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All About Short Course Architecture · Designing Golf

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Short courses are having a moment right now. They're being
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: built at a rake neck pace and they're enjoying a
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: kind of cultural relevancy in the golf architectural world that,
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: you know, would have been hard to imagine 30 years ago.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: A lot of exciting up and coming architects are getting
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: a chance to work on short course designs of their own.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: One of those architects, Benjamin Warren, is my guest for
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: this episode. Benjamin was behind the loop at Chaska. a
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: very innovative short course in Minnesota, and he's currently building
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: the Half Mile at Terra Cotta in Illinois. In this episode,
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: Benjamin and I talk about those projects, about the unique
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: aspects of short course architecture, and about some of our
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: favorite short courses in the world. I'm Garrett Morrison, and
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: this is Designing Golf. All right, Benjamin, we're going to
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: be talking about short courses today. But first, I want
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: to discuss your background a little bit because I don't
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: believe you've been on any of the Friday podcasts before.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: So I just want to introduce you to our listeners.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: I believe you're originally from Scotland. When people hear you talk,
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: they'll know that that's the case. Where did you grow up?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. So I was raised in North Berwick. Um, you know,
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  Speaker 2: mom and dad still live there. Uh, that's, that's very
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: much home for me still, even though I, I, I
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: live in a, in a different country now and I spend,
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: you know, like everyone who does what I do like
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  Speaker 2: eight to 10 months a year on the road. So, uh,
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  Speaker 2: but yeah, when I, when I think about home, it's
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  Speaker 2: definitely North Berwick and growing up on the links there and, uh,
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: you know, everything that, that, that, that entails. But yeah,
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: for now I'm, I'm based in Tokyo and, uh, Yeah,
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: I've been here for a while. Coming up for almost
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: 20 years in Japan at this point.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: I want to go back to North Berwick real quick.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, there's got to be no better place in
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: the world for an aspiring golf architect to grow up
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: than North Berwick. James Duncan, who you've worked with, James Duncan,
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: who has worked with Coren Crenshaw on a few projects,
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: including Rambles, also spent a lot of time in North Berwick.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: Did the two of you know each other or were
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: you there at different times?
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  Speaker 2: We actually did not, but I'm very proud to say
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  Speaker 2: that I introduced James for membership a few years ago.
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  Speaker 2: So very happy to help him get into the club.
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: And yeah, he's a great advocate for the golf course
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  Speaker 2: and the town. And I think having folks like that
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  Speaker 2: around who have a global perspective on what North Berwick
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: is and its place in the world of golf is
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  Speaker 2: great for all involved. So yeah, I was really pleased
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  Speaker 2: when James approached me and asked about you know, whether
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: or not there was a way to kind of help
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  Speaker 2: him into North Berwick. And I think he came with, uh,
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  Speaker 2: you know, a letter of support from Ben Crenshaw, which
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: probably helps, right. So, you know, he was, uh, he,
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: he made it in, he made it in. Okay.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: Brought a gun to a knife fight.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Um, no, it's, it's incredible town. Um, and
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: when you grew up in North Berwick, you're just surrounded
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  Speaker 2: by the most incredible golf. I mean, the hardest thing
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: is when you when you grow up a little bit
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  Speaker 2: and you forge outside of North Berwick, like the golf
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  Speaker 2: that you find is far less inspiring than all this ancient,
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  Speaker 2: you know, 150 plus year old golf that we, that
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  Speaker 2: we grew up with in our neighborhood. And, you know,
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  Speaker 2: that was, that was honestly the hardest thing for me.
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: It wasn't until a kind of very fortuitous circumstance where,
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: you know, Renaissance golf design came to North Berwick and
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: we're building Renaissance club. And, you know, that, if you
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: hadn't been in the States in the late nineties or
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: early two thousands, you weren't really aware of the, the,
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: the sort of, I don't know, second golden age, whatever
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  Speaker 2: you want to call it, but like this, you know, the, the,
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  Speaker 2: the golf design trend that was emerging and the, the
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: very much more craftsmanship, you know, oriented golf courses that were,
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: that were being put into the ground. So, you know,
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  Speaker 2: renaissance club was my first chance to see that. And
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  Speaker 2: to meet a few of the guys, you know, especially
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: Don Plasek was great. He kind of took me out
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  Speaker 2: and showed me around the project. And just to see
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  Speaker 2: what they were doing, to see the level of craftsmanship
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  Speaker 2: on that property was a game changer for me because, frankly,
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  Speaker 2: having not spent that much time in the States before that,
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  Speaker 2: the new golf courses that I'd seen were pretty disappointing. And,
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  Speaker 2: you know, this is just coming from someone who grew
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  Speaker 2: up in North Berwick, right? So I hope that's not
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  Speaker 2: like a, you know, a really egregious thing to say,
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  Speaker 2: but it's certainly a privileged environment to grow up in.
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  Speaker 2: And I think if you've internalized all the lessons you
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: learned from North Berwick and if you've you know, taking
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: the time to, to understand the architecture out there and
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: you try and, uh, take little bits and pieces of
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  Speaker 2: that and insert it into your work for other architects
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  Speaker 2: or on your own projects. I think you could go,
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: you know, you're not going to do too bad.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: Did you realize as a kid, how special North Berwick
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  Speaker 1: was from a design perspective?
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  Speaker 2: It's more the context. So, I mean, so growing up
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  Speaker 2: as a kid in North Berwick, you're playing North Berwick
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  Speaker 2: kids course. And, um, You know, we have these 100-year-old
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  Speaker 2: competitions that have been running on the kids' course. And
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  Speaker 2: first of all, that's a remarkable place to learn to
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: play golf. And even what you take away from that kids'
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  Speaker 2: course before you even get to the big course is
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  Speaker 2: pretty special, right? But when you're playing the kids' course,
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  Speaker 2: you can kind of see over, like, the closest green
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  Speaker 2: to the kids' course is the Redan. So you're playing, like,
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  Speaker 2: this really funky, cool little kids' course, but you're kind
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: of looking over the OB line to, like, just this
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  Speaker 2: monster and these giant hazards. And this thing that you're like,
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: you know that somehow eventually you're going to have to
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: step up to playing that thing, which is not daunting
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: for a kid. I think it's probably more exciting. But
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: I think what helped me to truly understand like North
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  Speaker 2: Berwick's place in the world was just caddying at North Berwick. So,
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: you know, from the age of 12 to whatever, sometime
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: early into college, you know, I was looping North Berwick
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: in the summer and you just had people from all
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: over the world, people who were so unbelievably excited to
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: be there playing North Berwick. And, you know, if you're,
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  Speaker 2: if you can't infer from that, that there's something pretty
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  Speaker 2: special about your hometown course, you know, it's, uh, it's, um, that, that,
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  Speaker 2: that's a, that's a bit of a, a bit of
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  Speaker 2: a flag right there. So, um, yeah. Um, I think
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: just the, just all those people traveling to North Berwick
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: and appreciating North Berwick and their excitement for it helped
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: to rub off on you and make you realize that
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  Speaker 2: this is something a little, a little bit unique, a
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: little bit special.
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  Speaker 1: So you, you mentioned earlier that you're, you're currently based
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: in Japan. How did that come about?
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  Speaker 2: Uh, so I moved here in the early two thousands
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  Speaker 2: to go snowboarding. Um, and you know, a winter of
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: snowboarding turned into still being here, whatever, 23 years later. So, um, yeah,
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  Speaker 2: it's a, it's a fascinating country, engaging country, um, really
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  Speaker 2: unique golf culture. Like Japan's interpretation of golf is, is
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: pretty fun. And, you know, I, I've been to a
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  Speaker 2: lot of different countries and seen golf in a lot
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  Speaker 2: of different places and, you know, Japan has its own
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  Speaker 2: thing going on, but it's a really cool expression of golf. Um,
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: and yeah, wonderful country to live in. Um, yeah, Tokyo is, uh,
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  Speaker 2: Tokyo is one of the world's great cities in my opinion. Um,
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  Speaker 2: so yeah, lots to like about living here and, uh, and, uh, yeah,
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  Speaker 2: still here and, uh, you know, building some golf locally.
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  Speaker 2: So I tend to be recently, I've just been splitting
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: my time between the States and Japan for, for work. So, um, yeah.
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  Speaker 1: We'll get into some of what you're doing in the States. Uh,
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  Speaker 1: our topic today is, is short course golf. golf architecture.
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  Speaker 1: And the reason I'm having you on for this topic
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  Speaker 1: is that you yourself have designed a short course recently
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  Speaker 1: and are in the process of designing another. So why
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: don't we start with those two projects? The first one
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  Speaker 1: I think people may have heard about because we covered
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: it at Fried Egg and it got a fair amount
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: of attention. This is the loop at Shaska. So what
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: are the basics that people need to know about this
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  Speaker 1: golf course?
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  Speaker 2: Lupichesco is really cool. You know, I was there last week, um,
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: places playing incredible. The greens are super fun. Uh, we essentially,
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  Speaker 2: this was, this was a fascinating project for me. Um, uh,
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  Speaker 2: this RFB kind of hit my, hit my inbox out
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  Speaker 2: of nowhere. And, uh, you know, with an invitation to,
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  Speaker 2: to travel to Minnesota to interview for this short course
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  Speaker 2: redesign project. And the, I think that the, client or
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  Speaker 2: the you know the the driving force behind the project
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  Speaker 2: is barrier free golf which is based out of minnesota
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  Speaker 2: uh you know funded by tim anderson who's just a
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  Speaker 2: like a huge figure in that kind of local uh
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  Speaker 2: um you know minnesota golf scene he's like a usga
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  Speaker 2: rules guy and in recent years he's been really big
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  Speaker 2: into like the adaptive golf side of things and uh
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  Speaker 2: you know tournaments uh sort of supervision and uh yeah
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  Speaker 2: so he had a vision to transform like this kind
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: of misunderstood uh slightly dangerous, you know, pretty boggy mini
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  Speaker 2: short course in Chaska, Minnesota, and transform it into a
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  Speaker 2: showcase project for golf course design, which is fun for everyone,
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  Speaker 2: but has specifically thought about the needs of adaptive golfers
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  Speaker 2: and how to make the experience more you know, more fun,
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  Speaker 2: more equitable for them. You know, how can, how can
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  Speaker 2: you create a golf course where an adaptive golfer, like
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  Speaker 2: let's say an amputee, let's say someone in a, you know,
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: a seated golfer in a wheelchair for a blind golfer,
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  Speaker 2: you know, that we, we brought together like a whole,
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  Speaker 2: a whole cast of incredible adaptive athletes to kind of
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: help us on this project. But essentially what we were
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: trying to do was to create a golf course where
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: A seated golfer, which is like the hardest golfer to
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  Speaker 2: design for just because of the the sort of accessibility
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: limitations of those vehicles and like an able-bodied golfer could
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: have an equitable match with you know no dropping playing
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: off the same tees you know so on and so
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: forth so that was really kind of the genesis of
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: the idea from barrier-free golf Um, the, as to how
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: that was to be interpreted into a design was still
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: kind of, you know, to be, to be determined. And, um,
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: you know, we had a lot of super smart people
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: help us with the thinking and, and especially the, you know,
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: the group of adaptive golfers that we brought together. But
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: I mean, I guess our, our core thesis was that
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: we wanted to make the place shine on the, on
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: the basis of greens. And we wanted to have. essentially
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: gravity based hazards. So, you know, all kinds of short
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: grass hazards. Uh, we decided that we would build a
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: couple of creeks out there or specifically one Creek and
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: one smaller Creek out there because, you know, in under
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: the rules of golf, like an adaptive golfer and able-bodied
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: golfer essentially treated the same way, you know, for kind
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: of dealing with that, that Creek. Um, but so going
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: back to the very start of the project, I mean,
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: this was a Trent Jones senior design short course, and
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: he built it while he was building Hazeltine. And, you know,
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: it was a tournament short course, you know, to all
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: intents and purposes. It had four greens hard on the
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: lake edge and pretty much everyone who played it. We're
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: talking like a very, very diverse set of golfers from
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: like good golfers to beginner golfers. Everyone was just losing
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: a bunch of golf balls. And, you know, it's nice
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: to have this, you know, water feature in the middle
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: of the property, but it didn't look good. It was shallow.
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: It was full of algae. Um, it was just an
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: amenity lake that had been kind of hogged out of
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: there to, in order to push greens onto the edge
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: of the lake, basically. So it didn't really function very
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: well from a golf standpoint. Uh, the, the greens by
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: the lake edge were just way too hard. And actually
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: since the golf course had been built, you know, it was, uh, uh,
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: basically the miss shot from the golf course was all
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: kind of to the right miss shot was all to
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: an OB. And since the golf course was built, there
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: was now a bunch of townhomes, a bunch of offices,
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: and just a bunch of other stuff around the golf course.
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  Speaker 2: And every shot that left the golf property was just
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: clattering into houses and offices and so on and so forth.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: So either going into the water or going into houses.
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. If you get scared of the water,
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: you're going to hit someone's house, basically. So there was
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: a lot that could be improved, right? The sparring position
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: was pretty low. Um, and the city was very, um,
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: open to, you know, to our ideas. I mean, obviously
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: Tim had spent a lot of time building up trust
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: with the city. Um, you know, Hazel teams there, like
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: this is like Chaska is a sort of high golf
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: IQ town for a little town in the Midwest. Like
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: they've hosted like a Ryder cup and a bunch of PJs,
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: a bunch of women's PJs. I mean, this is a
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: town that is aware of like the wider world of golf. And,
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: you know, for sure that Mayor Matt Podraski, he'd been
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: to Ryder Cups in Scotland. He'd been to obviously the
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: Ryder Cups in the US. And, you know, they were
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: sort of open and amenable to doing something kind of
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: unique and different. And, you know, fortunately, when we started
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: thinking about the project in earnest and we proposed that
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: we would move the clubhouse and reroute the entire golf course,
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: the city was open to that because fundamentally it just
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: had to happen. Um, the golf course was hidden in
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: quite a strange part of the property, which is now
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: the first green and it's, it's a much better first
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: green than a clubhouse location. And, uh, you know, we
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: moved the clubhouse over to the street edge, you know,
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: by this busy kind of thoroughfare, which heads into Hazeltine
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: and there's a mall there and a bunch of apartment buildings.
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: So like we were kind of moving the clubhouse to
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: a spot where it was, instead of being isolated in
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: the middle of the property, it was now connected to
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: like the existing community. And, uh, know it's really cool
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: there's now you know really nice kind of um white
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: wooden fences around the golf course so like walkers by
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: can kind of see into the golf course when you
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: pull into the parking lot you've got these views right
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: across it and uh we were also allowed to just
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: completely flip the routing right you know turn the routing
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: in reverse all our missed shots went into the former
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: lake that we converted into this beauty this beautiful wetland
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: we beautiful restoration project.
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: So you were designing this course in collaboration with Barrier
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: Free Golf. It was intended to be accessible to adaptive golfers.
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: So I wonder what was different about designing a course
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: for adaptive golfers and what was the same as just
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: designing any golf course?
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: I mean, there's no reason an adaptive golfer can't play
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: golf on cool greens, right? So So, I mean, we were.
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: That doesn't change.
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: No matter who you're designing for, you want cool.
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: Right. Exactly. Exactly. So, you know, that was the main
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: thing was just like, let's build cool greens out there. And, uh,
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: you know, to that end, we were really lucky. We
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: had help from, uh, you know, Jimmy Craig stopped by
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: Jonathan Reister from Renaissance golf design. Brett Hochstein came out
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: to design some greens, build some greens for us. So,
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: you know, we had a, like a murderer's row of shapers,
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: I guess, uh, kind of helping us, but, um, Yeah,
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: we did our due diligence. You know, we had an
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: amazing design consultant called Tenelle Bolt from BC. Her dad
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: had been a superintendent. You know, she'd had an injury
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: in her late 20s that made her, you know, she
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: became a paraplegic after that injury. But, you know, she'd
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: grown up around golf all her life and, you know,
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: runs a sort of nonprofit providing adaptive equipment to, you know,
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: folks who need it. And it's just an amazing kind
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: of powerhouse and a wealth of knowledge about this kind
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: of thing. So, you know, we brought Tanel out there
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: with us during the build. And, you know, we were
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: kind of aware of the operating abilities and the sort
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: of safety tolerances of the adaptive equipment. But, you know,
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: if we jumped in that stuff, we wouldn't have learned
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: a whole lot. But having Tanel out there kind of
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: riding the equipment around our golf course, you know, in
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: the dirt, just kind of stress testing our contours was eyeopening.
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's brilliant. Like those machines are incredibly capable.
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: I mean, if you're looking at like those, the paragolfer
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: setups that the seated golfers use, I mean, that thing
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: is as stable as a triplex. It can drive up
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: pretty much anything. The only limitation comes for stability when
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: you're trying to swing on a steep bank. So what
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: that led us to was, okay, if we can, you know,
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: avoid scenarios where golf balls are hanging up on steep banks,
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: then this is, you know, going to, serve the adaptive
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: golf community much better. So, and that's music to my ears.
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: Cause that was just like, okay, well, everything's going to
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: be fairway. If it's no green, it's fairway. There's, there's no,
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: I don't think there's any rough to speak of in
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: play in the golf course. Um, there's certainly nothing where,
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: you know, a golf ball is going to hang up
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: on a slope. That's so steep that someone in an
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: adaptive vehicle, we'd have to try to swing on that
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: slope and potentially lose balance.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: Pull like plug lies in really steep. small bunkers, that,
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: that kind of thing you can, you can avoid, uh, in,
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: in a course like this.
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. Well, I mean, fundamentally the, the no bunker,
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: the no bunker aspect was really a no brainer to us. Um, the,
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: first of all, I mean, we're dealing with like a PT,
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: like hilly sort of, you know, twin cities property, you know,
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: a lot of context for bunkers out there. So we
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: didn't really feel like, you know, having sand, having sand
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: out of the loop was an essential part of the
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: essential part of the project. And, you know, it's, it's
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: just really, really hard for adaptive golfers to get in
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: and out of bunkers. So there's, there's some special provisions
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: in the, in the rules of golf. Now they sort
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: of merged the rules of golf a few years ago. And,
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: you know, adaptive golfers have special provisions for how to
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: deal with bunkers and how to drop and so on
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: and so forth. But, you know, this goes back to
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: our original goal where we wanted, An adaptive golfer and
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: an able-bodied golfer to just be able to have the
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: same golf experience without, you know, the adaptive golfer having to,
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: you know, dive into the sort of specific like adaptive
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: golf rules to compensate for something that they can't do
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: that an able-bodied golfer can do.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: This episode of Designing Golf is brought to you by
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: Perfect Practice. Specifically the Perfect Practice putting mat and chip shot.
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: So first of all, the Perfect Practice putting mat is
• 18:53
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• 19:52
  Speaker 1: for the podcast and get a great product. Perfect practice.
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: Check it out. As I mentioned before, you're in the
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: process of designing another short course now, This one in
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: Prairie Grove, Illinois, which as I understand it is kind
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: of like distant northwest suburbs of Chicago. This place is
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: called the Half Mile at Terracotta. Tell me about this project.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: I don't know much about it. I've seen a routing map,
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: but I haven't heard the story behind it. So what's
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: going on there?
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: So. the owners are the Terracotta or the family who
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: own the Terracotta company or TC Industries and the Terracotta company,
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: like their ownership of this stewardship, ownership of this property
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: goes back almost a hundred years. It's really cool. So,
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: you know, obviously we're building on a piece of family landholding,
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: so there's no land costs at the start. So it's
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: really nice to be able to, you know, build a
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: short course where you don't have land costs and you're
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: only going to be essentially passing like the construction costs
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: onto the, onto the consumer. Right. So, um, like affordability
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: is not necessarily like one of the key goals out there. Uh,
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: I think we'll, we'll have some, um, some interesting, um,
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: you know, playing options out there, probably a little bit more, uh,
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: leaning into the way the Sweden's Cove operates with like
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: day passes, like for, for us being like a 45
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: minutes out of the metro area might be half day passes,
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: something like that, but we'll create a, a way to get,
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: you know, smaller, you know, pretty limited numbers of people
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: that own that thing with a degree of freedom to,
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: you know, play the way they want to play and
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: just kind of, you know, hop around and play in
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: big groups and do all the things that make Sweden's
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: Cove like very, very fun. We started off in a,
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: you know, a floodplain. Again, going with like the Sweden's
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: Cove similarities, we are like 50% of our property was
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: in a floodplain. So the first move was to, you know,
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: figure out how and where to find the dirt to
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: kind of raise our golf features up. And fortunately, the
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: property had been operating as a sod farm for 50 years,
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: which was kind of cool. I mean, we turned up
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: to break ground on the cleanest construction site you've ever seen.
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: It was perfect. But yeah, it's simple, kind of tilty property.
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: So we basically went up to the high side and
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: we dug a giant quarry and played a few holes
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: around the quarry and moved some dirt down into the
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: low to kind of build up our greens. We built
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: some creeks to get our you know, compensatory storage balance.
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: So like the, you know, flood mitigation calculations, basically. And
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: the contractor DWS construction, which is Kirk Spieth and Derek Love,
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: who are both kind of from Beverly background, went out
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: there with GNSS equipped bulldozers and basically did like a
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: kind of Lido style project where they just went through
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: with my grading plan and just bulked everything into place.
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: so uh yeah i made like one site visit kind
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: of checked in with the guys you know we kind
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: of got oriented a little bit i went off to
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: work on something else for a month and when i
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: came back like this landscape was just there it was
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: it's incredibly fun so then i just basically hopped in
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: after the guys and you know again like they did
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: alito just kind of went through and and detailed out
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: every green you know maybe moved some greens around it
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: just did little bits and pieces out there but by
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: and large was just, you know, adding a layer of
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: detail on top of the work that they'd done with
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: the big dozers and the GNSS. So like super efficient project.
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: It kind of has to be like such a short
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: construction season in Chicago that, you know, anything you can
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: do to get a boost and get a headstart on
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: the weather is pretty huge. So yeah, no, like really
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: fun concept. We have a couple of bunkers out there.
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: Like I said, it's not like really an adaptive kind
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: of focused project by the client. Uh, Mr. Barry, um,
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: didn't really want bunkers out there. I figured, you know,
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: we'll throw a couple in there. We'll do like a
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: little lion's mouth. We'll do a donut bunker in a
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: green and just, you know, let's not, I didn't want
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: it to be sort of compared with the loop at Chaska,
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: you know, as just trying to be the same thing
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: as the loop at Chaska. So that was important to,
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: to push for a couple of bunkers out there and
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: those ones will be pretty fun. They'll see some action, but, uh,
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: you know, certainly not an undue, you know, maintenance overhead.
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: So something that's really interesting about this project at Half Mile,
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: which you mentioned, is the use of GNSS bulldozers. And
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: if people don't know what that means, it stands for,
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: I believe, Global Navigation Satellite System bulldozers. You know, something
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: kind of parallel to GPS, I suppose. But basically what
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: you have is automated bulldozers that can go out and
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: kind of prepare the site for you in a general
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: way so that then... the human shapers can focus on
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: detail work and finishing and things of that nature. So
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: what kind of difference did that process make at half mile?
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: How did that all play out for you?
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's huge, Garrett. And there are still,
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: even in the GNSS bulldozer, still an operator in there
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: at this point. I might get to a point where
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: there's no operator, but Yeah, for now, someone's in there
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: following a diagram which is kind of telling them what
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: to do with the blade and where to cut, where
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: to fill, and so on and so forth.
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, when I say automated, I don't want people to
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: envision literal robots going out there. Yeah, it's just more
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: that the operator has information that they're able to follow
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: instead of kind of eyeballing it.
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. There's guidance there. So when we're doing the
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: detail shaping, we're just doing it from eye. There's no...
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: we're not really using stakes or elevations. It's just, um, yeah,
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: just whatever looks good, whatever's going to work, whatever's going
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: to give you the, the, the reaction of a golf
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: ball on a green that you're looking for. But yeah,
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: so the GNSS, you know, Kirk Spieth was out there
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: for DWS and, and, and the D6 just kind of
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: digging into our quarry and, uh, shifting dirt around the property. And, uh, yeah,
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: he was, you know, he was bouncing around on some
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: rocks and that thing. So he'll, he'll certainly remember, remember
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: that phase of the project, but, um, Yeah, no, it
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: was great. So for me, for my purposes, you know, I, uh,
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: I kind of came in at the start of the project.
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: Then I hopped away to work on something else. And,
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: you know, by the time I came back a month later,
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: the guys had basically roughed in the entire golf course. So,
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: you know, 10 green pads, the clubhouse locations, the, uh, uh,
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: a bunch of kind of creeks that we built running
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: through the property. So then my task was just to
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: go through kind of green by green, hole by hole,
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: and just add a layer of detail on top of
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: this base. I mean, it's hard to overstay. Like we
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: started off with nothing on that property. And this is
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: just a simple tilt kind of running down towards a
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: river's edge. So, yep, nothing to work off of, you know,
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: nothing worth, quote unquote, saving. So, yeah, just to get
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: that kind of basic, you know, kind of contouring in there.
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: And then to be able to see that and to
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: make decisions about, well, okay, well, I'm going to raise
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: this green up a little bit or lower this green
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: down a little bit. But, you know, to basically have
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: everything in place is huge. And I spent, I would say,
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: 45 to 50 days shaping out there, you know, for
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: 10 greens and a couple of teas in the Himalayas.
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: So that's really a pretty efficient way to go about
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: this kind of project.
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: This episode of Designing Golf is brought to you in
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: part by Friday Golf Club. So let me tell you
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: about something that's going on right now in FEGC. I
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: have started a book club. A bunch of people are
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: reading Robert Hunter's 1926 book, The Links. This is a
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: really entertaining, well-written introduction to golf architecture. Robert Hunter was
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: one of Alistair McKenzie's associates and He was very responsible
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: for a lot of the great things about Cypress Point
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: and Meadow Club. And this book that he wrote in
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: 1926 is absolutely fantastic. We're reading it chapter by chapter
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: in Friday Golf Club and discussing it. Recently, we just
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: read the preface. This week, we're reading a couple of
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: the first sort of sections of the book. And people
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: are really getting into it. There's been a lot of
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: good discussion already. So come join us. If you're interested
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: in a book club of this sort, we might do
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: it for other books in the future as well. Go
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: to thefriedegg.com slash membership and join FEGC.
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: So.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: those are two projects that you've been involved in that
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: you've directed really the, the loop at Chaska. I, you know,
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: Chaska is a tough one for me to pronounce for
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: some reason or another. I say Shaska, I say Chaska,
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: I say, you know, I never quite get it right,
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: but I believe Chaska is the, is the, is the
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: closest way to how I've, how I've heard people say it.
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: In any case, the loop in Minnesota is, a half
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: mile at Terracotta. Those are your two projects. But this
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: is really part of a big trend in the industry
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: that I've noticed. So before we talked, I went through,
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: I tried to remember all the projects, short course projects
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: that I've heard about recently, and I wrote some of
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: them down. So this is by no means an exhaustive list,
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: but these are some ones that I've kind of been
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: tracking recently. You have a course called WeNip, which is
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: pretty great, at Grand Geneva, which I believe is in Wisconsin.
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: The architect is Matt Dusenberry. It opened in May 2026.
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: You have the Cauldron at Sandwich Club in Connecticut. OCM
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: is the architect on that project. It opened this season.
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: That's a private golf club in Connecticut. You have Old
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: Field in North Carolina. That's Smyers, Craig, and Coyne. Opened
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: mid-year this year. Cool kind of public course, so more
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: in the spirit of what you've been doing. You have
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: a new short course at Wild Horse in Nebraska. Dave
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: Axeland and Dan Proctor were run that project. I believe
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: it opened this season. You have the Matchbox at Tobacco Road.
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: Carlton Marshall Design is behind that one. Opened very recently.
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: It is an artificial turf course. You have the 12-hole
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: scurry course at Chichese Creek Club. Dave Zinkand is the architect.
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: That just opened. You have a short course at Sweetens Cove.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: King Collins Dormer under construction right now. You have Sweet
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: Tooth at Candy Root. North Carolina New Resort, Mike Kropowski
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: and Michelle Wee West are on that project. That's under construction.
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: You have Highside Golf Club, which has two short courses
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: in North Carolina. Chris Spence and Katie Craig are working
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: on that, set to open next year. And you have
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: a new short course for First Tee Charleston. Brian Schneider
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: and Troy Miller are working on that one. And that
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: was just announced. Now that is... a partial, partial list
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: of the projects kind of recently wrapping up or currently underway.
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: If you're looking for particularly publicly accessible new build or
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: complete redesign projects happening right now, a lot of them
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: would be short courses as opposed to regulation 18 whole courses.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: Like a surprising proportion of those would be short courses.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: So what do you think? I mean, if you had
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: to speculate, I know you're an architect and not a developer,
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: not a, not a business person, but if you had
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: to speculate, what do you think is behind this trend
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: happening right now?
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: Hmm. Um, I was speaking from like the architect side,
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: these things are fun and fast to build. And I think,
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: you know, from the developer standpoint, like that's also a
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: desirable thing. You know, you're getting to. announce something, build it,
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: open it pretty quick. And the examples you mentioned there
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: are really, really diverse. I mean, that's some destination stuff.
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: That's some urban stuff. That's some stuff, of course, is
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: at private clubs, some resort-based things, some things in cities.
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: I mean, there's clearly a lot of potential variety in
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: the art form. And, uh, you know, the, the way
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: I've heard it discussed, I think very effectively is in
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: terms of if you really try to simplify is like
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: revenue per yard. So you are not maintaining, you know, whatever,
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: like 18 holes worth of fairways or 14 holes worth
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: of fairways, whatever it is. Yeah.
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: Regulation golf courses are highly inefficient uses of land in
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: terms of revenue per yard. That is true. It's something
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: you hear golf course developers talk about all the time. Yeah.
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: So, you know, at your, at your sort of classic
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: short course, um, you are as an operator and as a, uh, uh,
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: you know, the, the team charged with maintaining it, you
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: can put almost all of your focus into just making
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: the greens perfect. I mean, I was at loop at
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: Chaska last week. Greens are unbelievable. Like the guys are
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: doing a beautiful job out there. Those things that like
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: for a mini short course, first of all, I mean,
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: those greens are super fun, but like the conditioning was wonderful.
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: We had, we had a great, great time out there,
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: all credit to the maintenance team at Cheska. So yeah,
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: I just think the ability to really kind of pour your,
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: your assets or your, your, your, your sort of maintenance
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: resources into, into the, the part of the golf course
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: that people spend the most time on and play the
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: most shots on and spend the most time around is,
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: is a, is a, is a pretty big benefit in
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: that standpoint. But certainly just the cost to, get these
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: things open, get them making money. It's, it's a lot
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: lower than obviously, you know, like a, like a hundred
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: acre or whatever, 150 acre property. Yeah.
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's so true. It is, it is more
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: efficient in terms of land use versus, you know, uh, the,
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: the utility to the player, I guess. But traditionally we
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: haven't seen that many standalone short courses. Often short courses
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: have been connected to big resorts or have been in
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: alternative playing area at clubs. It's been relatively rare that
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: we've seen, especially par three courses, you know, these very
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: small property golf facilities like the ones that you've worked at.
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: It's been relatively rare to see those stood up as
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: independent businesses. But now we're starting to see a little
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: bit more of that. And I don't know, I guess
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: I'm just sort of thinking out loud here. Neither you
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: nor I really knows what is behind trying to make
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: a standalone short course go as a business. But we
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: have started to see more of them recently. And I
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: wonder if that means that golfers have just started to
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: become more open to the idea of going to a
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: golf facility and just playing a short course.
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: Well, Look, I think it's, if you really to, to
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: boil it down, I think it's more about operators and
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: developers understanding the importance of the hang. And if you,
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: and if you want, I think it's a, it's a really,
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: really helpful to look at the unlikeliness of like Sweden's
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: Cove working as like a destination nine hole course in
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: rural Tennessee. Um, I think the big takeaways from Sweden's
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: Cove are, are the fact that, and then, you know,
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: it took them a while to get to where they
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: got to Sweden's Cove in terms of the operating model,
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: but it's just a great place to go with a
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: group of friends and hang out. And, you know, they
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: are going out of their way to make sure that
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: you have a good time and to make it kind
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: of a little bit loose, a little bit fun, and
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: just a very different experience from what you would either
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: have at certainly like a, probably a public golf course,
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: certainly a muni, certainly a private club. you know, there's
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: maybe like little bits of the, you know, just the
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: way that you can, you can kind of enjoy yourself
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: at a private club if you're, you know, obviously part
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: of the membership and there's, there's certain sort of some
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: small elements of flexibility there. But like, just, I think
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: giving a more, just a, just making a better hang,
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: like more accessible and understanding the importance of that and
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: how complimentary that is to fun architecture. And then, that
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: don't get me wrong, like recreating like the magic of
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: Sweden's covers is not an easy thing to do, but I, I,
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: I sense that that's driving quite a lot of this,
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: like recognizing the success of that. Yeah.
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: Now that we have seen Sweden's cove succeed, the model
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: exists and now other people can kind of follow it.
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: That's a really good shout there bringing up Sweden's cove
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: because Yeah, it took them a few years, but this
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: idea of the nine-hole destination rural golf course did end
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: up working quite well because people, one, discovered that it
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: was a very fun course to play, and two, discovered
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: that it wasn't that big of a bummer that it
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: was just, quote-unquote, a nine-hole course, especially considering all the
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: other things that the facility offered in terms of the,
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: for lack of a better term, the vibe and And,
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: you know, hanging out above the ninth green and watching
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: other people come in, people just had a lot of fun.
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: And so I guess that is, that is part of
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: what these short courses are going to be trying to do.
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: Like create a nice bar area and you go play golf,
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: but then you also spend a good amount of time
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: because you have a good amount of time because you
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: haven't just played a five hour round of golf. You
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: have a good amount of time to hang out and
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: just kind of chill and drink a couple of beers
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: or something.
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, when you look at the,
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: like our situation at the half mile versus Sweden's Cove,
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: I mean, we're like 45 minutes from North Chicago. Uh,
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: we are probably an hour from Milwaukee. So, you know,
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: if you can convince folks from those Metro areas, if
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: you can dangle like some cool greens and, you know,
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: just the, just kind of good hand public golf that
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: doesn't really necessarily exist at this point in those, in those, uh,
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: those communities and to kind of give them a chance
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: to to just yeah come and you know maybe come
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: for a half day you know drive down hang out
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: you know lap this thing a couple of times come
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: with a group yeah sure we've got a bar. We
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: got a couple of bars out there. We got cocktails.
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: We got you covered. We have a food truck parking,
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: you know, we're, it's going to be a good time.
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: And I think there's a really big golf population in
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: suburban Chicago anyway, but I think when you're tapping into,
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: you make it make sense for folks in the Metro
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: markets as well. And I think it's a, it's, It's
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: kind of a no-brainer out there in northwestern Illinois.
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: Okay, so I'd like to get into the architectural side
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: of things a bit here. What is kind of distinctive
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: about short course golf architecture? What is potentially interesting about it?
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: Are there ways in which, for you personally, designing a
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: short course has freed you up as an architect? Does
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: it allow you to let go of certain things?
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you can get much more aggressive with greens. You know,
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: the variables at a short course are so much smaller.
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: You know, essentially folks are approaching a green from one
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: angle and one angle only. You know, maybe there's a
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: little bit of diversity angle. You can obviously kind of,
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: you know, get some multiple tees out there, but it
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: doesn't have the same kind of variables as folks playing
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: like a full scale golf course and all the different
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: things that can happen between tee and green, right? So
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: you're eliminating that for starters, and obviously you still need
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: to make the recovery shots around the green work. But,
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: you know, the way that I've typically approached these projects
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: is just to go out and think about, you know,
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: my favorite, what are some of the most interesting second
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: shots that you play out there on full-size golf courses?
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: We're not really, never really, it's rare to be influenced
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: by a, par three on these projects. It's funny, even
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: though they're, they're obviously par three courses. I've personally, I've
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: been taking more inspiration from, uh, really interesting second shots on,
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: on par fours and third shots on par fives and
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: trying to integrate some of those shots into the golf course.
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: So just to, to make it really, you know, so
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: if we go to the loop at Chaska, you know,
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: we built like a, a kind of May West, the Alps,
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: the green, um, You know, we built a version of,
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: a little mini version of the Cape Green and Mid-Ocean Club.
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: We built, you know, Brett built a crazy kind of
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: double punch bowl plateau kind of arrangement there on the second.
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: We built a little double plateau. You know, we built
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: a kind of just tilty, old-fashioned kind of pizza box
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: style green. So, you know, the opportunity to just throw
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: out like a bunch of really diverse greens, but, you know,
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: greens that you might be you know, attacking with a
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: second shot on a, on a full size golf course.
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: But yeah, just, just integrating some of those, you know,
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: half mile, we, we went deep, you know, went to
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: the North Berwick well, and we, we got a version
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: of the 16th green out there. We did a, you know,
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: a hole with a stone hole with a stone wall
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: in front of it, kind of recreating that second shot
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: into the 13th, the North Berwick.
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: Just, just some really like diverse, quirky shots. like a
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: collection of just really, really interesting greens. And I think
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: if you can nail that and then get the overall,
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: so like the loop, the thing that defines the loop
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: is like this giant wetland restoration project that we did
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: in the middle. Like that's very much the character of
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: that property. Uh, the half mile, you know, we've built
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: just a bunch of creeks and the interaction between these
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: creeks and the golf holes is really going to be
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: the kind of character on that property. But that was
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: also a function of having to, you know, to make
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: the kind of floods um, mitigation, alleviation, the, the compensatory
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: storage thing work out there. So, um, yeah, so I
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: think you can, you can add, there's just a lot
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: of detail. Like it's quite an immersive experience. Like when you're,
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: when you're on the half mile, there's a lot going
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: on around you. There's a lot of greens around. There's
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: a lot of like really kind of cool features, you know,
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: winding through all the greens and kind of giving the
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: holes like a little bit of, um, sort of physical separation,
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: if not visual separation. And, um, yeah it's just kind
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: of as you turn through that property it's just kind
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: of cool green after cool green and you know neat
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: kind of views that just have a lot of golf
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: in them like you're just in a golf playground right
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: it's a it's a very different experience to being on
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: a full-size golf course typically and uh you know to
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: the earlier point if you combine that with a good
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: hang and a degree of freedom to to enjoy the
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: golf course the way that you feel like enjoying at
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: that particular time um these things can just be incredibly
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: popular and you know you can not necessarily charge accordingly,
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: but like, it's not like, uh, this is somewhere between
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: like a premium golf product and, uh, you know, you,
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: you can, you can price it in a way where
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: the conditioning can be, you know, comparable to, you know,
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: playing like a really elite condition golf course. I think
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: you can, you can make that, Because again, you're just
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: focusing all of your maintenance expertise and resources into a
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: relatively small area. So with a relatively modest budget compared
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: to a normal golf course, you can still have the
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: thing singing. I mean, it can be very fun. Very
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: fun playing conditions out there.
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the maintenance is much more concentrated and efficient for
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: sure because you're not maintaining a massive property. Of course,
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: it also means that the play, the wear and tear,
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: is more concentrated as well on, on teas and greens. And,
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: and that does create some challenges. I've, I've talked to, uh, uh,
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: the people at sand Valley about this before. And, and,
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: you know, that, that is a tough job, but if
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: you can spread out the wear and tear through different
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: pin positions and different T positions, then, then you really, uh,
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: help yourself there. But yeah, I mean, short courses are,
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: are unique in terms of this concentration of everything, right?
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: Concentration of players. When you're on a short course, you
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: feel like, you're really social because there are other players
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: right close to you. And you also feel like there's,
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: there's cool golf features everywhere because they're, they're all within
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: your site kind of right. There's the, you see more,
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: it's more information dense, I guess. And that's, that's gotta
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: be fun for an architect because as an architect, you're
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: always thinking about what is the player seeing from any
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: given point on the property. Well, when you're designing a
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: short course, as opposed to a regulation course, you really
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: get to do a lot with those sight lines compared to,
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: you know, what you would do at a much bigger property, right?
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, one of my favorite pictures out
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: at the loop at Chaska is there's a stack of
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: four greens from like right across the property that, you know,
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: they all kind of more or less line up and
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: you've just got kind of flag after flag after flag
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: and really interesting diverse greens kind of coming in from
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: different angles. Like it looks super, super cool. So as
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: you turn around and kind of look through the property,
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: you get all these really interesting looks of like very,
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: very dense golf. And, you know, to your earlier point,
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: the size of those features is, I would say that
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: what we've done at the Half Mile is like pretty
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: whimsical golf architecture. Like we have our square footage of
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: our greens out there for 10 greens is, you know,
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: probably bigger than it would be on an 18 hole
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: golf course. The square footage of the teas out there is,
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: you know, bigger than the greens. So it's, it's essentially
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: just the way we looked at it was that the
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: areas that when you look at, you know, a drone
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: shot of the half mile, the areas that would appear
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: to be fairways are essentially all just treated as teas
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: and drained and constructed as teas. So, I mean, you're,
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: you can essentially tee up anywhere and, uh, And yeah,
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: the greens are enormous. You know, one of the things
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: I think we wanted to do was to potentially support
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: like two flag setups. Again, same as we do at
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: Sweden's Cove. I'm not sure that would necessarily be like
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: a day-to-day setup thing. But I think having the opportunity
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: to do that for specific groups, I think is a
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: very cool thing and just helps to let people, you know,
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: get off the 10th hole and immediately think about going
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: back to the first hole and like, let's, let's play
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: this thing differently or let's play cross country or whatever
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: it is. Just, you know, shouldn't be too hard to
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: have fun out there. Let's put it that way.
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: So to go back to one of your earlier points,
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: I want to make sure I understood you correctly when
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: you're talking about why you could be a little more
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: bold with short course greens. Does that have something to
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: do with the fact that players are playing them from
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: only one direction and you don't need to be quite
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: as conservative? with the contours as you would if you're
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: trying to accommodate, you know, a number of different approach
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: shots that they might be hitting into the green? Is
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: that kind of what your argument would be?
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: So I, like the way I look at golf architecture
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: and the way I play golf as someone who grew
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: up in Scotland, I'm looking at so I think we'll
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: come back to like, you're the main part of your question,
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: but like, I'm looking at like aerial approaches to running
• 48:43
  Speaker 2: approaches to like hitting a putter on all, basically all
• 48:46
  Speaker 2: of these holes, the trajectory that a golf ball is,
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: is coming in towards these greens is, is, you know, there,
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: there's a lot of variability. There's a lot of, uh,
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: you know, option to play different trajectory shots into these
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: things and to use little contours to bank into certain pins. But, um, yeah, it,
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: To your main point, like there's a far smaller spread of,
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: you know, where golf balls could potentially be coming into
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: the green from. So, you know, you can afford to
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: be like a little a little bit more aggressive than
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: you would in an 18 hole setting. Like, absolutely. I mean,
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: it's just all about those variables and the, um, you know, relatively,
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: you know, similar, um, you know, playing lines into each green. But,
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: you know, we, we obviously, the way we were thinking
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: about the half mile was to, to, to create some
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: kind of cross country options out there. So, you know,
• 49:42
  Speaker 2: there's some greens that would be, you know, if you,
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: I mean, there's certain greens like on a, on an
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: 18 year old golf course, like if you were trying
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: to play into a Redan from the wrong sides, like, right,
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: good luck. Right. So, you know, they're, they're not necessarily
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: going to work from every angle, but I think, you know,
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: that's up to golfers to figure that out for themselves.
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: You know, there'll be some extremely hard shots out there.
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: You might have to, to use a little contour somewhere
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: over there to kind of bank, stun it and kind
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: of bank it around and get it to the green.
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: But yeah, there'll be a, there'll be lots of fun
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: to be had on those greens. Yeah.
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: I think another factor here is that golfers are just
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: taking themselves a little bit less seriously on a short
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: course than they are on a regulation course. You know, the, the,
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: the score, the, the, the handicap is, is not as
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: much a part of the picture for them when, when
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: they're playing these courses and, And so they can loosen
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: up a little bit and maybe accept really bold green
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: features in a way that they might not normally. I
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: know I sort of find myself reacting that way to
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: short courses myself, even though I'm fine with big, bold
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: greens at normal regulation courses. But when I'm playing a
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: short course, it's not even something that's in consideration for me,
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: whether I find this green to be too severe or
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: gimmicky or whatever else. I'm just not I'm not in
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: that frame of mind, right. When I'm playing a short course.
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And I, like, I think with a
• 51:08
  Speaker 2: short course, just like with a full golf course, it's
• 51:10
  Speaker 2: important to have some rhythm and cadence to the run, right.
• 51:13
  Speaker 2: You don't want to just have, you know, it's not
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: kind of full accelerator or like full throttle on every hole.
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: You know, you're looking for some, some more, some more
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: subtle greens. You're looking for some, you know, just to,
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: just to set up like different shots, uh, just to,
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: to give people, um, you know, chance to, you know,
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: have sort of high points and, and, you know, quieter
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: points in the round and so on and so forth.
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's, that's important in short course architecture, full
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: size architecture. Yeah.
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: Now to, to address the other side of this, there
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: are a lot of fun opportunities for architecture at short
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: course at short courses. You know, it, it, it does
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: you know, we've, we've, we've talked about that. I can
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: see how a golf architect might find this kind of architecture,
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: very fun and, and kind of, Like the governor is
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: off in a lot of ways. At the same time,
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: I have heard some golfers say that after a while,
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: they find short courses maybe a little bit boring or
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: repetitive to a degree, right? And I think that the
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: reason for that is very simple, and that's that regulation
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: courses have a key advantage in terms of hole-to-hole variety.
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: they get to use a few par threes, a bunch
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: of par fours, and a few par fives. And so
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: just in terms of length of hole and the number
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: of shots that you hit on a certain hole, regulation
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: courses can differentiate their holes from each other much more effectively.
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: At short courses, generally your tool is just par threes.
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: Now there are some short courses being built right now
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: that interestingly incorporate par fours or even par fives with,
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: you know, a concentration of par threes. I'm thinking of
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: the commons at sand Valley or, uh, Dave Zinkan's course at,
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: at to Chessie Creek there, there are some longer holes
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: on those horse, uh, on those courses while at the
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: same time, they are clearly short courses, but most short
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: courses and the ones that you've built are all par threes.
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: So how do you deal with that limitation? Like how
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: do you create whole to whole variety of, When the
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: only tool at your disposal is the par three.
• 53:31
  Speaker 2: So, well, the loop actually has one par four and
• 53:35
  Speaker 2: the par four that we snuck in there. We just
• 53:37
  Speaker 2: had like one part of the property that was suitable
• 53:39
  Speaker 2: for hitting for like a, an elite player to hit
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: driver in. Right. So we're like, okay, well, let's take
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: advantage of this one part of the property. And essentially
• 53:46
  Speaker 2: this is like a par five for kids, right. Or
• 53:48
  Speaker 2: par six for kids, probably par five from kids for
• 53:50
  Speaker 2: the front T. But yeah, it was just, we just
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: had one part of the property that was you know,
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: between a railway line, property line and the wetland that
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: was kind of wide enough to just let people have
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: like a big old swing out there. So we were like, okay, cool.
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: Let's keep that one long hole, our long hole out there. But,
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: you know, more so than like the variety of like
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: length of shots, it's like the type of shots that
• 54:15
  Speaker 2: we're encouraging people to hit. And like, you're talking to
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: like a Scottish Lynx kid here, right? So, I mean,
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: I would hope that you know, folks at the half mile,
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: certainly when I'm playing the half mile from hole to hole,
• 54:30
  Speaker 2: I might be pulling, and these holes are all, you know,
• 54:33
  Speaker 2: a hundred and a hundred yards of change there, thereabouts.
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: I'll be pulling anything from six iron to nine iron
• 54:38
  Speaker 2: to wedge to putter on these golf holes, just to,
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: you know, so that the, the, the proposition is, is
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: quite diverse. And, you know, I think depending on the
• 54:50
  Speaker 2: pin positions they're using out there, There's some pin positions
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: which are very conducive to a running approach. You know,
• 54:55
  Speaker 2: others are aerial, others might be, well, it makes it
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: a no-brainer to pull a putter on that thing. I mean,
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: I was playing the Commons last week. I mean, I
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: was pulling putter on some par threes of the Commons, right?
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: I mean, especially there where it's fescue, like to me,
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: that's a no-brainer. I mean, I'm almost happier just like
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: bunting a putter up there than pulling wedge. But no,
• 55:17
  Speaker 2: I think it's the variety of shots that we're encouraging
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: people to hit. And, you know, I'm not, expecting everyone
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: to necessarily see the same shots that I see because
• 55:26
  Speaker 2: I grew up in North Berwick and that's just the
• 55:28
  Speaker 2: shots that you kind of have to hit. But yeah,
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: I would like to think that over time people will
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: start to see some of those shots and find sort
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: of ways to play the half mile without just kind
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: of default pulling wedge on every hole. Yeah.
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: Do you think there's such a thing as a strategic
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: par three? I've had this discussion before. I kind of like...
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: Because usually the way we think about strategic design has
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: to do with the interaction between two full shots, right?
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: And the relationship between where you place your drive and
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: what the resulting approach shot is. And so when it
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: comes to a par three, it's a little hard to
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: sort out what strategy is there.
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: Well, I think the main thing is just knowing where
• 56:15
  Speaker 2: to miss. Knowing if you... Depending on the situation in
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: your match or depending on what number you need to get,
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: if you have a scorecard in your hand, you're just
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: trying to eliminate some. There should be some risks on
• 56:29
  Speaker 2: a par three. If you think about the great par threes,
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: like there's ways to hang yourself, right? So I think
• 56:35
  Speaker 2: when you have some really sort of severe features, take
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: a Calamity, take a Redan, you know, the devil's divot
• 56:44
  Speaker 2: at Girono or something like that, right? Some of these
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: classic par threes where, you know, if you hit like
• 56:52
  Speaker 2: the shot that you should never, never hit, you could
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: be having like a really big number. And then, you know,
• 56:59
  Speaker 2: I think the strategy in that is if you have to,
• 57:02
  Speaker 2: you have to understand what the miss is. And if it's,
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: let's just take North Berger Dan, if you need a
• 57:07
  Speaker 2: number there, you're hitting it long left every time. And
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: like hitting it long left is not bailout. Like you
• 57:11
  Speaker 2: need to, pool more club you need to think about
• 57:15
  Speaker 2: the fact that like okay i'm you know best case
• 57:18
  Speaker 2: scenario i want this to land kind of middle of
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: the green roll out through the back left and then
• 57:21
  Speaker 2: i've got you know a relatively straightforward putter chip back
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: up the green i've got a really good chance of
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: making three you know if you need a two that's
• 57:29
  Speaker 2: a different story altogether but um i i think if
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: you want to talk strategy par threes it's just about
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: where you miss it when you need to make a
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: certain number.
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: It makes me think of this yardage guide that the
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: architect Mike Kaprowski made for Broom Sedge in South Carolina.
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: Really cool kind of hand-drawn yardage guide that Mike made.
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: But the funniest part of it is how he labeled
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: the surrounds of each green, where some parts he would
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: write good, Other parts he would write bad, other parts
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: he would write horrible.
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: And so it's, it's kind of, but that's, it's such
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: a great way to think about what the strategy of
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: an approach shot or the strategy of a tee shot
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: on a par three might be. You have your good,
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: your bad and your horrible misses. And if the pin
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: happens to be near a horrible miss, then this, then
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: the risk reward question is how much do you go
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: at that pin? And on a Redan, the pin is
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: going to usually be in the back there, and that
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: is an interesting strategic scenario, because where do you miss
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: around there? You really don't want to be short, you
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: really don't want to be long right, but long left
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: is kind of okay.
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's the essence of a great par 3.
• 58:54
  Speaker 2: If you have to attack it, it is gettable, but
• 58:56
  Speaker 2: if you have to make a score, you can try
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: and mitigate some risk. Yeah.
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and if you can work those options out really
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: clearly in the design of a short course par three,
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: then you start to have something that's, that's pretty dynamic,
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: you know, depending on, uh, on pin position. Um, so
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: I want to, uh, uh, talk with you a little
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: bit about just short courses that you've seen. What, what,
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: what does a successful short course look like, uh, aside
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: from the Do you have, are there short courses that
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: come to mind for you as, as inspirations or, or
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: ones that, that really stand out above the rest as,
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: as kind of classics of the genre?
• 59:40
  Speaker 2: So we obviously have to start with North Barrett kids course.
• 59:43
  Speaker 2: I mean, which was originally.
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: For people unfamiliar, kids course at North Barrett, like where
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: is it? What is it like?
• 59:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So nine hole course actually opened in
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: the 1880s there, thereabouts. It was originally the ladies golf course.
• 59:59
  Speaker 2: I think the ladies for maybe five or 10 years,
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 2: you know, played there and then they were like, yeah,
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: we're just going to play the big course. So, so yeah,
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 2: it's been a dedicated kids course for over a hundred years. And,
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 2: you know, it just like, it's, it has a remarkable
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: variety and, and really stand out memorability on the golf holes. So,
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 2: you know, you have a punch bowl green, you have
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 2: an uphill hole, you have a downhill hole, you have
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: a kind of Dell-style hole, you have a hole that
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 2: just plays over a bunch of diagonal ripples. They're very, like,
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 2: just memorable and easily identifiable golf holes for even, like,
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 2: the most beginner of golfers, right? So I think North
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 2: Berwick kids' course, and there's obviously stone walls and whatever,
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 2: just cool kind of North Berwick contours out there. I mean,
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 2: it's a great place to start, right? I think in
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: the modern era, like the cradle to me is an
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 2: iconic project. Um, and probably primarily just because Pinehurst Resort
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: understood the importance of location. Um, like if you build
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 2: the cradle off in like a little corner of the
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: resort somewhere, this is different animal, right?
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: That's so true.
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 2: If you get, if you give that thing center stage,
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 2: if you understand the fact that, you know, what you,
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 2: what you want to do. So what, what used to,
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: what did they used to have in front of, you know,
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: the Pinehurst resort clubhouse there, I guess a driving range
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 2: and maybe the first hole of course, one in the
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 2: first of course, three, I can't remember exactly something like that.
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 2: Either way, it's not very engaging. There's not a whole
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 2: lot of action out there. The vibe is not great. Um,
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: but if you move that stuff elsewhere, put in a
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: killer short course, put in a bar, put in a Himalayas,
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 2: all of a sudden, um, You just have this kind
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 2: of focal point for golf activity, like right in front
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 2: of the clubhouse with food and beverage right there. Um,
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 2: you know, that's, that to me is just people and,
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 2: you know, how much of that was Gail and how
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 2: much was the resort? I don't know, but that is
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 2: folks just understanding how short courses with all that kind
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 2: of compactness and all those people together in this relatively
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: small space creates like a really, a really good vibe. Yeah.
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: It has totally changed the character of that place. And
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: it reinforces this notion that architecture is in part placemaking, right?
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: You can, through architecture, change what a place feels like.
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: And the Cradle is the perfect example of that because
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: of its location right there. All of a sudden, that
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: whole area is such a fun place to be. And
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: it was always a pretty fun place to be because,
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: you know, you had the 18th Green at Pinehurst No.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: 2 right there and the First Tee and you had
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: the little patio and And all of that stuff has
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: been in place for a while, but now you add
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: in the cradle and it's just like a theme park there,
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: you know, it's, it's really fun. And it's, there's so
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: many people there and it, and you get that, you
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: get that energy out of, out of that course.
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 2: Right. Yeah. I know they had to, obviously had to
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 2: move a lot of things around to make that happen. But,
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 2: you know, I think, I don't think anyone would argue
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 2: that that you know, the expense and the effort that
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 2: they went to, to, to make the cradle work. Like
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 2: that's completely justified. I mean, that is just such an incredible,
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 2: incredible addition to the resort. And from what I understand,
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 2: like the food and beverage out there is, you know,
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 2: it does pretty well. Right.
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: I would imagine. I would imagine that like makes a
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: little money for, uh, for the resort. Um, recently you were,
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: and you have, by the way, just gotten back to Japan.
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: So I want to thank you publicly for, uh, for
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: coming on the podcast so quickly after you've done so
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: much travel, but you were, you were recently traveling a
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: little bit around, uh, uh, around the States and you
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: found yourself at one point at sand Valley. You, you've
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: mentioned that, that you had gone to the commons. Uh,
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: did you also play the sandbox while.
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 2: You were there? I actually didn't this time, but I,
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 2: because the, the, the half mile that we've been building,
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 2: the project in Chicago is only like a two or
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 2: two and a half, three hour drive from sand Valley.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: I've been up a bunch of this summer. So I
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 2: was up there with Akbar from Seamus, uh, like a
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 2: month ago. And, uh, yeah, we did some, we did, uh, some, some, uh, some,
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 2: some short course funds, some, oh man, I'm blanking on
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 2: the name right now. Uh, sandbox. We did a, we did,
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 2: we did a couple of sandbox runs. Yeah. It's a
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 2: fantastic place. Jimmy Craig did a beautiful job out there.
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 2: And it's, it's, I think it's really interesting, like trying
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 2: to get like the right amount of golf in that property. Right.
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 2: And how, how defined the boundaries of that property were
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 2: when Jimmy started. And I know, you know, Bill and
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 2: Bill and Ben were obviously working on it with him
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 2: as well. But, Yeah, just to create like the perfect
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 2: amount of golf is quite a hard thing to do.
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 2: And I think the, you know, the sandbox does it
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 2: very well. It's obviously a neat little property and there's
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 2: a lot of kind of twisting and turning and you
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 2: kind of, it gets compressed and you get kind of
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 2: back to the clubhouse and then it kind of opens
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 2: up on the last few holes. You know, you've got
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 2: your kind of long range views out into the rest
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 2: of the property. You know, it's beautiful. I mean, everything,
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 2: every technique that you employ to make you know, a
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 2: full size golf course, like dramatic and memorable can also
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 2: be deployed on a short course, right? I mean, they're
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 2: none of the, like the, the, the writing lessons from
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 2: full size golf can all be sort of adapted and, and,
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 2: and kind of repurposed for, for short course golf experience.
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 2: I mean, it should still be a story with a start,
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 2: a middle and an end and, you know, cadence and
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 2: high points and low points and all those good things. Yeah.
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: That's such a good point about the sandbox. Cause I, I've,
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: When I think of the best short course I've played,
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: I think of The Sandbox. I like it even more
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: than Bandon Preserve, which is the short course that maybe
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: most people would say is the best they've played. And
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: for good reason, like Bandon Preserve is in an absolutely
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: spectacular location. It's on a piece of land that really
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: couldn't have been used for anything else, but it's perfect
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: for a short course. But what makes The Sandbox so
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: impressive to me is what you're talking about, the kind
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: of journey across the property. And that property was nothing, right?
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: There was nothing there that was useful for a golf
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: architect like Bill Kaur. But they created some really interesting topography.
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: And then they created a routing that explores that topography
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: in a way that feels like a Kaur and Crenshaw
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: golf course. there's a sense of discovery as you go
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: around through those little kind of humps and hollows. It's
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: kind of roughly maybe a figure eight routing or kind
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: of there, there's some looping that happens. And as you
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: get to the latter parts of the golf course, you
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: realize where you're going and there's sort of this realization, Oh,
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: this is, this is how it works. And that's really pleasurable, right?
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: When you figure out, Oh, this is, this is how
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: they made this all work from, from beginning to end.
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: So that's something that's so cool about it. And then
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: the greens are just absolutely brilliant, like such cool greens,
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: each one very memorable. It's an achievement to design that
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: many greens and have each be instantly memorable. But yeah,
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: the sandbox always comes to mind as a real achievement
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: because you had a property that wasn't offering much in
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: terms of terrain. but you created just enough terrain and
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: then a routing through it that, yeah, it's like you're
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: playing a miniature version of Sand Valley or something where
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: you're discovering each piece of the course as you go
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: along and it creates that excitement. I can't think of
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: many short courses that do that, right?
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really, really good. And I think to your
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 2: other point with the recent addition of the commons, I
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 2: think just having the ability to move from that kind
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 2: of pure kind of par three style you know, short
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 2: course experience to like the 12 holder that you can
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 2: play in two hours. It's just like all these really
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 2: kind of lovely packages, you know, like servings of golf
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 2: that are just, you know, perfect for, you know, however
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 2: you feel in a certain day, you know, certainly we
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 2: had a, we had a crew up at Lido last
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 2: week and you know, for our final morning before everyone
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 2: took off, no brainer. Okay. We're all going to go
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 2: out to the commons couple hours, Just, again, super fun greens.
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 2: Another very fascinating routing, very dramatic features on the commons.
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 2: It's a different animal to the sandbox for sure. But again,
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 2: just a beautifully precise serving of golf for a bunch
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 2: of people who are about to you know, drive a
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 2: bunch of hours and hop on planes to get wherever. Right.
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, the commons is a slightly different genre, of course,
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: obviously still a short course. So, so very much within
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: the realm of what we're talking about in this episode,
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: but Michael Kaiser refers to the commons as an afternoon course.
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: It has a mixture of par fours and par threes.
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: It's 12 holes. It's a little more of an in-depth
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: experience of golf, not quite as casual, but still a
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: great thing to kind of tack on to the end
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: of a long day, a very manageable golf experience. And
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: Kaiser's inspiration in this, as well as Jim Craig's inspiration,
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: et cetera, are these kind of second courses that a
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: lot of clubs in england scotland and ireland have one
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: that i just saw that sort of blew my mind
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: and i wonder if you've been to it cruden bay
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: the saint olaf course that place is amazing now i
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: i was at cruden bay on a trip for friday
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: golf club we're we're going around the highlands playing a
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: bunch of different courses i did not plan to go
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: to saint olaf until brian schneider told me that i
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: needed to And so after I played the main championship
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: course at Cruden Bay, I just walked around the nine
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: hole St. Olaf course. It has five par fours and
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: four par threes. And it is absolutely delightful. It uses
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: sort of the leftover land for the most part, you know,
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: kind of the most subtle land at Cruden Bay, whereas
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: the championship course really goes into the big dunes and
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: adheres to the big dunes. But That land in the
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: middle of the valley that's less dramatic is still so interesting.
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: It's just smaller contour, but it's really chaotic and fun.
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: And then the course kind of wraps around and then
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: visits the dunes for a couple of holes, uh, on
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: the sixth and seventh holes. And then, and then comes
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: back and the greens are Tom Simpson, Herbert Fowler greens.
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: Like they're probably even better than the greens on the,
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: on the main course. And I was just like, man,
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: this would be a great thing to have as a
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: club member. Like this is, this is where I would play.
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: If I were coming home from a day at work,
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't play the championship course. I mean, that's a,
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: that's a heavy lift. It's a great golf course, but
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: I need a day to do that. Come home after work.
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: I can play St. Olaf for sure in like an
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: hour and a half. And that, and that would be great.
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: And that's a satisfying golf experience where I'm hitting some drivers,
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: playing some strategic par fours, but, It's, it's a quick experience.
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 2: So I was, I was.
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: Blown away that by that place. I don't know if
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: you've been there at all.
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's super cool. And you know, there's examples like
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 2: that all across the UK really. It's almost like you
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 2: have the championship course over here and the holiday course
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 2: over there or whatever the term for it is, but
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 2: holiday course was used like fairly used quite a lot. Um, yeah, they're,
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 2: they're amazing. And, uh, I think a lot of that
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 2: is just leaning into the fact that it's light. So
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 2: late in Scotland and you know, there's a culture of
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 2: playing golf like after work. Right. So, um, yeah, I
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 2: think being able to head out there almost like after dinner,
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 2: it was almost like an after dinner golf course in Scotland. Right.
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 2: I mean, you might be heading out there like 7 PM. Yeah.
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: When sunset is like 10, 30 or 11, you know,
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: that's kind of like when you, you can, you can
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: do it. That's a summer, a summer treat sort of,
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: I guess.
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So, I mean, I would imagine that that played
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 2: a big part in the, in the original development of
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 2: those facilities in Scotland, uh, Scotland and England. Um, yeah.
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 2: A hundred percent. I mean, like just people want to
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 2: play golf. You just give them something that kind of
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 2: fits their lifestyle and the time they have available and
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 2: it's going to be popular. Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: And one last thing I want to mention about, about
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: short courses and, and the good ones that I've seen,
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: not many people have been out to Sylvie's Valley Ranch
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: in Eastern Oregon. I'm assuming you haven't been out there before.
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 2: I have not. I'm familiar with it. I have not. Yeah. Fascinating.
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: Dan Hickson designed golf courses out there. He did a
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: reversible course. That's, that's really cool. That's kind of the
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: main course at Sylvie's Valley ranch. But the craziest one
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: is this little short course called McVeigh's gauntlet. And it's
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: on the most severe piece of land that I've ever
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: seen adapted to golf. Like it is a hike you,
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: but it's, and it's walking only, but, but you really
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: need to hike up some mountains, but, It's so cool
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: because you could not have put a normal golf course there.
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: You could not have laid out regulation golf holes on
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: this terrain. But you can create a few small greens
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: on the peaks of these choppy hills that the golf
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: course occupies. And it's incredible that you can play golf
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: across this landscape. It's really a unique experience. And as
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: I was playing that course, I thought to myself, well,
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: This is what short courses can do. It can give
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: you access to landscapes that might not normally be accessible.
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: And I think band and preserve fits that category as well.
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: And so that, that is also something I feel that
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: it's exciting about short courses. You can, you can find
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: these little pieces of land.
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 2: It's probably the, the, I think it's the little bad nine.
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 2: That Scottsdale national as well is going.
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: To be the bad little nine.
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Jackson nine. There you go. There you go. There
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 2: you go.
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: Crazy.
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 2: I mean, just there's just wild little pieces of property that,
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 2: as you say, just unsuitable for full size golf, because
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 2: you know, too many variables in full size golf. So
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 2: you eliminate some of those things. You have people playing
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 2: from reduced set of angles. Yeah. You can, you can
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 2: make use of some very, very funky land that otherwise
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 2: is just sadly going to be sitting over there and
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 2: not part of your golf course.
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: And it kind of fits with minimalist principles because If
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: you were to put a regulation golf course or try
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: to put one on the land of McVeigh's Gauntlet at
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: Sylvie's Valley Ranch, you'd have to knock down a lot
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: of topography. You'd have to really carve out the golf features.
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: And that would be a bummer because you'd be disrupting
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: this very cool piece of land. So instead, you put
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: a short course on there. You can keep the land
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: intact and still play golf on it. And again, this
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: is exactly, it was exactly the logic behind band and preserve.
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: And it's why people like that golf course so much.
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: You're gaining access to a piece of land that, that
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: you wouldn't normally otherwise.
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 2: The same. There's the Mulligan course at Ballyneal as well.
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 2: I forget what exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Same thing again, just
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 2: a really gnarly little piece of property. You're not going
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 2: to get any full size golf holes in there, but
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 2: I mean, that is a fun short course. Yeah.
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: Very fun. Very fun. I had forgotten that one. That's a,
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: but yeah, that's, that's absolutely a good, a good pick too. Okay,
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: I think we've probably done enough remembering some golf courses.
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: Like remembering some guys who used to play baseball in
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: the 1990s. We've done a little bit of that. But
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: that was very interesting. Thank you so much for coming
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: on the podcast, Benjamin. Appreciate it. And good luck with
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: the project at Half Mile. I hope it turns out well.
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 2: Thank you, Garrett. Great to be on the pod. Thanks
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 2: for the invitation. And yeah, good stuff. Good to talk
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 2: about short courses. Thank you.
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: Absolutely. This episode of designing golf was produced by Will Balsam.
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Will. If you've been enjoying the podcast, then
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: go to Apple podcasts or Spotify or wherever you might
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: be listening to us and leave a rating and review.
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: We do like hearing from listeners. If you have ideas
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: for future episodes, I always take note of those. So
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: let me know what you're thinking. Thank you for listening,
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: and we'll be back again soon with another episode.