Latest / Designing Golf / The Story of Sand Hills

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The Story of Sand Hills · Designing Golf

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: For a long time, I've wanted to do a proper
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: in-depth episode on the Sandhills Golf Club. That's because one,
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: I think this Corrin Crenshaw design in Mullen, Nebraska is
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: the best modern golf course. And two, it's just a
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: great story. So I'm very excited that the moment has
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: arrived to tell it. My guest, David Normoyle, has just
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: released a terrific book on the history of Sandhills called
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: Lonely Beauty. David is one of the game's leading historians,
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: the author of many books, including a recent club history
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: of Cypress Point, and I can think of no one
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: better to explain both the fine details and the overarching
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: significance of the Sandhills project. I'm Garrett Morrison, and this
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: is Designing Golf. All right, David, we are talking about
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: the Sandhills Golf Club today for two main reasons. One
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: is that I've always wanted to tell the story in
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: podcast form. And two is that you have a new
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: book on Sandhills called Lonely Beauty, which was commissioned by
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: the clubs. Yeah, it's right there.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: Oh, good.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you're holding it up for the YouTube audience. Published
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: earlier this year, maybe a couple of months ago or so.
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, the public release date's really the 1st
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: of October, but we wanted to do a pre-release to
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: members mid-part of the summer so that they could enjoy
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: it until it's more available publicly, which it is. And
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: that's one of the great fun things about it.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: So how did this book come about?
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: Well, the book really started back in 2020 when I
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: was driving around America by myself for 40 days at
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: the height of COVID and writing letters about it. And
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: most of the places I was visiting were work-related, but
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: one of the places on this trip that was not
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: work-related but was just fun was the great place that
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: I'd always wanted to go but had never been, and
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: that was the Sandhills and the Sandhills Golf Club. And
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: because I was writing letters about the places I visited
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: at the end of my trip to the Sandhills, I
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: composed a letter reflecting on my time there. And a
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: couple days later, I got a response from Dick Youngscap,
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: the founder of the Sandhills. And he said, David, your
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: letter was forwarded to me. And I was struck by it. Essentially,
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: I'm paraphrasing. He said, and Dick and I happened to
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: have dinner one of the nights that I was there.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: And so he had told me his backstory. And he said,
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: it's rare that you meet somebody, in his words, so
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: perceptive so quickly about this place. Thank you so much.
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: And to me, that was one of the absolute highlights
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: because it was like, I don't know, driving around America
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: and going to national golf links and meeting Charles Blair
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: MacDonald and him saying, you got it. Thank you so much.
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: You know, it was just, it was in a way
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: a crowning achievement. And then six months later, I got
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: an email out of the blue from Dick who said,
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: I've been encouraged to find somebody to help tell our story.
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: And I think you should be the one to do it.
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: And then it went from there.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: And so how did the research for the book go?
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: And I particularly want to hear about a pretty special
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: meeting that you had at Sandhills with some of the
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: main figures in the story.
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: The research for the book was interviewing the central characters.
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: Because they're still living, right? A lot of your books,
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: that's not a luxury you have for most of your books.
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: Exactly right. So- In late September 2021, I went to
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: the Sandhills and spent a couple of days with Dick
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: Young's Cap, with Bill Core, Ben Crenshaw, and also Dave Axland,
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: who was the construction manager for Core and Crenshaw on
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: the project. And we filmed a couple of interviews, both
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: in Dick Young's Cap's cabin at the Sandhills and in
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: the library of the club. And they just talked and
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: I listened. And for two days, I asked them every
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: question I could possibly conceive of, because the way I
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: The way I thought about this book was that, you know,
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: 100 years from now, anybody could come along like me
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: and do a beautifully illustrated book and piece together what
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: the legacy of the place is. But there's really only
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: one chance to speak with the original characters behind the
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: story and capture their recollections while they're still here. You know,
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: it'd be fun just as an example to sit around
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: with Bobby Jones and Clifford Roberts and Alistair McKenzie and say,
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: why did you do what you did at Augusta National?
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: But we can't. In place of Bobby Jones, we have
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: Ben Crenshaw. In place of Clifford Roberts, we have Dick Youngcap.
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: And in place of Alistair McKenzie, we have Bill Kaur.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: And so as a golf fan, as a golf enthusiast,
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: it was just an absolute pinch me moment to be
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: in the room and having those conversations with them. And
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: that's why the three of them really needed to be
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: the lead characters in the story of this book.
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: So let's dig right into the story of Sandhills, which is,
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: in my opinion, the most interesting story in modern golf architecture.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: There are so many parts of it that fascinate me.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: I want to start, as you do in the book, actually,
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: by bringing some of the characters on stage. The first
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: and probably most important of these characters is the Sandhills
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: region itself. So what are the Sandhills of Nebraska?
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: The Sandhills is a place that almost nobody in America
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: knows about. And if anything, the reason why they're coming
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: to discover it is because of golf, strangely and unexpectedly.
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: The Sandhills is a massive landmass. It's a massive environment
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: that consists of basically three things, sand and dune grass
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: and wind. And the question of how to live and
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: navigate that environment has been one that's challenged people for hundreds,
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: thousands of years. And It is, in its way, it's
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: almost its own monoculture. It stands apart from Nebraska in
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: the sense that it's a totally different environment. It's austere.
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: It's difficult. It's windy. It's hard to live through. It's cold.
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: It's very hot in the summer. It's just an extreme
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: environment where only resilient things thrive. And I think, in
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: a way, that's the story of this golf course. But
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: it is... A friend of mine once said, Mother Nature
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: is a tough business partner, and she remains undefeated. And
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: I think in the Sandhills, this is more true than
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: anywhere else. But it's a place of distinct and strong community.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: Everybody remembers the first time they see the Sandhills. Because
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: there's a perception that people have of Nebraska, that it's flat,
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: that it's just part of the plains. And that is,
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: for the most part, true of driving through or spending
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: time in Nebraska. But then you come upon... this area
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: that all of a sudden the land kind of just
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: heaves up and, and, and forms all these, all these
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: fascinating shapes. The Sandhills themselves are, are such an interesting
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: topographical and, and you know, an ecosystem, right. That is,
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: that is so distinctive. You know, once it's very simple,
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: It's just kind of one thing. There's sand dunes and
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: a lot of the flora looks kind of homogenous throughout
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: the region. But then once you drill down into its details,
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: it becomes very complex. You find all these different plants
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: and all these things that you didn't expect. So you
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: very recently saw the Sandhills for the first time. What
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: was your first impression of them? What was your experience
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: of them?
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: I think in the simplest terms, it either connects with
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: you or it doesn't. And that's okay. It's not for everybody.
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: But for me, when I went and I saw it,
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: I thought it was just a place that would be
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: part of the story the rest of my life. I
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: don't know if I can explain it any other way
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: than that. It just hit me and it struck me.
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: And I think that was the case for Dick Young's cap.
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: He started going out there in the 1960s because his
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: sister-in-law was and her family lived out there, so they
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: would visit. And he just became captivated by the complexity
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: of it, right? The idea that it is a land
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: of contrast. It's dry and it's wet, it's cold and
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: it's hot, it's warm in terms of people, and yet
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: it's austere, to use the other word, again. And not
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: everybody connects with that. Some people think, yeah, not for me.
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: And I think Dick Youngscap, the people who love the Sandhills,
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: the people who live in the Sandhills would understand that.
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: It's not for you. But if it is a place
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: that connects with you, it's a place that connects like
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: few places in the world.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: You've mentioned Dick Youngscap a few times. Of course, the
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: founder and kind of benevolent dictator of the Sandhills Golf Club.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: He is the second character that we should bring on
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  Speaker 1: the stage here. You've talked a little bit about how
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: he came to the Sandhills. But who was he before
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: he founded this club? And to put some context around this,
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: I think people are used to these kinds of clubs
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: in recent years being founded by billionaires, by people who
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: have more than enough money and for whom founding a
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: golf club is just kind of an interesting eccentricity. But
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: Dick Young's cap came from a very different place, right?
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: Just as the Sandhills is a land of contrast, I
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: think Dick himself fits that perfect mold. He is unconventional.
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: I would say he's a singular person, a maverick for sure.
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: He's the exact opposite of everything you think a visionary
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: developer of one of the world's great golf courses should be.
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: He grew up in Lincoln, Nebraska. He's an architect by training,
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: built buildings in a variety of different styles, and became
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: a land developer. in the 70s and 80s at Firethorne
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: in Lincoln, Nebraska, and was really interested in finding out
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: how to make creative, thoughtful, appropriate environments out of something
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: that wasn't all that interesting to begin with. And so
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: that was the real test case for him was at Firethorne.
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: And then during his visits out to see his family
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: in the Sand Hills in the 1980s, he attended a
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: calf branding, a family gathering that takes place traditionally in
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: the springtime. And he said to a local land broker there, hey,
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: do you have any farming land, ranch land, that's no
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: good for ranching? Meaning it had lost its grass cover.
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: It was exposed. It was sandy. It was poor soil.
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: And he didn't really know why he did that, but
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: he just did. And the land broker came back sometime
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: later and said, yeah, I've got a couple of things.
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: Do you want to go look at them? And this
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: was in the late, late 1980s. And so Dick said, sure,
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: I'll go take a look. And the way that it
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: all happened was he came out to two different properties
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: in the greater Mullen area, we'll call it, an hour
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: or so north of North Platte. And he really had
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: very few preconceived notions about what the land should be.
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: He saw one property, knew it was too severe. And
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: then he came to the second And he went over
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: this rise, which is now known as Tire Iron Hill,
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: and he saw the valley of the land spread out
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: before him. And without thinking about it, he just turned
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: to the land broker and said, we'll take it. He
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: didn't have financing. He didn't have backers or investors. He
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: didn't have a golf course architect. He didn't have plans.
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: He had nothing other than the support of his wife, Barb.
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: And just on the virtue of seeing the land and saying,
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: we'll take it, that was the origin story of the Sandhills.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: And only, and these are Bill Corr's words, only a
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: person like Dick Young's cap could have seen it all
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: the way through to completion. Nobody that Bill's ever met
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: and all the wonderful owners that he's ever worked with
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: has the kind of personality that would make a place
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: like the Sandhills real. But Dick could and did.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: What do you think Bill Corr meant by that when
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: he said that nobody but somebody like Dick Young's cap
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: could have made this happen? What personality traits do you
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: think Bill had in mind?
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: How much time do we have? What I love about
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: Dick is that he is one of one. I've never
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: met anybody like him. I don't think anybody has ever
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: been like him. He has absolute certainty about what he
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: knows and cares about and is committed to those ideas.
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: He is willing to withstand criticism and pressure. And doubt
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: and disbelief because he sees with clarity what he believes
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: something good in this world should be, whether that's from
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: a design standpoint, architecture standpoint, community standpoint, personal relationships. Dick
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: has said many times one of the most dangerous words
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: in the world that he doesn't believe in is the
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: word expert. He's a disbeliever in the concept of expertise.
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: And so that's the kind of homemade, hard-edged, committed vision
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: that a person has to have in order to see
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: through what everybody else says is impossible or shouldn't be done.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: Having a general disregard for expertise is a very interesting
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: quality for somebody in Dick's position to have had because,
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: of course, just diving into this project, most people would
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: have said, I'm not enough of an expert to do this.
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: But But he felt free to do it. And yet
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: at the same time, he was a golf course developer, right?
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: He had done it.
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: You mentioned Firethorn. Tell me a little bit about Firethorn.
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: It's always been an interesting bit of Dick Youngscap's biography.
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: It is, as I understand it, a very different kind
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: of place than Sandhills. But this was Dick's first initiative
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: as a golf course developer was Firethorn. So what should
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: people know about that?
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: Well, he wanted to protect a piece of interesting land
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: in Lincoln, and he wanted to make something additive to
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: his community that he thought was better than the comprehensive
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: plan that Lincoln had come up with. And so he
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: assembled a syndicate and purchased the properties and had the
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: idea of developing a golf course and golf course community
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: that would be championship level. And so he reached out
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: to Pete Dye, who was the leading architect at the
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: time in the early 1980s, and developed the golf course
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: and the club. And it has its own story, but
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: it was the crucible of Firethorn that in many ways
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: prepared him for the challenges, the financing, the criticism, the feedback,
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: all of that. And as he would have said at
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: the time, he didn't know what he was doing. He
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: just knew what he thought would be good. And I
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: think one of the great qualities of Dick is, reminds
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: me of an old saying, which is, if you can read,
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: you can cook, which is in a way of saying,
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: if you're unafraid to fail, you could do anything. And
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: I think that's the superpower that Dick has had is
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: that he has curiosity, he's got skepticism, and he's got persistence.
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: And those are the qualities where if you're unafraid to
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: fail and you see something you think you believe in,
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: you can change the world. And he's done that with golf.
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: The third and fourth characters that we should bring on
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: the stage here are, of course, Bill Kaur and Ben Crenshaw,
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: the architects of the golf course at Sandhills. Most listeners
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: to this podcast will be familiar with Coren Crenshaw, but
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: where were they in their careers as an architecture firm
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: in 1990, which is when they came on board at Sandhills?
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: It's hard to believe now because they are, if not
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: the leading golf architects in the world, perhaps the most
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: important and influential other than Pete Dye in the last
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: 50 or 60 years. You could throw in a couple
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: of other names, but in terms of The trajectory of
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: the game and the values of design, you'd have to
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: put them in the smallest possible number. Yet in 1990,
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: the definition, the working definition, I think, of their firm
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: would be failure to launch. And even Bill and Ben
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: would acknowledge this, that in 1990, when they got a
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: call out of the blue from Dick Young's cap, they
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: had formed their partnership five years earlier. They had had
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: four projects, all of which failed due to the savings
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: and loan crisis or other different reasons. And the only
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: thing that they had going at the moment was the
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: development of Barton Creek in Austin, Texas, and the plantation
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: course at Kapalua. That's it. So they really had no
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: credentials in a major way other than Ben Crenshaw's name
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: and the fact that they would take Dick Young's call
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: because in the back of their minds, they had heard
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: about this potential for land somewhere in Nebraska and were
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: captivated by it. So they said yes when everybody else
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: said no. But the point was they are not Corrin Crenshaw,
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: or at least were not in 1990. They were just
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: Ben Crenshaw, champion golfer, and who's the other guy? We're
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: not quite sure.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: That was sort of my reaction when I first heard
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: of Corrin Crenshaw. And I remember this. This was when
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: I was first getting interested in golf and golf courses.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: I think it was the first tournament of champions championship.
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: that was held at Kapalua. And I heard that the
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: designers were Coren Crenshaw. Well, I know Ben Crenshaw for sure.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: He's won the masters and I don't know who the
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: other guy is, but, but whatever. Ben Crenshaw though, I
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: think his reputation really must have helped him gain a
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: certain credibility with golf course developer clients because his reputation
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: was as someone who was very thoughtful, right? Ben, Ben Crenshaw, uh,
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: wasn't just an ordinary professional golfer. He was the guy
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: who was going out to see other courses that he
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: found interesting whenever he played tournaments in a new place.
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: He was somebody who answered interview questions with unique thoughts
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: and a kind of eloquence. And so you would look
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: at Ben Crenshaw and think, well, yeah, he's thoughtful enough
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: to be a good golf course designer. I wonder if
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: that was part of what, what got his foot in
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: the door with, with Dick Young's cabin.
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: I don't know if it was that so much as, uh,
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: as Dick would say, they just answered the phone call.
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: And rather than saying, where is that? They said, we
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: want to know more about where that is. Uh, I
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: think one of the great qualities of, of Ben, when
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: you get a chance to spend time with him is that, um,
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: at his root, he is a golf enthusiast, just like
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: all of us. And I think we secretly think that
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: there might be something wrong with us. Some sort of,
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: I don't mean to diminish this, but some sort of
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: mental illness that we have.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: There's a genetic, you know, anomaly somewhere.
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: That's exactly right. We think there's something wrong with us.
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: And yet you then hear from Ben Crenshaw and you think, well,
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: there's nothing wrong with us at all. He's doing everything right.
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: And I want to be just like him. That's his
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: great qualities that he draws you in and makes you
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: feel better about your own strangeness when it comes to
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: your enthusiasm for the game. All right.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: So we've brought the characters on the stage. You've talked
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: a little bit about the acquisition of the land, Young's
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: Cap's kind of discovery of it, his epiphany there on
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: the hill, which, you know, there's an interesting parallel with
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: Mike Kaiser's epiphany on what is now the 14th T
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: at Bandon Trail, seeing the property and knowing instantly, oh,
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: I have to bring people here. The parallels between those
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: stories are fun to me. So, you know, this property
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: that Young's Cap was going to buy, what were its
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: main characteristics and what about it attracted Dick Young's cap?
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: The central thing that attracted him was the valley where
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: the golf holes are today.
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: Because the valley where Sandhills Golf Club is, just to
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: be clear, is a very small part of the property.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: that was under negotiation.
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: The ranch land was about 8,000 acres, if you think
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: about it. And the area for golf was going to
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: be 1,000 acres within the 8,000 acres of surrounding ranch land.
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: And the two distinctive features for Dick were, number one,
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: the valley that he saw, which had this particular setting
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: for golf holes that he just imagined. And then the
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: other part was the Dismal River, which fork? I'm forgetting
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: it at the moment. South Fork of the Dismal River.
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: And that was what came through the property. And the
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: quality of the Dismal River section is it was cooler.
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: It was sheltered. There was tree growth because there was
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: water there. but it was singularly unsuited for golf because
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: of its severe nature. And so the big breakthrough, the
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: big crazy idea, which they had many different discussions about
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: during the development, was Dick's idea of putting the golf
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: course a mile from the clubhouse, which Bill and Ben
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: frankly thought was crazy. But Dick, through his convictions, said, no, no,
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: this is the way it needs to be. It'll be hot.
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: It'll be exposed to the wind. Let the golf course
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: be the golf course and then let the clubhouse area
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: be the place of refuge. Those were the two qualities
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: and how they worked with one another.
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: Now, I know that this is a complex part of
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: the story, but basically, how did Young's Cap put together
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: the funding to purchase this property and then move forward
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: with the golf course project?
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: There were several stages and several partnerships that he created.
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: And again, this was part of the experience that he
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: had developing Firethorn and piecing together parcels of land in Lincoln.
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: But essentially, there was... a group of owners, initial investors,
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: who secured the rights to the property. So get that
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: part first. And then there was a second group that
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: had to pay to build the golf course, the clubhouse,
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: all the facilities. And it was never a sure thing
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: going up to and including the deadline on the option.
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: And I hope in the story of the book, what
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: we now think is something we take for granted and
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: was destined or predestined to be was very nearly not.
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: Up until June of one particular year, just before June
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: of 1991, before the option on the land ran out,
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: Dick received a fax out of the blue from Jim Simon,
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: a rancher and neighbor and ultimately investor, who offered to
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: agree to float the difference between the purchase price and
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: what Dick was needed at a very, very low rate
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: in order to make it all happen. And as Dick
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: has said, if it wasn't for that obscure fax out
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: of the blue, none of this would have happened. But
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: the structure is reasonably complex. We try to make it
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: clean and also understandable, but yet complete for the historical
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: record in the book. It was not a sure thing.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: When it comes down to it, the funding, the main
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: part of the funding for the project came from just
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: a few sources, right? Jim Simon was a big part
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: of the picture. And then there were just a handful
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: of other people who really made this possible, right?
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: To me, one of the educational parts of it, just
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: for my own interest in golf, was the conversation that
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: went on between Dick Young's cap and Ben Crenshaw. Ben said,
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: you don't want a couple of singular investors because they're
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: going to have too much say. You want to spread
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: it out to a variety of people. You, Dick, be
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: the managing partner. You make all the decisions. That's how
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: it ended up happening, meaning, Dick, you be the managing partner.
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: You make all the decisions. But the great fortuitous part
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: of this conversation whole endeavor was that there were three
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: principal investors who were essentially silent investors and were willing
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: to hand over the control of their investment to Dick
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: and make it all happen while they funded it. And
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: so it was truly a best of all worlds thing.
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: And it was not something that you could have ever
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: planned for. And that's the thing that Dick Youngscap says
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: again and again and again in his book, in this book,
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: and in our conversations is, I don't think I should
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: get as much credit for this as I do because
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: I could never have planned this out. Yeah. All right.
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: So now we're at the point in the story where
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: the golf course begins to take shape and there is a,
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: there is a law.
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: I would just, I would just pause and make just
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: a small detail here is the very complicated nature of
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: the financing of this, which may not be very interesting
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: to the reader is something that gave space for bill
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: core and Ben Crenshaw to spend time working on routings.
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: And that's a central point is that they had, the
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: most important quality or the most important ingredient in great architecture,
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: which is time.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, which is something that Ben Crenshaw says all the time.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: And we will get into how they use that time,
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: but it is something that just makes this project so distinctive.
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: It's interesting how history works, where people look back at
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: Sandhills and say, well, that was a revolutionary moment in
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: golf course design where something new happened. Well, a big
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: part of the reason that something new happened was just
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: the circumstances of this funding structure that Youngstap was putting together.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: This episode is brought to you by Friday Golf Club, FEGC.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: Our team here at Friday Golf has spent more than
• 25:08
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• 25:11
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• 25:15
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• 25:18
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• 25:40
  Speaker 1: our ongoing book club. Right now we're reading Robert Hunter's book,
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: The Links. It's been very enjoyable. We've sort of been
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: discussing a couple of chapters at a time, and it's
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: all going to culminate with the next Designing Golf episode,
• 25:56
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• 26:00
  Speaker 1: So if that sounds compelling to you, join Friday Golf
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: Club today at thefriday.com forward slash membership. So getting to
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: the design of the golf course itself, I want to
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: first talk about Koren Crenshaw's methods, such as they were
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: when they entered this project. So what were some of
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: the working habits that Koren Crenshaw had developed in their
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: early projects? Not just Barton Creek and Kapalua, which are
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: their first kind of well-known or successful golf course projects,
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: but also the ones that they started and worked on
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: and had to abandon ultimately. Through those experiences, who did
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: they become as a golf architecture firm? How did they work?
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: Sure. Bill Kors said that the prevailing word, the prevailing
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: theme at the time of the Sandhills being created in
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: the early 1990s, the prevailing market force in golf was demographics,
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: meaning You go to where people are, throw money at
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: a site, make the site interesting, and because people are there,
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: they'll support it. Sandhills flipped that because it went to
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: a destination that was the interesting thing, and even though
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: the demographics weren't there to support it, the site is
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: what prevailed. But that's not the only major thing they did.
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: I wouldn't say that they were unique in this respect,
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: but I would say they were influential in this respect.
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: And that is, at the time, in architecture, it was
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: that designers design courses and builders build courses. There was
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: a separation of labor between the two. And the key
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: insight in the core Crenshaw model is that they are
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: design builders. They assembled a handmade team, homespun in every way,
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: and Bill and Ben knew what they wanted, but they
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: didn't necessarily know how to make that real. And the
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: other guys who worked on this team, a variety of
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: names that have become famous throughout time, they would work
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: through these ideas in the dirt. And a great example
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: of this is the story that Mark Rolfing told about
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: the development of Kapalua and the plantation course, about how
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: Ben and Bill and the guys would have breaks and
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: they would go down to the local grocery store that
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: made sandwiches, the local store in the village. And they'd
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: be sitting there eating potato chips and sandwiches and all
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: of that. And Ben Crenshaw would dump out the potato
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: chips and sort through the potato chips and he would
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: find a potato chip and he'd say, there, That's the
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: third green. That's what I'm trying to do. Now let's
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: go out in the dirt and let's try and make
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: it real. That's not something you can design on a page.
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: That's not something you can design in a computer. That's
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: only something that you can reveal as you're doing it.
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: That might make it hard for planning. That might make
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: it hard for permits. That might make it hard for, frankly,
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: history to record what decisions were made when and where.
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: But that's their particular creative style is the ability to
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: translate the idea that you and I read about online
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: or in discussion groups or in old books into to
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: translate that into the ground. And that's the key thing
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: that they, as a team, this custom built crew, that's
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: what they had the ability to work on in those
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: four failed projects, the early projects, and then at Sandhills
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: was how do we work together? And that's what they learned.
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: I wonder if Ben Crenshaw was the first person to
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: compare greens to potato chips. Because that has become a
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: popular framework recently. It's something that Andy Johnson and I
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: talk a lot about. Potato chip greens, Perry Maxwell greens especially,
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: often look like potato chips. Oh, man. didn't know that
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: story about Ben. That's, that's amazing.
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: It's pretty cool. I think it echoes the plasticine models
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: that McKenzie or Simpson were using in the twenties and
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: thirties to try and figure out how to create these shapes. But, uh,
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: but yeah, I think it, And Dave Axlin talked a
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: lot about this, driving to and from the Sandhills, the
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: 12 miles from the house that they had in Mullen
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: out there, is a big part of design is not
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: inventing something, but just keeping your eyes open and looking
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: around and saying, I like that. Take that. Do it here.
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: Make it work. Let it fit in. Yeah.
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: And they were Hawaiian brand potato chips.
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: That's exactly right. Okay.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: Hawaiian potato chips.
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: Those are the ones to get. Very famous in the 80s.
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: Right. Okay.
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: In any case, Koren Crenshaw, you know, this different way
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: of working. Now, of course– An interesting parallel here, and
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: this doesn't get explored in the book, and I wonder
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: if that's because Dick Young's cap doesn't really talk about it.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: But if you're looking for other people at this time
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: who would work in the way that you're describing, other architects,
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: you would look at maybe Tom Doak, who was on
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: a bulldozer at High Point in Michigan at this point,
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: shaping greens by himself, had not had many jobs.
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: He was young.
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: The other... person that you would look at would be
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: Pete Dye. Of course, this is Pete Dye's, more or less,
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: his method of working. He was a builder.
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: Of golf courses, not a designer or an architect.
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: He was the design-build guy in the industry, and it's
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: where Bill, I assume, learned many of his tricks that
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: he went on to use in designing and building golf courses.
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: Dick Youngscap worked with Pete Dye at Firethorne I wonder
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: if there is some kind of connection there, some kind
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: of affinity where Dick Young's cap works with Coren Crenshaw
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: partly because he had worked with Pete Dye previously and
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: Coren Crenshaw's way of doing things happened to be similar.
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: Was that just a coincidence or is there something more
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: like causation there?
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: I think it's more of a coincidence. Part of it
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: was that in Dick's recollections, the answer is they were
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: the only ones who said yes. Right. Yeah.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: You said this, they were, I mean, he asked a
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: number of different architects, presumably, and Koren Crenshaw were the
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: ones who were interested because they knew that, you know,
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: the Sandhills of Nebraska might be actually an interesting place
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: to build a golf course. But so there's nothing, there's
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: not much there that he talked about.
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: I don't see that, or at least we didn't cover that,
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: or I don't remember that. So hopefully the historical record
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: will correct me the next time something comes out. But
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: I think another thing that I would add to the
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: discussion about how they did it. And this is something
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: that came from our interview with Bill and Ben is
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: that you couldn't take the lessons that you learned anywhere
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: else in golf and apply them to the Sandhills because
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: it was building in an entirely new environment. So golf
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: course grass is inherently non-native to the Sandhills and you
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: have to find a way to make it germinate, stay
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: and not blow away when you open up ground. So
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: whether that was opening up ground for fairways or opening
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: up ground for bunkers or opening up ground for greens,
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: if you didn't put non-native grass and keep it alive,
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: not only during the summer, but through the winter, all
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: the work that you did as an architect would blow away.
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: So you had to go very, very carefully and slowly.
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: And one of the phrases they used was careful opening
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: up ground, because if you didn't cover it back up
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: very quickly and stabilize it, it was all gone. Hmm.
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: And that's just not something that applies really anywhere else
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: in golf at the time.
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: Or at least not anywhere that they were building golf courses.
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: That's right. Yeah. That's correct.
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: So that gets into my curiosities about where the concept
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: for the Sandhills Golf Club and the course at Sandhills
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: came from. A remote, private destination club with a very
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: natural course on incredible sandy terrain. This model has become
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: pretty widespread in recent years. People are very familiar with
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: it now, but at the time it was novel.
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: It was the opposite of everything. It was just novel.
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: It was, it was inconceivable to everybody they talked to.
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: They said, well, there's no people there. Why would you
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: go there? Why would you do that? This, this seems
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: contrary to everything that everybody thought about golf development at
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: the time. It was the exact opposite direction. which is
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: what makes it so revolutionary, and which is why I
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: think Dick would say, again, don't give me credit. I
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: didn't know what I was doing. I just wanted to
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: build something there. I had no sense of what it
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: could possibly become.
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: Well, that's one of my big takeaways from your book
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: is that Dick Young's cap himself says, I didn't come
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: up with this concept. It wasn't my idea to revolutionize
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: golf course development or golf course architecture. We just kind
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: of made... a bunch of decisions in sequence that led
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: to this result. And so how then do you account
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: for the emergence of this new modern concept for a
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: golf club? Does it have to do with limitations and budget?
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: And this is what they needed to do because they
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: didn't have a lot of money. Is there some philosophical
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: underpinning to the concept, whether coming from Young's Cap or
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: coming from Koren Crenshaw? that led to this being the
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: thing that they pursued? Does it have to do with
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: the local culture in Sandhills? I would imagine it's a
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: combination of all those factors, but I'd like to hear
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: you talk about that a little bit. Where did the
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: concept for the Sandhills Golf Club come from if it
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: didn't just come from Dick Young's cap?
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: So I think the answer to that question is yes.
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: Next question. I'm just kidding.
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: I knew you wouldn't do that to me.
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: Next. What it makes me think of is, so when
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: I was, I think it was just after I graduated
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: from high school or maybe I was in college, something
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: like that. And I had the good fortune to be
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: able to go on a trip to Europe, which is
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: an amazing good fortune. And I remember talking to my
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: aunt at the time about it. And she said, never forget,
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: being constrained by finances is not a limitation. It requires creativity.
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: You're going to go and do things with your time
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: that if you had all the resources you wanted to,
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: you would never do. So memories will come from that.
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: Learnings will come from that. Being constrained is not a limitation.
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: So that kind of sticks in the back of my mind.
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: And I think Dick and Bill and Ben talked about
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: this too, that if they had more money, things probably
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: would have turned out worse. So how can I summarize
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: the essence of your question about the idea? So I think,
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: and now this is just my perspective, is Dick Young's
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: cap fell in love with the Sandhills because if you've
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: been there and it hits you here, you don't stop
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: thinking about it. So that's starting point number one. Secondly,
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: he liked the idea and the challenge of creating something
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: that was contrary to what everybody thought. He's a contrarian.
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: So that's part of it, number two. And then it
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: kind of is the end there, in a way, because
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: he didn't see the possibility of what that all would be,
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: which is why having Bill Korn and Ben Crenshaw as
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: these shaping forces, these central characters, is so important because
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: they brought their own thing. So Ben brought his perspective
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: and talked to Herbert Warren Wind and was excited by
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: the idea of doing something that had been happening in
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: golf for 500 years, but for about 50 or 60 years,
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: we kind of fell asleep and forgot about doing that.
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: So the new version of the old idea was super fun.
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: Then we have Bill Core in his own particular way
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: of genius, where figuring out what to do and what
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: not to do, how to route the golf course, how
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: to use the holes, how to create the features, how
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: to go from 137 potential holes in the constellation map
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: down to 18 holes that worked. That was his particular
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: way of doing it. Then you have, because of the
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: amount of time that they spent on site building the thing,
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: you have the presence of Bill and Ben in the
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: local community and in a way assuaging some of the
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: fears that local folks had about some Palm Springs type
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: of golf course coming to the Sandhills of Nebraska. And
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: that was all softened by Bill and Ben and their characters.
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: It couldn't have just been Dick, but they also had
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: to get creative and develop these relationships. And I think
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: it was ultimately the idea that if you, there was
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: this other thing that was happening at the time too,
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: this field of dreams notion in the late 1980s. The
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: movie came out, yeah. If you build it, they will come.
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: And this risky, visionary, mavericky kind of thing was in
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: the broader cultural conversation at the time. So you take
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: this cocktail of different things and people, and that's why
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: no singular person could be responsible for it. but without
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: Dick taking the risk and seeing it through and being persistent, curious,
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: and skeptical, and not really believing all the experts, but
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: challenging them nevertheless. That's why you have this combination. But
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: at the end of it, just to conclude the thought,
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: the Sandhills Golf Club is perfectly named because it's about
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: the place. It is what it says on the tin,
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: as our British friends would say. And you take it
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: and you put it somewhere else that doesn't have Mullen
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: and 500 people and the relationship with the community. And
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: all of the things that came about through the creation process,
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: you have a totally different dynamic. It's a fragile, rare,
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: and special mixture. And that's why when it lands with people,
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: it lands with them forever.
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: That's such a rich answer. And what it brings home
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: for me is that the concept for the club, if
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: we can even talk about that now, wasn't a top-down thing.
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: It wasn't, I have an idea and now let's go
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: and apply it somewhere. It was the result of, you know,
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: bottom-up activity where we start from the place and the
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: land and we work from there. We make reasonable decisions
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: from there that almost inevitably lead to the result. And
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: so it's, it's almost as though as soon as Dick
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: Young's cap stood on tire iron Hill and said, I'll
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: take it. That everything from that point on was, was
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: almost inevitable, right? Even though it wasn't right. Even though
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: there are some contingencies here, some places where it could
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: have gone wrong or gone in a different direction, that
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: founding moment of saying, I love this land. I love
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: this land so much that I'm going to do something
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: completely irrational. I'm going to just buy it right away.
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: As soon as he makes that decision, that gives the
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: club its concept or to put it, I think, to
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: put a better word on it, it gives the club
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: its soul, right? That moment is what does it.
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: That's right. And so I think that's the third leg,
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: if you will, of what was transformational about the Sandhills
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: is it started with the rejection of the idea of demographics. No,
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: that's not the most important thing. It embraced the notion
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: of design build and how you go about discovering and
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: revealing a raw piece of land carefully, slowly, and considerately.
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: And then the third part of that is the idea
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: that you don't have a master plan. You find the
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: site and you let the site tell you what it
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: should be and you figure it out along the way.
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: And that's what I think great design is, is it's iterative.
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: It's not top down. It's taking the fundamental elements that
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: surround this particular problem and trying to solve them one piece,
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: one question, one decision at a time. And I think
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: all of that, demographics, design build, that bottom up rather
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: than top down approach speaks to the humility and the
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: humble nature of the people in the place. And again,
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: if you like it, if it lands with you, that's
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: why it stays with you forever. And if not, that's okay.
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: There's lots of other choices out in the marketplace. Yeah.
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: So before getting into the design and construction process itself,
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: I want to talk a little bit about the Sandhills
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: community and its relationship to the golf course and vice versa.
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: What was the community's initial response to the project and
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: how did that evolve over time?
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: Skeptical, I think, is the best way.
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: Understandably skeptical.
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And part of it was because there had been
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: some intrusions into the Sandhills in the 70s and 80s
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: from big agricultural business endeavors that were trying to turn
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: this place of ranching into a place of agriculture. And
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: as a consequence, they stripped the land, they left it bare,
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: they left behind machinery, and it really left a mark
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: on the Sandhills communities. And so I think there was
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: a fear and skepticism that here's golf. And again, this
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: Palm Springs type situation, it's going to bring trees and
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: houses and water and all these things completely foreign to
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: the land. So that, that's the starting point. And what
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: Dick Young's cap and what Bill Corr and Ben Crenshaw
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: had to do slowly, but surely is to convince the
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: local community, not just, I think in Mullen, but the,
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: or the broader area, but really specifically Mullen, that, that
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: these were going to be good neighbors, that these were
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: going to be people who made a contribution to the
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: area and were, um, sensitive to the needs of the people.
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: And one of the joys, I couldn't fit all of
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: the stories in the book possibly, but one of the
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: joys of driving with Dick Young's cab from Lincoln out
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: to the Sandhills, staying with him in his cabin, and
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: then back is it was just hours and hours of
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: stories about people breaking down on the side of the
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: road and picking them up and somebody saying, well, that's
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: the strangest thing in the world. And the other person saying,
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: what do you mean that's the strangest thing in the world?
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: It's just what we do. We look after one another.
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: I remember speaking with one of the employee's who worked
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: at Ben's Porch and asked her, what do you like
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: about the ranching life? And she said, after a long
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: moment of thought and pause, she said, well, it's not easy,
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: but it's free. It's freedom. And all of these things
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: mixed together with the community, the way that there's been
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: a dining membership since the beginning, there's been a local
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: golf membership since the beginning. It's an unspeakably low price.
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: Very affordable. Yeah, both of those.
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: Which you can't believe. Yeah. But that's the point is
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: there's this relationship and there's symbiosis, right? There's this absolute
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: symbiosis of how the places work together. And it can't
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: be done in a master plan way. It can only
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: be done moment by moment, day by day, conversation by
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: conversation being revealed. And that's what makes it such a
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: human landscape.
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: It's something that has been really successful about the club.
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: It's kind of tender relationship, mutually tender relationship with its community.
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: I think people have this perception of Sandhills as being
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: this exclusive high-end golf club, which in one sense, in
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: a national sense it is, but in a local sense,
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: once you get there, The people who work at the
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: club are locals. That's right. There are many members, as
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: you mentioned, who are locals. And so there is a
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: mutual embrace there that has been very successful and is
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: a big reason probably why the club has been able
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: to survive. This is not charity or anything like that.
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: This is mutual dependence.
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Members love going to the Mullen football games and
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: playing Mullen North, the nine-hole course in town, and going
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: to Big Red's Cafe, and when possible, enjoying all of that.
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: Because in a way, it's a bonus. It's an amenity.
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: And I think that, again, is not a new idea.
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: That's an old idea, that golf courses and golf clubs
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: can be pillars of their community. They may be private institutions,
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: structurally or from a play standpoint. But they can also
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: be pillars of their community. And this is not a
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: new idea. This is a very old idea. And I
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: think the most successful thriving golf clubs are the ones
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: that figure out how to maintain their particular position while
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: at the same time being an asset to their community,
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: not sitting behind the hedgerows and pretending that the world
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: doesn't exist. All right.
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: Time for the construction process. We're talking about a span
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: from about mid-1991, I guess, when Coren Crenshaw began the
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: routing process proper.
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: Even as late as 1990, their first couple visits when
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: they started thinking about how to route the golf course.
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: Thinking about where to put the golf course on this
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: vast expanse of land was, I guess, sort of part
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: and parcel of the routing process. So yes, late 1990 to.
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: October 1994, which is when the course was basically seeded
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: and playable. I particularly want to zero in on the
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: routing process, which we've alluded to a couple of times.
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: But I think to understand the architecture of Sandhills, you
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: have to understand how it was routed. So tell me
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: about how Coren Crenshaw initially explored the property and found
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: golf holes.
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: So one of the questions that a lot of people
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: have is, okay, Bill Corr, Ben Crenshaw, Corrin Crenshaw, who
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: does what? And this isn't a perfect illustration, but one
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: of the things to keep in mind in the early
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: 1990s is Ben Corr is still, yeah, Ben Corrin. I'm
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: not the first one to have done that. Ben Crenshaw
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: is still playing a full schedule on the PGA Tour.
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: So he's traveling, he's playing, all that stuff. Bill Corr
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: had the flexibility of time to spend more time on
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: the ground thinking about routing, but they were always collaborative,
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: always thinking about how to make decisions together. So the
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: answer is both in this instance, but Bill Corr spent
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: more time on the ground. And he was the one
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: who would fly up there and work on the routing.
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: And when you have a thousand acres to work with,
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: it's really hard to know how to make it all work.
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: He used the illustration once of how he would go
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: into Big Red's cafe and see this giant jigsaw puzzle.
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: And he would think, basically, that's what I'm doing. It's
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: almost like, as I suggested to him, it's like solving
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: a New York Times crossword without a pencil. He goes, yeah,
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: it's basically like that, except he had the pencil and
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: started working on what became the constellation map routing. So
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: in our conversations, Bill said something very simple, but I
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: think really profound. If you're trying as a student of
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: golf architecture to understand how all this works, he said,
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: you have to have somewhere to start and you have
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: to have somewhere to finish. And he said just instinctively
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: when he drove out to this big landscape that had
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: nothing on it, he went to the windmill. And the
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: reason why he went to the windmill, which is now
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: next to the first and the 18th holes, is because
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: it was the one place where he could always come back.
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: And not only he came back, but the cattle would
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: come there because there was the water that the windmill
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: pumped and brought them for a watering trough. So he
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: always used the windmill as a starting and finishing spot
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: for the golf course, just for practical reasons, because it
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: was the place that he wouldn't get lost when he
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: was coming back. So if you take that as the
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: starting point, 1 and 18, you want to begin and
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: finish somewhere near the windmill. Then the next question becomes, okay,
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: in what direction do we go? Do we go north, south, east,
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: or west? And one of the principles rules or guidelines
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: of golf architectures, you don't start the golf course to
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: the east and finish the golf course to the west.
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: You don't want to be playing into the rising sun
• 49:22
  Speaker 2: or finishing on the setting sun. So for that to work,
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: starting at the windmill, you can't go south because that's
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: where the river is. So you have to go north.
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: So he would go north across the valley into the
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: biggest hills. And the idea was, these are big dunes.
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: Let's get them out of the way early while people
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: have strength and energy. They're going to be enthusiastic about
• 49:43
  Speaker 2: taking them on. So we have to go into the
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: dunes north. We can't turn east too soon because when
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: the sun rises, you can't see anything. So that's how
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: you go across the valley on one, through the big dunes,
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: up over to two, and you get to this edge
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: of forever. I mean, it's one of the most amazing
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: inland views anywhere in golf, anywhere. As Bill said, I
• 50:05
  Speaker 2: don't know anywhere other than next to an ocean where
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: you see that far on a golf course and you
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: see nothing. No sign of humanity whatsoever. So you're out
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: on this ridge and you think, okay, now it's time
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: to turn. And so you turn a little bit east
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: and you play down three and four. And originally they
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: had some ideas of going even further. And then you
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: start trying to come back. And they discovered what they
• 50:25
  Speaker 2: call the twins or the cousins, the short par fours,
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: the seventh and the eighth. They found them early, so
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: they knew they needed to be somewhere in the routing.
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: And then nine brings you back up to essentially the
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: windmill where you start. Now, the big insight for them
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: was they knew they were going to be moving away
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: to the west on number 10 and then kind of
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: continuing on 11. They had found 16, which is this
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: amazing heaving, rollicking ocean of par five, the sweet little 17th.
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: And then 18 brings you back to the windmill. But
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: the big question in the whole routing was how do
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: we get from 11 green to to 16T. They are
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: not close to one another. And to get there on
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: a straight line, you'd have to play across some of
• 51:08
  Speaker 2: the less interesting ground. So this is where one of
• 51:10
  Speaker 2: the amusing moments in the whole story occurs, because one day,
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: and this wasn't Bill Core who did this, this was
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: Ben Crenshaw who was out there, they walked over a fence,
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: and there were barbed wire fences everywhere, so they didn't
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: know what any of these fences meant. But they walked
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: over a fence behind the 11th green, and they started
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: moving out towards what became the 12th, 13th, 14th, and
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: 15th holes, And they said, we really like this. This works.
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: And by doing this, it shifts the center of gravity
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: so that we can have the first nine holes come
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: back to the clubhouse. The second nine holes go out
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: and come back to the clubhouse. This is going to
• 51:43
  Speaker 2: be great. There was only one problem. In this giant
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: 8,000 acres, of which 1,000 was set aside for a
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: golf course, holes 12, 13, 14, and 15 weren't part
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: of the 1,000 acres. So they had to go back
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: to Dick Youngscap and say, We've got four great holes,
• 52:01
  Speaker 2: but you don't own them. And Dick said, what? How
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: could you not find 18 holes on a thousand acres
• 52:07
  Speaker 2: of amazing sand hills? And I said, well, that's just
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: kind of the way it works. So Dick had to
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: figure out a land swap. It all worked, but the
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: point was, don't do that again. We don't want any
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: more of those.
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: Fortunately, the land in question was owned by Jim Simon,
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: with whom Dick Young's cap had already come to an
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: agreement about the overall purchase of the land. So it
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: wasn't like it was a rancher or a long-tenured neighbor
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: whose land was being taken over.
• 52:36
  Speaker 2: And that's one of the things that we wanted to
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: do in the book and how we paced it and
• 52:40
  Speaker 2: how we designed it was, We have the narrative flow
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: of the story, chapter by chapter, but then there are
• 52:45
  Speaker 2: these interludes where we do the whole-by-whole conversations, and it's
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: just direct quotes from Bill, Ben, Dick, and Dave Axeland,
• 52:52
  Speaker 2: and it's a portal, a tunnel straight into their brains
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: and their memories about why they made the routing decisions
• 52:57
  Speaker 2: that they made on a whole-by-whole basis. So as a
• 53:00
  Speaker 2: leave behind, as a historical record for the true architecture enthusiast,
• 53:05
  Speaker 2: it's there for you.
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: It's tremendous. There's so much detail in those little hole-by-hole
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: portraits via oral history. You've described the logic of how
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: the eventual sequencing of the holes came together, but I
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: want to drill down on how unique the method was here.
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: The usual method then, and also today really, would be
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: for an architect to look at a topographical map in
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: his or her office, and basically sketch out the routing there,
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: and then go to the site to confirm. But a
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: lot of routing work for most golf architects is done
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: off-site with the use of aerial photographs and topographical maps.
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: Bill Corr and Ben Crenshaw, you know, this was not
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: They found the topographical map that they were given basically useless.
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: They had a topo. Absolutely.
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: They did, but they didn't like it, right?
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: It was absolutely useless because imagine, okay, what are sand hills?
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: They're small sand dunes. Do they have topographical relief? And
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: would they be enough to be marked on a map?
• 54:15
  Speaker 2: The answer is yes. But there's literally thousands of them.
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: There's thousands of them. So a topo map is absolutely
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: useless because you could look at the map and think, oh,
• 54:24
  Speaker 2: that looks pretty good. but when you get out there,
• 54:26
  Speaker 2: it doesn't work. One of my favorite stories that they
• 54:28
  Speaker 2: told is how they had this crew of interesting characters.
• 54:30
  Speaker 2: And there was one who, uh, Bill Corr would say,
• 54:33
  Speaker 2: all right, this looks like a good tee shot. We
• 54:35
  Speaker 2: really liked the look of this little hole. Why don't
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: you go out there 280 yards and we'll see how
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: it looks. So he would walk it off 280 yards
• 54:41
  Speaker 2: and Bill would say, well, Where'd you go? So you'd
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: chase them down and you'd go down and you'd be
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: in this huge giant dune hole, which would never work
• 54:50
  Speaker 2: for golf. And if you looked at it on a map,
• 54:52
  Speaker 2: or even if you looked standing there on the tee,
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: you'd think this is perfect. But until you physically get
• 54:57
  Speaker 2: out there and you understand the reality of the way
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: that that particular sequence of dunes works and how it
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: works for golf, not possible. And so that's how they
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: got to 137 or so different possible routing choices within
• 55:11
  Speaker 2: this landscape. And the question was not, how do you
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: pick 18 good holes? Because there's way more than 18
• 55:16
  Speaker 2: good holes. I mean, there's hundreds of good holes that
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: you or I or anybody else could design. But I
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: think the true work, the true genius and the true
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: insight of what was accomplished, it was how you take
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: 18 holes that work together in sequence. How there's rhythm,
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: how there's flow, how there's movement, how there's variety, how
• 55:35
  Speaker 2: something in a small choice that you're doing right here
• 55:38
  Speaker 2: works with something that you saw back there. And, you know,
• 55:42
  Speaker 2: Bill Corr is one of golf's great guys and extremely humble.
• 55:47
  Speaker 2: And he always has that little smile. And he said,
• 55:50
  Speaker 2: during our conversations, he said, you know, a lot of
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: people said, oh, anybody could do that. Right. Sure. You
• 55:55
  Speaker 2: go try it. Let's see how it worked out.
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: Well, it is interesting that, you know, quite a few
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: golf courses since Sandhills have been built on on somewhat
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: similar land and remote locales, maybe not as good land.
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: And a lot of those golf courses have been really good,
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: but are any of them as good as Sandhills? I
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: would say probably not. And so that's a testament to
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: the quality of the routing they came up with. But
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: walking as a method of finding a routing, it's pretty unique.
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: Not many people would do that. And part of the
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: reason is that it's inefficient.
• 56:32
  Speaker 2: You had to do it.
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but in this case, you had to do it.
• 56:34
  Speaker 2: There was no other option.
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: Took a long time.
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: It took a long time and it took years. And
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: back to an earlier part of the conversation, if it
• 56:41
  Speaker 2: hadn't been the years of Dick trying to figure out
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: the financing and the funding and the structure of the
• 56:46
  Speaker 2: whole thing, Bill Corr wouldn't have had the space to
• 56:49
  Speaker 2: go and wander and work and develop it. And in
• 56:52
  Speaker 2: a lot of ways, the book was the same. I mean,
• 56:54
  Speaker 2: it took the better part of five years, about the
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: same period of time to do the book because we
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: were trying to figure out how we wanted it to
• 57:01
  Speaker 2: be the story and the style of the place. And
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: that's why having Bill Corr's logbook with 38 individual entries
• 57:08
  Speaker 2: of all of his trips to the Sandhills, why that
• 57:11
  Speaker 2: was in a way the perfect structure for the story
• 57:13
  Speaker 2: because it wasn't chapter one, two, three, four, five, or
• 57:16
  Speaker 2: it wasn't chronological or it wasn't thematic. It was, this
• 57:20
  Speaker 2: is the story of Bill Corr there. Let's use that
• 57:23
  Speaker 2: as the structure by which we tell the larger story. Yeah.
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: You've referred to the constellation map a couple of times. Uh,
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: this is a famous part of the Sandhills story, uh, where, uh, this,
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: this map that, that Bill Corr used represents many, many
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: different holes that could have worked at, at Sandhills. Uh, and,
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: and eventually the 18 that were chosen were within those,
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: but there are so many others that, that could have been. Uh,
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: and so there's a very kind of kill your darlings, uh,
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: element to this, to this process where they had to
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: abandon holes that would have been great, but, um, but
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: they didn't work in the, in the final sequence of
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: the routing. How did the constellation map come to be? What's,
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: what's the story there?
• 58:07
  Speaker 2: Well, because Bill was there and Ben wasn't, he needed
• 58:10
  Speaker 2: some way when Ben came to explain, oh, there's a
• 58:13
  Speaker 2: hole here because again, you can't just take a picture.
• 58:15
  Speaker 2: All the pictures look the same. It's just dune land.
• 58:18
  Speaker 2: And so they took a piece of corn crenshaw letterhead
• 58:21
  Speaker 2: and folded it up in, uh, in quadrants and stuck
• 58:25
  Speaker 2: it in his pocket with a pencil. And there's just
• 58:27
  Speaker 2: a sketch here and a star here or a circle
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: here or some sort of thing that really only made
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: sense to Bill. And he never had any expectations that
• 58:36
  Speaker 2: this would be formal or celebrated. It was just, in
• 58:39
  Speaker 2: its own way, practical. And as Dick has said, that
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: to his knowledge is the only existing drawing in any
• 58:47
  Speaker 2: way of what the plan for the Sandhills was going
• 58:49
  Speaker 2: to be, was this one Sheet of letterhead, which is
• 58:52
  Speaker 2: now framed and on display in the clubhouse with a
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: line here or line there or check or a circle
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: or a star or whatever made sense to Bill. He
• 59:01
  Speaker 2: honestly thought nobody would ever see it.
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: Another innovation of the Sandhills construction project was how the
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: bunkers were built. And a lot of credit for this
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: goes to Dave Axland, who is one of Koren Crenshaw's associates,
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: has been there from the beginning, now has his own
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: architecture firm that he works with in Whitman, Axland, and Cutton.
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: But Dave Axland... during this project developed a new method
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: basically of, uh, of building bunkers that has been widely
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: imitated since. Uh, so tell me about that.
• 59:37
  Speaker 2: Well, this would be like, uh, you know, somebody who
• 59:40
  Speaker 2: watched a YouTube channel trying to explain how a heart
• 59:42
  Speaker 2: surgeon does heart surgery. So I'm not going to get
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: it right, but, but Dave grew up in the Prairie
• 59:47
  Speaker 2: and he had a great respect for this amazing landscape.
• 59:50
  Speaker 2: And so he told this story about how being on the,
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: the now eighth hole, that was where he first put
• 59:55
  Speaker 2: the bit of, um, his little excavator into the ground
• 59:58
  Speaker 2: and he was terrified to do it because he didn't
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 2: want to tear open the prairie. And one of the
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 2: things they learned is that if, if you took the
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: land away and you tried to make some sort of
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 2: perfect composition, the wind would not allow you to do it.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 2: So the best thing to do when you were creating
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 2: a bunker is to take chunks out of the turf,
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: do what you needed to do, and then put the
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 2: chunks back in and that in their own way, they
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 2: would grow back in a random asymmetrical method. which created
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 2: its own kind of distinctive beauty you could never shape
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: in detail on its own. So it was working with
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 2: what you were given and dealing with the reality of
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 2: what was before you rather than trying to impose some
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 2: manufactured style on anything. And again, it was practical and
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 2: it ended up being more beautiful. And now people have
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 2: seen that, well, if we do that elsewhere, might have
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 2: great results as well. Yeah.
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: And this is, architects refer to this as chunking, right?
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: This process is chunking. It's very interesting. I think that
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: when it's done properly, it creates a really attractive aesthetic
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: because you're using material from on-site. You're not shaping something
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: as a sculptor would shape something. You're actually using the
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: terrain itself to create the bunkers and that's why they
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: look naturalized. That's why I think when you try to
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: do this on a site that doesn't lend itself to it,
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: that the effect isn't quite the same. But at Sandhills,
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: it just seems like the bunkers kind of have always
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: existed there.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 2: It appears like they just revealed the golf course that
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 2: was hiding underneath. And that's the magic of it. And
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 2: I think, you know, the same can be true. And
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 2: we talked a little bit about this with Cypress Point
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 2: and McKenzie in a previous conversation is that, you know,
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 2: Cypress Point was in a way the opposite of this
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 2: because McKenzie admitted that everything was manufactured, artificially constructed, but
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: the skill was in making it appear as though it
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 2: was not. Uh, whereas at Sandhills, it was basically, we
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 2: have to make it look as though it was there
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 2: because if not, nature's going to find a way and,
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 2: and change it anyway.
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: There's been a lot of discussion over the years about
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: how much earth was moved, uh, at Sandhills, maybe some exaggerations, uh,
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: on that count. What did your, uh, research reveal about,
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: you know, the scale of the earth moving that Coren
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: Crenshaw did on the site?
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 2: Sure. So, uh, Number one, I think the misconception, well,
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 2: there's the practical reality is they didn't keep track. They
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 2: were too busy trying to get it not blown away
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 2: to keep count. So they have no idea what the
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 2: number was. And once a number gets thrown out there,
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 2: it kind of sticks. I think in a way they
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: actually shaped or moved more dirt than you would think
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 2: because they had to make areas that weren't playable for golf,
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 2: playable for golf. So in a way they did more
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 2: than you think. But on the other hand, they didn't
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 2: actually pick up and move dirt in too many places.
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 2: So they weren't bringing it in from anywhere. They were
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 2: just kind of massaging it around. And that's where the
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 2: number gets, I think, wacky, is that when you're bringing
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 2: in huge amounts of soil, that's easy to measure. They
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 2: weren't bringing in, but they were places... The fourth hole
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 2: is one that's talked about because it is a reasonably
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 2: built up shape, but also on 15 and on 16,
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 2: they had to bring sand from one place to another,
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 2: but it was 40 or 50 yards away. So it
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 2: wasn't like they were doing a lot. And to me,
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 2: one of the great distinctive insights from our conversations, and
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 2: this actually came more from Ben Crenshaw than it did
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 2: from Bill, is that when it came to the greens,
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 2: the greens that are the most severe, you think, well,
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 2: they built those.
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: Like two and yeah.
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, we could go through the list, but yeah,
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 2: two is a perfect example. The greens that are the
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 2: most severe are actually the ones that are the most
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 2: natural because they held up to the wind in the
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 2: first place. So all you had to do was soften
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 2: them out a little bit, plant some grass and they worked.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 2: The greens that are the most subtle are actually the
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 2: ones that took the most amount of work because when
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 2: it's slightly subtle, if the wind blows and it changes
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 2: the shape of the sand between the moment that you
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 2: finish shaping or grading and you start planting and seeding,
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 2: if it goes just a little bit, now you, you
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 2: lose an angle or you lose a percentage of tilt.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 2: And what looked really good for golf no longer is
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 2: good for golf. The 11th green is an example of this,
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 2: the first as well. And so that kind of played
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 2: with my mind. I would have thought, no, no, the
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 2: ones that have the most shape, those were the ones
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 2: that were shaped. No, the ones that are the, The smoothest,
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 2: those are the ones that took the most effort to
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 2: make them playable for golf.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: I think the shaping attitude at Sandhills is maybe best
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: summed up by a verb that Ben Crenshaw likes to
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: use over and over, and I love this word for
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: its purpose, and that is introduce. He always says, and
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: he says this many times in your book, we introduced
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: a bunker.
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: Or we introduced a contour on the fifth grain. We
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: introduced that little spot. He says we introduced that. They
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: built it. Yes, they manufactured it. There are many other
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: words that you could use, but he uses introduce. And
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: I love that because there's a gentleness to it. There's
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: a gradualness to introducing something as opposed to building it. And, uh,
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: and yeah, that's, there is shaping at Sandhills. Like there's
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: no doubt. It's not as though the golf course were
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: just plopped down and that's all they needed to do.
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: They did some fairway grading, right? They did. So they
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: took off, you know, they, they would, they would, they
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: would introduce something or other in the, in the fairways. They,
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: if a contour was too severe, too high for players
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: to see the green properly, sometimes they would lower it
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: a little bit, but it was all very gentle and gradual.
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: I guess partly because, and this is a big takeaway
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: from this conversation in your book for me, because if
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: they did anything that was too abrupt, then it would
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: blow away.
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 2: It wouldn't work. That's right. Nature would solve the problem
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 2: for them or create a new one, as the case
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 2: might be. Your insight, not surprisingly, is a great one
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 2: about the word introduce because what it implies is I
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 2: vouch for this. So let me introduce you to my friend.
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 2: It's not just, let's take two people who've never met
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 2: and connect them. It's no, no, I'm, I'm, I'm vouching
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 2: for this person. I think that you'll enjoy spending time
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 2: with him or with her. Um, I I'm in a way, um, um,
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 2: claiming in some way, um, whether it's credit or responsibility
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 2: or anything else, but it means we've thought about it
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 2: and we think it's valuable and worth keeping. And so
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 2: back to your insight from a while ago about Ben's
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 2: own thoughtfulness, I think, introduces a beautiful reflection of that.
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 2: I love that insight.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: He's got some great phrases. There are some other ones
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: that I picked up.
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 2: On the book. Including the title. Yeah, right.
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. Lonely Beauty is a Ben Crenshaw-ism, and it's
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: just wonderful.
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think it's worth mentioning this because this
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 2: was part of the conversations that we had. And he
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 2: said this phrase, and I wrote it down immediately because
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 2: I said that's That's gold, Jerry. That's gold. He said,
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 2: there's a feeling to the place, a lonely beauty. We
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 2: can brag about the land because we didn't build it.
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 2: And so for me, that phrase, lonely beauty, says so
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 2: much about everything. Part of the appeal of the Sandhills
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 2: is its loneliness. It is its beauty. I think the
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 2: combination of the two is an evocative and a deep
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 2: and meaningful concept. I think Dick Young's gap was remarkably
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 2: lonely while he was going through the process of creating it.
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 2: And he did it because he believed in the beauty
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 2: of the place. And I think that's what people feel
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 2: when they're there is that there's this thing they can't
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 2: quite put their finger on or describe, but they feel it.
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 2: And it's sad and it's wonderful and it's lonely and
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 2: it's beautiful.
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: So Sandhills opens in June 2020. 1995 it's reception is
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: very positive.
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: Almost immediately. And I remember this vaguely myself at showing
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: up in golf digest and, and, you know, within a
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: few years being on the top 100 lists, it was,
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: it was praised widely and very quickly given that it
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: was a new kind of golf course for modern architecture.
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: One would assume or suspect that some people wouldn't like
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: it or that its reception might have been more divided.
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: But that doesn't seem to have been the case. Maybe
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: there were people who didn't love it or who preferred
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: more humor. you know, overtly luxurious courses or whatever, but,
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: but those voices weren't particularly loud ones. And so do
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: you have any theories as to, as to why Sandhills
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: was so immediately loved?
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 2: I think when there's a need that is embedded into
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 2: the human condition, just because that need is not being
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 2: met doesn't mean it goes away. It might be forgotten about.
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 2: It might be hidden for a while. But when somebody
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 2: comes along and taps into that need, we immediately respond
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 2: and generally do so in a positive way because we're
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 2: being fed and nurtured in ways that we hadn't been.
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 2: And I think golfers in 1995 were thirsty for a
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 2: kind of experience that they used to have. because that's
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 2: the way golf came about. In Ben Crenshaw's phrase, here's
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 2: a piece of land that might be interesting for golf.
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 2: Let's go hang out on it with people we like.
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 2: The end. That's it. And that part of the game
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 2: wasn't being fed. And so to bring about a place
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 2: that fed that deep-seated need in all golfers to explore,
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 2: to be alone, to have this vast landscape that you
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 2: can't quite comprehend, I think in some ways The loneliness
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 2: of the place is a reminder that we're not alone.
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 2: And so the joy of being out there is not
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 2: just the playing of the golf course or the enjoying
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 2: of the community or getting to know people. It's going
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 2: out to Ben's porch at midnight and sitting under the
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 2: stars and thinking of all the thoughts that invade your
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 2: mind when you are in a place like that. I
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 2: think it was so well received because it tapped into
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 2: something we all needed and wanted but had been missing
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 2: for a very long time.
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: Didn't know that we wanted... But when it arrives, it's, oh, yes,
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: this feels right. And, you know, to Ron Witten's credit,
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: Ron Witten, the longtime architecture editor of Golf Digest and
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: somebody who had seen this project emerge from the ground up. He,
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: you know, he was in contact with Dick Young's cap
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: and had been on the site before the golf course
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: was built. He immediately recognized that this was the case.
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: This was something very special. And his voice was very
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: influential in and I think helped people accept that they
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: wanted this, right? And gave people permission to give in
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: to the allure of this place.
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 2: Absolutely right. And there's a chapter in the book about
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 2: this called Snakebit, where he talked about and profiled the
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 2: snakebit nature of who Bill Kord and Ben Crenshaw were
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 2: as a partnership at the time. And he talked about
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 2: walking around the Sandhills with them and exploring the possibilities
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 2: of the land and And he, especially among others, was
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 2: responsible for giving it a voice and shining a light
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 2: on what it could be. So he deserved credit in
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 2: all those ways.
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: I loved your note that Ron Witten is a wonderful
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: writer and very pithy and comes up with all sorts
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: of memorable phrases. So I very much enjoy his writing.
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: But at the end of one of his articles, early
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: articles about Sandhills, he says as a kind of cap,
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: to Bill Korn and Ben Crenshaw's snake bit early career.
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: He says, there are no snakes in the Sandhills. I
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: loved your note. Well, actually, there are snakes in the Sandhills.
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: There are a few snakes, but they aren't seen very often.
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: And I think that there's a metaphorical richness there because, yes,
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: this was a great opportunity. Yes, this was Bill Korn
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: and Ben Crenshaw kind of breaking out of their snake
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: bit early career. But this project was not free of hazards.
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: This could have gone wrong. This, this wasn't, it wasn't
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: the case that as soon as they received this land,
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: they were necessarily going to build one of the world's
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: greatest courses. They, a lot had to go right for
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: this to turn out the way.
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 2: And plenty of, and plenty of things did go wrong.
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 2: And we try and cover that book, the week from
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 2: hell among others. But what I loved was this particular moment.
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 2: And there's a little sidebar about it in the book where,
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 2: I offhandedly had said to Bill Core in our conversations, well,
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 2: this is supposed to be fun, isn't it? And he
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 2: looked at me like I ran over his dog or
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 2: something like that. And he goes, fun? This wasn't fun.
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 2: I said, come again? He said, we knew we had
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 2: been given an opportunity with this piece of land where
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 2: if we, and he said, we don't like to talk
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 2: about it in these terms, but if we didn't create
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 2: one of the world's truly great golf courses, if we
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 2: just built a really good golf course, failure. And so
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 2: we carried that with us every day. And that pressure,
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 2: the burden of potential, that was with us constantly. And
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 2: I think anybody who's involved with a great creative endeavor
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 2: feels that. And maybe that's Christopher the Mill. Maybe that
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 2: pressure is what creates the focus and the potential. But
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 2: he said, yeah, no, I enjoy it now and I
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 2: love sharing it. But at the time, the creation process
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 2: was not necessarily the most enjoyable because we knew what
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 2: we'd been given and that we had to deliver.
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: There's a moment in your book, which I'll save for
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: readers of the book, where Dick Young's cap basically gives up.
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: And that's a great scene. And there's a lot of
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: detail to it that I love. And so people should
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: look forward to that.
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 2: It's what makes the story really cinematic in a lot
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 2: of ways. One of the nice pieces of feedback that
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 2: I've gotten from people who've read the book is they've
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 2: said it reads like a screenplay. And you know, who's
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 2: going to play what characters in the movie?
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: That's the third act dip, right?
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: It's the, it's the, that moment in every, you know,
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: mainstream movie in the romantic comedy, it's where the couple
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: like breaks up and you don't think that they can
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: possibly get back together again. There's, there's a third act
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: dip there with, uh, with Dick Young's cap and his,
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: his kind of dark night at the soul. Um, so, uh,
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: I'll end with this. There's a whole other podcast episode
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: to do on the legacy, the influence of Sandhills. We
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: don't have time to give justice to that right now,
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: so that's maybe another topic for another day. But I
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: wonder if, after having told this story and done all
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: the research, I wonder if there are a certain number
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: of lessons from the Sandhills project that you hope will
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: golf course developers and golf course architects of the future
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: hold dear? In other words, what are the things, maybe
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: the things that people haven't generally taken away from Sandhills
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: that you think or that you wish for the game
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: that people would learn from Sandhills?
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 2: We're going through a moment of great prosperity in the game.
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 2: Possibly the greatest since maybe ever, but certainly this 1920s
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 2: period that we talk about in terms of experimentation and ideas,
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 2: money rushing into the game, all for a variety of
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 2: different reasons. But Sandhills is different also in its way
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 2: in that if you have the monopoly on humble, nobody
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 2: can out-humble you. If you're seeking for the best, the greatest,
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 2: the newest, that's a spiral that you can never catch.
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 2: There's always something newer and more expensive. But if you
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 2: just understand that taking a piece of land and making
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 2: it into a golf course and leaving behind something better
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 2: than if you'd never gone there in the first place
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 2: and doing so within limited financial constraints, doing so with
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 2: respect for your surrounding community, doing so because people will
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 2: travel to see great golf and be with one another,
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 2: doing so because. If you go to the thinnest place
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 2: you've ever been where you're not quite sure if you're
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 2: up there or down here, it will make you feel
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 2: connected to golf and to the world in a way
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 2: that you didn't know was possible. But if you just
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 2: take all these things together and you are a contributor
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 2: to people's lives, to the community, to the land, if
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 2: you're a steward in a way, that's something that can
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 2: never go out of fashion and never go out of style.
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: David, thank you for coming on the podcast. Always a
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: delight to talk to you. People should make sure to
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: check out your book, Lonely Beauty, of course. And I
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: hope we get a chance to talk like this again soon.
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 2: That's great. No, it's available. People can go buy it.
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 2: And there's a website just for it, lonelybeauty.com. We'll take
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 2: you right to it. And you should be able to
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 2: purchase it yourself. It's wonderful. Thank you so much.
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: This episode of Designing Golf was produced by Will Balsam.
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Will. If you've been enjoying the Designing Golf podcast,
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: then I would highly recommend, as an experience, just for yourself,
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: rating and reviewing our little podcast. Tell us what you
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: think about what we've been doing. We always like to
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: hear feedback. Thank you for listening, and we'll be back
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: again soon with another episode.