up to the offenses. And now again it's on the offenses to adapt again and do something that spites the defense. And I think that's the unique aspect of golf that doesn't get talked about enough, Like the defense against golfers is golfer extra.
Yeah, and it's hard to you know, I thought about that a lot when we were working in Houston, but you know, the offense of what I understood, you know, I tried to understand the analytics, but it seems so boilerplate that it was like there wasn't much you could do with the defense that was going to change how they thought about the whole or how they played the hole.
And you know, I've been trying for you you know, I've been trying to do things for years that get good players to think about it more and see something either that scares them or tempts them into doing not what the analytics say if they just stick to what the analytics say, you know, hit it thirty two yards away from that bunker. You know, that's what they're gonna do. And you know, to me, it's kind of sad like when we when we rebuilt that seventeenth hole in Houston
last year. It's like, Okay, I know where the edge of the water is. I'm want to make a green that's about, you know, fairly skinny. So if you miss it left pin high, that's the worst place. So you're you know, you've got the green a little bit off the water, and then you've got the green about eighteen yards wide, and then you realize very fast, well, you know they're going to be aiming ten yards left of this green. The guy that actually hits the ball in
the green probably wasn't aim in there. You know, that's it's just a bad shot. They're all going to be aiming left of the thing because that's what the analytics tell them to do. And then a gas it's whoever you know, hits the least. You know, they throw the analytics pretty much out the window. When you've got a wedge in your hand from fifteen twenty yards off the green, you know, you're really really boiling down to execution there.
But but I did you know, when I was in Scotland this summer for the to walk around the Renaissance Club, the they're having meetings with the PGA tour guys about you know, they've got one more year on the contract to have the Scottish Open right now. They'd like to host a long term I think the tours would like
it to stay there so they don't have to. You know, some people think the Scottish Open should be all over Scotland, and I get that, But from the from the players standpoint and especially from the tourist standpoints, like going somewhere different every year is hard and they you know, it's so much more work for them to put together. It's much easier if they're staying at the same place year after year.
Don't forget the sponsors. That's another aspect.
They know exactly what their chalet is going to look like, how they can craft their experience for the like it.
I suppose you know some some sponsor. You know, it's not always the sponsor rolls over every few years and sometimes they got a different idea of where it should be or what they want too, but we've been we've been talking about changes there. It's much harder than it is an Augusta because you're the Scottish openers right in the middle of a short growing season. In Scotland. You cannot tear up a green the week after the tournament
and get it back into perfect shape. You can't even tell it's a different the next by the next tournament just won't happen. So we really can't do much with change in the greens. We can do everything else, but you know, most of its window dressing. You put in a new bunker and like you look at the shottling stuff at the end of the tournament, it's like three eyes hit it in that bunker and seventy two you know, in seventy two holes of the one hundred and fifty guys.
It's like, you know, so so really it's more about you know, you're you're hopefully you're changing how they're thinking about the hole and where they're trying to hit it that the bunker is there. It's not that the bunker is actually going to catch them that much. But you know, Padrake said something to me that just you know, I guess I sort of understood it, but I hadn't really registered yet. So so one of the things we changed two or three years ago we put in a new
fairway bunker on the right of the first hole. It's about three hundred yards off the tee. It's tied over there. If you aim away from it, you're bringing the tree that's to the left and short of the green into play. And you know, we're making them, you know, we're making them decide which one of those two things is going
to be in play for them. So between the bunk, you know, to the right of the bunker, there is about twenty yards of rough that's not very thick, and then outside of that there's like some trees and then a couple of gorse bushes. It's like so nobody's ever going to hit it to the right of the bunker deliberately. It's not near big enough to aim there. But you know, Padrick said, the guys complained a lot that, you know, their playing partner or opponent gets away with missing there.
They don't have a problem with hitting it if they if they hit it in the bunker, they don't have a problem with that because they knew it was there and they should have kept away from it, But what really bothers them? If somebody misses a little more and it doesn't go in a bunker and it gets they get away with it. It's like for a tour pro's mentality, it's like everything between that bunker and the gorse should be more bunkers and deeper rough than just something so you never get away with.
The scale of it has to get more different.
The works of shot is right, and that's what fair is, and they all understand that wouldn't work for the members any other week, but it still just riles them up that you know, I was aiming over here, and well the other guy was aiming over here and he hit one way wide and he got away with it.
Yeah, nothing bothers someone like that a tour pro more than that, I think one of I think an interesting discussion about golf analytics is that all the analytics are based in the idea of stroke play and all the numbers the decisions are based out of fear of what double triple, quadruples or even bogies will do to your seventy two whole score, fifty four.
Hole score or thirty whatever.
The scale of the tournament is what that impact will do.
So all of this, all of this analytical system is based off numbers in the set. Now, if the PGA Tour was a match play tour where you played matchplay tournaments, it would completely spin how the analytics work. It would be completely flipped on its head, and all of a sudden, the thing that would have way more relevance would be golf architecture and you'd see way more attempts at heroic
shots that line. I think conceivably your line on seventeen in Houston would shade way more aggressive if the penalty for a triple bogie was simply a loss of whole. Yes, And that's like the interesting discussion about analytics is like these systems are based off of the existing rules and by the tour or an amateur golf primarily being a stroke play pursuit in America, right, the analytics and the strategy behind playing golf is dramatically different than if it was a matchplay.
System, and dramatically different than like how people play every day golf in Scotland. Yeah, you throw those analytics out because that's not the same. And yeah, I mean if in match play, the the analytics would be much more like playing poker, Like as soon as you know what the other guy what, you know, the odds changed completely with what the other guy's cards are, and you have
to be able to figure out in your head. Well, okay, now that he's done that, does it still make sense for me to go twenty yards left of the screen or you know, numbers wise? Is that not going to work out? And I really need to try to hit it on the green or I'm going to lose the hole anyway.
Yeah, I think, like I mean to me, that's where like match like the amount. I think we're at this information age with golf and golf courses, like you think about rangefinders, pin sheets, like all these things that you give people to to me, what happens, and like we're never going back to where we lose this information. But like sometimes golf courses like what I love, Like I
hate big flags. I hate them for punch bowls, especially if it's a golf course like tall flage, Like especially if it's a golf course where if I walk past that green playing a previous hole, to me, a really smart player is going to look and see where that hole is and they're going to put away in their memory bank for when they come rack around and play
the hole. Like to me, that is like some of the advantages and just like and to me, match play at this point, and golf is really the thinking like if you want the most intricate experience of playing golf, what analytics has done is it has created a framework to play stroke play golf, and a lot of those that framework works for match play, but match play turns is alive that experience, that reactionary experience to what your opponent's doing. Everybody says, play your own style, like play
the way, but it's impossible to ignore. And it also it just amplifies the intricacies of golf course architecture.
And at the end of the day, I mean the analytics or play boring golf. Yeah, hit it to the middle of the green, aime, aime away from the hazard. You know, just don't don't take any chances, you know, because you're you're good, So why take any chances you know you can you can just not play for the whole and still make four birdies around because you're that good.
Yeah, that's the thing.
I mean, it's like so much for the best players, it's like avoid mistakes and you are going to just run into four or five birdies around like that is the general belief of men's professional golf at this point. Let's get back. We got very off topic. Said sorry, now me too, seg what is one hole? From playing it?
That just really I guess like spoke to you like that you really loved that the way it played out, that you you previously weren't thinking that much about just based off of playing from designing on paper into the ground that then playing it. You were like, I really like this one.
You said on paper, Like you thought I had it all figured out on paper, which some holes more than others, some metamorphous of it. Uh, you know, you know five was a last minute idea kind of off paper, and you know, we saw a pin to the left, and we saw a pin to the right, and I got up first in our matches on both those holes, and I just played for the backboard on the greens both times.
You know, I think the I think the hardest pin there is the one in the in the middle of the V. It's like, you don't if you go through it all, you either have to stop it on a dime or you're going in the back bunker and that's really hard. But I thought the that's a really good little hole. The shots around. You know, if you miss the shots to get it close, they're not severe. You can even pot pretty well from one side of the green to the other. But but trying to make three
off a miss is pretty hard. And it's such a short haul. It's like, oh, this should be so easy. But you you know, for me, it's like, well, I'm just going to hit it to the correct half of the V and go from there. And you know, thirteen, the part three with the really big green, is kind of the opposite. That was the one that I always like, you know, that doesn't really fit in with the rest
of the golf course so much. You know, it was just a big flat air and we were trying to figure out something to do with it that would tie it together, you know, tie that green and fourteen tea in with eleven going past them back beyond there, because it was just like a little they're a little too close to have any like native stuff in there that meant anything, and a little too far to just be like, you know, you can't have them in play off of fourteen t or off of eleven t so, so thirteen
has like five like wildly different whole locations. There's there's a little whole location front left that you've got to like use the slope behind it to stop it. There's a little whole location front right behind the mounts where you really want to land just short and left and have it feed off the little contour to the right to get over there. There's the shelf on the left which you can use the bank to the left a
little bit. There's the stuff down off the shelf to the left that you all of a sudden you can't really play it in left to right. It's either going to get stuck up there or go pretty far past. And and there's there's almost a hidden pin to the right. We only saw two of them. I think that's a hole that like the first time you play the golf course, it's like, yeah, that didn't really fit in. I think you'd have to play that course a bunch to go like, wow,
this is really different from one day to another. But it seemed to seemed like it was going to work that way, and I think it it probably won't be appreciated that much by the first time player, but Hopefully eventually people see it enough to go, Okay, this is not you got to hit different kinds of You got to approach this different on different days. On that.
On that topic, like playing it a lot, do do you ever wish some of your resort courses were were like private clubs or a fee courses that people played regularly that we're like, oh yeah, everything and if there are there one or two that jump to mind that you you would love to have seen that golf course it be a everyday course for the majority of the customers.
I mean, the reason I do like that experience is because people get to know the golf course a lot better and and appreciate the subtlety in it. You know, I get better feedback at a members club because the members get to know it well enough to know. You know, you thought that playing out left there would be a good thing, but we keep trying that and it just doesn't work. And you know, on a resort course, you
never figure it out. You just you know, will people only play it once or twice and they give up on it, or or it works out perfect for them and they think they're a genius, but or they say it's unfair or they say it's unfair. You know, we were talking about that at high Point the other day. You know high Point, it's kind of in between. I mean, it wasn't like Sand Valley or abandoned that at best
people would go once a year. I mean, you know, when it was a public golf course, they used to you know, there were a lot of locals that played it half regularly, but you know, the shots like potting up to the back of thirteen green to get it to come down to the left side. You know, these members will get to know that a lot better than most people used to just seeing it if they came
up here once a year on vacation. So so really, yeah, I mean for Pacific Dunes or Barn Google to be things that people played on a weekly basis, those would be a lot of fun. I think they'd probably be that much more appreciated. Even though you know, as I've said many times of this podcast before, it's great for my career that those were public. They get so much more press and pr free because the readers can go there.
Yeah, I mean, it's it's I think that's like one of the things that this era of design might grapple with is like the economics of public golf are just so a cumbersome at this point for like new public golf outside of.
Just resorts, high high end resorts.
It's like the only like the idea. And I've said this to so many people ask me that it's just like how can you overcome twenty million dollars like or fifteen million dollars with like the payback period is just so long that we're just going to like the market has you know, gone a certain way until there's a
big change in how expectations. The only way it changes if there's like this huge change in customer expectation for a really good for what's considered a really good, affordable public golf course.
I think that's always been kind of true. I mean, of some of the courses you highlight as the great public golf courses in America and the great Communi courses in America were built as private clubs in the twenties and then bankrupt immediately and became public golf courses. They weren't built as public golf courses. Yeah, I mean, I hear from people all the time, oh, is that going to be another high end private golf club and it's like or another two d and fifty dollars resort course.
And it's like, you know, there was a rule of thumb when I got into the business, and I don't know why it would have changed that. For every million dollars you spent building a golf course, that was going to be one dollar on the green or ten bucks on the green fee. So if it costs twenty million dollars to develop a new golf course, it's a two hundred dollars green fee. Is how that's going to work,
one way or another, whether it's private or resort. That's the average of what they're going to have to get in order to make that work. And you know, that's maybe not true if you're in a place where you could play forty or fifty thousand rounds a year, but most places where six or eight months season. That's that's how it has to work.
The place that you can play forty fifty thousand dollars rounds a year reliably is California.
And there's other reasons why it's extensive there.
The yeah, I think the only other relatively unexplored model in American golf that has public access is the membership that the UK kind of model that has some sort of downstroke in membership that allows a quicker payback. That's the only one to me that really can can get that public model out there in with new builds. But it is like a hybrid.
Like lido. You mean, yeah, where it's a club, but there's also outside plus.
So you get the you recoop.
You're not out twenty million dollars or fifteen million dollars. You recoup five or ten of it, and then you gret you pay it back like to when you think about the economics of it, Like to me, that's the only But then you're still talking high end, like you're not going to have a membership.
And be like, yeah, we're charged in seventy five dollars when we open it up to the public.
No, probably not, So it's hard I think the best public affordable golf opportunities, as you said numerous times, it's the second or third ownership of a property.
Well, you know, I was just done a podcast for Golf Magazine the other day with Billcore and Rob Collins and Andrew Green about the rankings and what we all thought of the rankings is a general thing, and whether it was good or bad, And I said, you know, to me, the worst thing about him is it's like a price list for you know, if your golf course is fiftieth in the rankings and you're only charging a hundred bucks, you're an idiot. And you know, look around you.
It should be two hundred and fifty, so that you know there is no bargains left, or there's almost no bargains left. I think. I think the only course in the top fifty or sixty in the world that is not a three hundred dollars golf course is barn Google because they don't think Australia. You know, that's ninety percent Australian's coming from Melbourne and Sydney and they're now used to pay them three hundred dollars to play golf and so it's about half that.
Yeah, I think about that a lot.
It's like, and there's also the flip side of that is like they've seen this all over the UK because nobody came when we were fifty dollars and then we marked it up to two hundred dollars and now when now we're books out, but.
There's got to be a ranking behind. There's the same again, it is, but there's a ranking behind it. If it wasn't for that, you know, if you were trying to charge two hundred and you weren't ranked in the top fifty three affordable public courses in England, you wouldn't be able to charge as much. I mean, it's funny like they you know, all the magazines are trying they think they're trying to do their best to rank affordable public courses.
They're just driving up the price. It's like, if we're number five in the affordable, we shouldn't be affordable anymore by their definition. We could raise the green fee.
That's why I really respect places like Lawsonia's had some price increase, but they.
Are committed to being affordable.
Like it is like and I think like there's something about like the facilities that are it's in there like DNA like to me, like we like Revere.
So much.
In golf architecture, these these golf courses that are you know, have ten thousand rounds and amazing architecture that's maintained perfectly. They are amazing, But like the ones that will always stand out to me is like the most the toughest feat in golf anywhere.
Is affordable golf with.
Exceptional architecture and presentation, you know, right, like those are the those are the the true unicorns. Like you know, with money and and and especially now with like where Mounern architecture has gotten. I think you can achieve a really high bar of golf architecture and presentation, but very few can do it at an affordable rate open to the public, with like the demands of like you can't do like you can't make improvements because you have a T shirt that's sold.
Out, right, Yeah, that's hard. I mean, you know, all of us in the golf business they are a little guilty of that too. We want to make more money. We want to you know, I mean I question a lot why we need three rows of irrigation or four rows of irrigation or whatever instead of the places that used to have one. But it usually falls on deaf earth. You know. It's like it's like if you if we didn't have that, we could charge less, and the client is thinking if we had that, we could charge more.
Yep, it's very true, all right, tying the knot on sedge as we've gone all over the place, you're I don't think you're going to reprint the Northern Destinations of the Confidential Guide anytime soon.
I'm not going to rewrite it, no, so that's probably not going to be in there.
Well, what would be the Doak score of such?
Who? I don't know yet. I mean, I at least I was there last week. You know. I feel like trying to give a score to a golf course is like, you know, give me three or four months and let me see, let me see how I feel about it then. But you know, a lot of those courses that it was kind of inspired by in England there are sevens and eight's on the Doak scale, occasionally at nine, but
that mostly they're seven and eight. It fits right in there, I mean it's it does fit right in there with those, and you know, arguably, I mean, there's more detail to it. Those greens are really cool. They're so different than high Point screens. I thought of the two properties is pretty similar, and I've been playing high Point all si're and then I go over there for a couple of days, I'm like, wow, these are really different. Different guys building them, and a
little less elevation change right around the green stir. It really did make it different.
I love.
I think there's so much like a static similarity between yes Point, like down to like the just the surrounding the flora and faun.
Even though it it's very different, like the stuff, the native stuff that said value is actually almost completely different than what's growing at high Point. It has the same general look and you know, it gets the same weather, so it browns out in the summer and it gets thick if it rains a lot in the spring. But it's different plants.
Yeah, it's cool similar, similar, as you said thirty two minutes and probably almost similar, exactly the same. On the latitude latitude, I always get those confused longitude and latitude. All right, this does it for episode one. We'll have a couple more of these coming, but we're going to switch topics here. Thanks Tom, all Right, thank you for listening to another edition of the Friday Golf Podcast. We will be back next week. I'm excited about what we
got coming down the pipe. Big thanks to PJ. Clark for editing and producing this podcast. And hey, if you like nitty gritty conversations about golf courses and golf architecture, if you like this episode, I think you'd really like our membership Club TFY Club TFE is one hundred and twenty dollars a year and really focuses on golf architecture right now. We're going to add a bunch of features to this membership over time, but we have a weekly course profile that goes up in depth look at a
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