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The Future of Golf Course Restoration · Designing Golf

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: In the United States, many of the greatest old golf
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: courses have already undergone what they've called restorations. That is,
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: they've worked with architects to bring back elements of their
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: original designs. In fact, many of these courses have gone
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: through this process multiple times over the past thirty years,
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: which begs the question, when can you actually consider a
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: golf course restored? Can you?
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: Ever?
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  Speaker 1: In any case, the restoration movement, which dates back to
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties, has seemingly reached a point of maturity,
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: and now I think we have to ask where does
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: it go next. In this episode, I'll explore a few
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: projects that I think represent interesting frontiers of the golf
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: course restoration and renovation industry. First, I'll sit down with
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Jeff Stein to talk about his and Brian Ross's creative,
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: historically inspired redesign the Great Dunes course at Jekyl Island.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: Then I'll speak with Clyde Johnson about his efforts to
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: bring back vintage elements of British links courses. I'm Garrett Morrison,
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: and this is Designing Golf. Jeff Stein, Welcome to the podcast.
• 1:21
  Speaker 3: Thanks a lot, gar I'm really glad to be talking
• 1:24
  Speaker 3: with you.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: So today we're talking about the future of golf course restoration,
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: and I wanted to talk to you specifically, Jeff, about
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: a project that you recently completed with your partner Brian
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: Ross at Jekyl Island Golf Club off the coast of Georgia.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure i'd call this project a restoration in
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: the strict sense of the word, but it certainly had
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: a historical motive and there are a number of intriguing
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: things about the project that might indicate where golf course
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: restoration quote unquote might go in the coming years. So
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: just to set the scene, where is Jeckyll Island and
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: what's the history of golf there?
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  Speaker 3: Okay, So Jacky Island is on the southeastern coast of Georgia.
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  Speaker 3: It's kind of midway between Jacksonville, Florida and Savannah, Georgia.
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  Speaker 3: So from the airport in Jacksonville, it's an hour drive
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  Speaker 3: right up ninety five, you make a right turn at
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  Speaker 3: Brunswick and you head, you know, right through the marsh
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  Speaker 3: and onto jeckl Island.
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  Speaker 1: So we're talking about the sea islands here, basically the
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  Speaker 1: Georgia Sea islands.
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  Speaker 3: Well they call them the Golden Isles.
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  Speaker 1: The Golden Isles, that's right, yeah, yeah, yeah.
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  Speaker 3: And then from Savannah. You know, it's an hour and
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  Speaker 3: a half south from Savannah. You know, Atlanta is probably
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: four hours away from if you want to come from
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  Speaker 3: that direction. And the history of golf there is a
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: long history. They you know, really done laid a golf
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  Speaker 3: course out there. Originally through I think it was the
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: Riverside course. Donald Ross lay out a pretty would be
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: a failed routing of a golf course through there. It
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: just was too wet. He wasn't able to drain it
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  Speaker 3: very well. You know, the members went through several iterations
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: kind of playing golf from the river through the Savannah. Later,
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: Carl Keffer, the Canadian Open and their winter time pro
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  Speaker 3: laid out the original holes in the sand dunes, so
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: where you would travel from the Savannah out to the
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: sand dunes and back again. And then of course Walter
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  Speaker 3: Travis came in and fully laid out a spectacular ocean
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  Speaker 3: side links called the Great Dunes.
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  Speaker 1: So the Great Dunes Course a Walter Travis design. We'll
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  Speaker 1: talk more about Walter Travis in a moment. Originally eighteen holes,
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  Speaker 1: as I understand it, How did this course evolve over time?
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  Speaker 1: What happened to it?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, Travis came and laid out the course in
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  Speaker 3: twenty six. Of course opened end of twenty seven, but
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  Speaker 3: Travis never lived to see the course actually finished. But
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  Speaker 3: the holes he laid out were you know, hard against
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  Speaker 3: the ocean, I mean, nothing in between you the beach
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  Speaker 3: and the golf and it was just one of these
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  Speaker 3: spectacular link settings that's pretty rare to find in the
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: United States. And you know, Travis adapted the routing of
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: Keffer on the front nine and he re routed stuff,
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  Speaker 3: but definitely used some of his green sites and the
• 4:37
  Speaker 3: back nine which we lost due to basically time erosion storms.
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  Speaker 3: And then of course when the original owners, you know,
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  Speaker 3: this group of very wealthy individuals who used to own
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  Speaker 3: Jacko Island, they kind of gave up the club in
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  Speaker 3: the island in the you know, post depression, and the
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: state took it over. And that's that is when we
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  Speaker 3: really lost the back nine of the Great Dunes golf course,
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  Speaker 3: and they decided to do a lot more economic development.
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  Speaker 3: They put a beach road in later on at convention Center,
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  Speaker 3: several hotels and and so on.
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  Speaker 1: So basically you can't get the original back nine back
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  Speaker 1: that has now been developed.
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  Speaker 3: That ship has sailed.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, you alluded to the ownership situation on the island.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: It's a pretty unique situation, so tell me about that.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, oh, you mean currently or before?
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, currently, Well, as I understand it, this the was
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  Speaker 1: the Jekyl Island Authority. It's a state body, right, It's
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  Speaker 1: a government body that owns it, but it's relatively independent
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  Speaker 1: from the government. So yeah, the current situation, which I
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: think dates back a couple of decades, right.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I don't know when the authority was,
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: you know, given their license from the State of Georgia
• 6:01
  Speaker 3: to operate, but the state park was created sometime in
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: the in the forties or fifties around that time, and
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  Speaker 3: the Jeklan Authority has, you know, complete control over all
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  Speaker 3: the you know, the lease agreements on the island for
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: whether that be if you're a restaurant, a hotel. You
• 6:19
  Speaker 3: know that they actually operate the golf course, a conservation department, landscaping,
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  Speaker 3: et cetera. And they just they oversee everything that goes
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  Speaker 3: on in the state park. But there are actually a
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: for profit entity but given the right by the State
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: of Georgia. So this project really came to be from
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  Speaker 3: a really massive commitment. I think I read the other
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  Speaker 3: day it was like two hundred and eighty million dollar
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  Speaker 3: renovation plan over several decades, and the and the golf
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  Speaker 3: piece was really the last part of that puzzle in
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: this whole economic redevelopment of the island.
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  Speaker 1: So I guess the reason they can do a project
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  Speaker 1: this ambitious is that they are an entrepreneurial body. Essentially,
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  Speaker 1: They're they're not they they need to make a They
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: need to make a profit, absolutely.
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: Need to make a profit. And and I think that
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: they they kind of they all pool the resources and
• 7:14
  Speaker 3: pull all the dollart tourist dollars from you know, there's
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: a ten dollars toll when you come on the island.
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  Speaker 3: So you know, they unlike you know, a standalone golf course.
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  Speaker 3: They do have maybe some other profit centers from tourism.
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  Speaker 3: But of course we're hoping that the golf is going
• 7:28
  Speaker 3: to start to drive a lot of those tourists, uh,
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: that tourist activity and and we start filling the t
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  Speaker 3: sheets at the Great Dunes.
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  Speaker 1: It's really cool. It's a it's a fun model of
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  Speaker 1: ownership that kind of combines the UH the entrepreneurial spirit
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  Speaker 1: of an ambitious golf course with the support of of
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  Speaker 1: government and and the and the and the you know,
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  Speaker 1: I guess the mission to bring people out and give
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: them access to a great golf experience.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, and and I think that, you know, oftentimes municipal
• 8:03
  Speaker 3: golf isn't really that profitable or it's hard to be profitable.
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: So we're and I also want to mention there's a
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: you know, we have two other golf courses at the
• 8:13
  Speaker 3: Jackal Island Golf Club. There's Pine Lakes which is just
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: recently renovated, an Indian Mound which is more your budget
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: friendly option right now, shorter golf course built by Joe Lee.
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  Speaker 3: And we're going to see what happens with that third
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  Speaker 3: golf course, whether that gets redeveloped, maybe into a short
• 8:30
  Speaker 3: course or something along those lines. We're just going to
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: see how this whole plan comes together.
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  Speaker 1: So just some history of the island itself. My understanding
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  Speaker 1: is that pre Depression, Jackal Island was sort of a
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  Speaker 1: happening place, right This was a place that that wealthy
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  Speaker 1: people vacationed, and then it it just fell on hard
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  Speaker 1: times during the depression and the war and that's when
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: the state stepped in and took it over. Is that
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  Speaker 1: is that basically an accurate characterization?
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  Speaker 3: That's that's fairly fairly accurate. I think there's a funny
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  Speaker 3: anecdote that they, you know, these owners kind of walked
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  Speaker 3: away with a pretty large tax bill and just said, okay,
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  Speaker 3: you guys deal with it.
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  Speaker 1: You take care of our debts here. Yeah, exactly, so.
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  Speaker 3: They say, here's the land, we don't want to deal
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  Speaker 3: with this anymore. And you know, there's a there's another
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  Speaker 3: island just down the coast. I think it's Cumberland Island
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  Speaker 3: maybe is owned by the Carnegie family, and that they
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  Speaker 3: have a home like in a national wilderness or something.
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  Speaker 3: So like this, this whole area, you know, in the
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  Speaker 3: teens and twenties, was was very happening. You know, you
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  Speaker 3: had a lot of commerce and and just yeah, vacationing
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  Speaker 3: for like, yeah, the wealthy and influential folks. I mean,
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  Speaker 3: I think they made the first transatlantic phone call from
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  Speaker 3: Jackyal Island. They they formed the idea of the Federal
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  Speaker 3: Reserve on Jecko Island.
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  Speaker 4: This wasn't you know, your average getaway wow, okay, yeah,
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  Speaker 4: I mean the stories of these different islands off the
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  Speaker 4: southeastern coast are all different.
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  Speaker 1: That's that's the interesting thing about them. There's there's not
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  Speaker 1: really a standard narrative of the history of all these islands.
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  Speaker 1: People are maybe familiar with hilton Head Island, right, hilton
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  Speaker 1: Head Island is currently a much more developed and you know,
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  Speaker 1: I would say financially stable and thriving place than Jekyl
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  Speaker 1: Island has been until recently. And so you have a
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  Speaker 1: different situation at Jekyl, right.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, and even more even more close to
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  Speaker 3: home at Jeckel. You have Saint Simon's Island where you
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  Speaker 3: have this the you know this the Sea Island Resort,
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  Speaker 3: Open Forest Frederica. You know, there's there's dozens of golf
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  Speaker 3: courses right there, and that's just very much more developed,
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  Speaker 3: uh you know land Jecko Island is a state park.
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  Speaker 3: You know, we have we're playing golf in a state park.
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  Speaker 3: And and that's really evident and part of the part
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  Speaker 3: of what we like about visiting there having worked there,
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  Speaker 3: is just the tranquility of it. The wildlife. There's deer
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  Speaker 3: all over the place, osprey's flying over the golf course,
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  Speaker 3: all types of fish, and you know, gators and whatnot.
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  Speaker 3: So you really it's really a getaway and I think
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  Speaker 3: that's that should be the attraction and the focus of
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  Speaker 3: Jeckyll is the fact that it's not developed. You know,
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  Speaker 3: we do have a convention center and that's you know,
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  Speaker 3: like I said, that ship has sailed, but I think
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  Speaker 3: that we've done a lot to conserve the space that
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: we have. And that was part of the thrust of
• 11:37
  Speaker 3: the Great Dunes project is we got the nine holes
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  Speaker 3: from the Dick Wilson course, the only ender golf course
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  Speaker 3: because we gave away the other nine holes for wetland conservation.
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  Speaker 3: So the whole thing is wrapped up in you know,
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: a nice little package.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, so that's good context. Now you enter the picture
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  Speaker 1: with Brian Ross. How did you become involved in the
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: in this Jackyll Island golf course project.
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  Speaker 3: It was a public RFP. Brian brought the RFP to
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: me one day.
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  Speaker 2: Uh.
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  Speaker 3: I we were working together in Pennsylvania. I was doing
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: a design and build a type project where I really
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: was working as like architect and contractor. We had built
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: We'd built a very small crew and had shapers working
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: for us, and Brian was one of those shapers and
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: he said, Hey, what about this project. And I said, listen,
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: if you if you can put this RFP together, because
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: they're they're pretty onerous, you know, it's.
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: Like, yeah, yeah, a government RFP. It's not you know,
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: it's not just.
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  Speaker 3: A presentation patch together. I don't know if it was
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: thirty forty pages or something. And I said, I'll co
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: sign it. You mail it, I'll co sign it. And uh,
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: that's how we got involved. You know, Brian had been
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: there before and knew the potential of it. I really
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: had no conception of it. He didn't even show me
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: any pictures. He just I trust Brian's you know, I
• 13:04
  Speaker 3: his his knowledge of the business. And the first day
• 13:08
  Speaker 3: that we got there, I have to say I was
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: a little bit like overwhelmed with the amount of work
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: that I saw was necessary. And I was like, oh man,
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: what did you get us into? How are we going
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: to do this?
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: What exactly did you see on that on that first
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: day on site?
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  Speaker 3: So much overgrowth, an overwhelming amount of vegetation, vines. Not
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: only that, like it's a sensitive you know, conservation district,
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: like you're there are restrictions on removing trees.
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: We we had luckily since we were literally working for
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: the j I A. The you know, the the methods,
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: and like the mitigation was easy to work with if
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: we had to take you know, a large tree branch
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: out that was hanging over a green site. But that
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: happened couple of times where we moved a green back
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: by about forty yards, but we had this huge, you know,
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: oak branch hanging over the green and you know, I
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: kind of wanted to keep it because I thought it
• 14:10
  Speaker 3: kind of reminded me a little bit of like the
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: Harbor Town stuff. But in the in the end, you know,
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: we had to lop lop off a few limbs here
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: and there.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: And you were working for the authority that that would
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: decide whether you could do this, so that it was
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: fairlylined the process.
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: But we we mitigated, we mitigated whatever we cleared, and
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: we honestly we didn't We didn't take out any very
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: large trees. It was just all the underbrush and palmettos
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: and all the thick stuff underneath the understory needed to
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: be just mulched up, chewed out, and and taken away.
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: We buried a bunch of it to bring up clean
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: sand so to kind of like again minimize our you know,
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: our our footprint in terms of hauling stuff off off island,
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: we did as much of that as possible to just
• 14:59
  Speaker 3: keep everything like in the envelope.
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: So how much of the Walter Travis design remained in
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: the ground to restore through light touch methods? Like, to
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: what extent could you get back the Walter Travis design
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: by clearing out some vegetation, widening fairways, pushing out mowing
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: lines on greens In other words, was there much in
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: the ground that that you could work with?
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: I would say there were three green sites that required
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: a relatively light touch, and the rest of it what
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: really had to be adapted for modern play, just kind
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: of making stuff a little bit bigger, like amplifying the
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: green site. Just you know, we're expecting you know, twenty
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: thirty thousand rounds maybe a year, where there were probably
• 15:49
  Speaker 3: playing a few hundred or a few thousand when the
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: course was created. So yeah, we're just trying. Definitely some
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: green sites were were worth preserving and working off of.
• 16:04
  Speaker 3: And then the veget clearing vegetation on the dunes. I
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: mean that that really elevates the architecture as well, because
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: again more overhanging trees you couldn't see certain sight lines,
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: lines of charm, stuff like that. And and of course
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: the routing was intact. I mean, we accept our our
• 16:26
  Speaker 3: ninth t was the first hole of the Great Dunes.
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: So the way that we you know, looped in the
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: Great Duns nine, it happens really in the middle of
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: our round of golf. We play holes one, two, and
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: three on the old Oleander, and then four through twelve
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: is the Great Dunes. And and it's a really happy
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: accident that it works out that way because it allowed
• 16:51
  Speaker 3: it created this seamless transition and an out and in
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: routing as well, that really doesn't require more than you know,
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: fifty to seventy five yards walk between where the golf
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: courses were linked.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: Okay, so you had two different courses. You had the
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: Oleander eighteen designed by Dick Wilson, and you basically borrowed
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: a portion of that course and connected it to the
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: Great Dunes nine to create a new eighteen whole course.
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: So presumably you had very different approaches for these two
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: different sections of the course. You probably had to be
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: way more aggressive on the Oleander portion of the course
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: than you were on the Great Dunes portion of the course.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: Where maybe you were doing some more classic restoration work.
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: So how were your methods different on these different parts
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: of the site.
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: Sure, well, the approach was the same because we're trying
• 17:55
  Speaker 3: to create you know, a classic, a classic you know,
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: appearing Golden age golf course. The method was on the
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: odlander was okay, drop the blade and just smash all
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: this dirt. There's a lot of dirt around those green sites,
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: so you know, either we're just pushing it out as
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: far as we can, trying to tie it out, you know,
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: and just blend it into the kind of restore the landscape.
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: That's like job number one, and then find a green
• 18:23
  Speaker 3: site that that makes sense for the routing and the
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: you know, the timing of you know, where you're gonna
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: you're gonna see these particular greens. And that's what that
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: was like the biggest the biggest challenges maybe just taking
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: away and just trucking off a bunch of dirt and
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: putting it somewhere where you needed it, you know, on
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: the first green, for example, a ton of dirt around
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: the green site pushed it out, but also we also
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: created a kind of push up green there on number
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: one to kind of kind of you know, punch you
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: in the face a little bit. Let you know you're
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: on a Walter Travis golf course. And and it also
• 18:58
  Speaker 3: broke up some of the site line so that you
• 19:01
  Speaker 3: could have a really focused target. And just the way
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: we cleared cleared the trees behind number one, you know,
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: it was just this long gun sight, you know, probably
• 19:13
  Speaker 3: twelve hundred yards long from the first tee or the
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: first fairway all the way to too Green, and we
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: decided to just break that up a little bit so
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: that you could you could just get a really nice
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: target to hit at.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: So this might be a somewhat naive question, but was
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: there ever any thought of restoring Dick Wilson's work on
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: the non Great Dunes nine And if not, why not?
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: I think it was a very fleeting thought if anyone
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: had it. I think the work of Travis was just
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: valued more highly above that of Wilson's. Not to say
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: people really adored the only under golf course.
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, Wilson was a good architect, There's no
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: doubt about that. Maybe this wasn't the best example of
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: his work. Well, but where he did good work, he
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: did really good work.
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, except half his golf course was like perpetually underwater,
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: so like it just was it just never was created
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: in a way that was would be sustainable. Whether that's
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: because the water table has risen, we're getting more rainfall,
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: I don't know exactly, but decision was really made for us.
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: We're gonna, you know, chop off half of the only
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: inter course because we can't even get golf carts out there.
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: And hey, we really like and this came from you
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: know that we had a sense of it during the
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: RFP process that restoration was a priority for Jecko Island,
• 20:44
  Speaker 3: like going back as far as we could go to
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: something that was usable and really like the best iteration
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: of the golf on Jecko Island is from the savannah
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: to the dunes. And we didn't have the choice to
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: go dunes dunes, but you know, if we had a choice,
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: hey let's let's marry these two pieces of land which
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: were really actually very similar, Like the the thirteenth and
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: fourteenth holes on the Oleander pretty much are joined up
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: with this you know sandy plane that that rides in
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: the in the the back of the sand dunes of
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: the primary sand dune. So it was always I think
• 21:22
  Speaker 3: it was always meant to be this way when when
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: they built the Oleander golf course, the front nine was
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: actually a part of the great They combined the two
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: back in the sixties when they were building the Oleander.
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: When they completed both nines, Oleander went to it's you know,
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: its routing. So I find it I find it really
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: interesting that again, like it seems like it was meant
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: to be to join these two nines together.
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: How do you go about restoring a golf course that
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: never existed? Maybe that's maybe that's an issue for philosophers,
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: but I like, yeah, how do you what's your what's
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: your approach there?
• 22:01
  Speaker 3: Right, that's the that's the semantical argument, and say hey,
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: is this a restoration or not? And and so you
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: go about that by really diving deep into the historical photography.
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: You look at the aerials and you see, hey, what
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: can we do what was actually built and how can
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: we maybe place that on what we're doing here on
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: those Oleander holes. And Brian came up with a great idea.
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: Picked he picked a great green site. It's kind of
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: a a T shaped green with a saddle, you know,
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: two high dunes and you know saddle in between. And
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: so the green sits down low in between these in
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: between these mounds, and Brian found a great site on
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: our thirteenth Green to recreate the shapes and strategy of
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: of what we believe to be the fourteenth Pole on
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: the Great Dunes. So that's a you know, the best
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: example of how we went about restoring something that actually
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: used to exist. But you know, kind of it's kind
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: of like the Lido, right, you know, in a certain way.
• 23:10
  Speaker 3: You know, they it definitely didn't ever exist in Wisconsin, right,
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: So I think it's it fits in a similar category
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: with Lido, although we didn't use like the you know,
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: the lighter like they did, and you know the GPS technology.
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: Ours is really handbuilt and using our judgment, intuition and
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: and you know, just trying to find fun features that
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: we think Walter Travis would have built if he had
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: that had those pieces of ground to work with.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: So you were pulling inspiration for lost from lost aspects
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: of the course. So that's that's one possible source that
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: you can use. I assume you also looked at other
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: Walter Travis courses to get ideas from there.
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: Oh, without a doubt. Yeah, we uh, we took our
• 24:04
  Speaker 3: executive our deputy executive director, Noel Jensen. We took him
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: on a field trip to New Jersey. So we brought good, good,
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: good old uh uh you know, buy you boys from Louisiana.
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: We brought him up to New Jersey and we took Yeah,
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: he had a blast, and we took him to Hollywood.
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: We went to North Jersey and we went to Troy.
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: Uh I. I have been you know, an intimate knowledge
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: with Garden City Golf Club, Cape Arundle, and those were
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: like a really good uh subset for us to like
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: pull ideas from and and really look at the greens
• 24:37
  Speaker 3: and see like what did Travis do here? And so
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: going back to an earlier question like what was worth restoring?
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: Was there anything that we could just do like a
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: light touch on And the the ninth green of the
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: Great Dunes, which is our eighth green, it had this
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: this deep swale that ran through the middle of the
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: green on a little bit of a diagonal. And that's
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: something that we all picked up on in our in
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: our field trip, was the way that Travis used these
• 25:06
  Speaker 3: these swales through the middle of his green. He would
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: rotate them different angles and create different playing strategies. And
• 25:13
  Speaker 3: and that was far and away the most like intact
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: feature that we found that was recognizably Travis uh out
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: there in the Great Dunes. So you know, that's a
• 25:24
  Speaker 3: great way to uh you know again like build something
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: that was never there, but you know, to kind of
• 25:29
  Speaker 3: transport yourself and say what would you know, what would
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: Walter do?
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: North Jersey is incredible.
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know, Brian Schneider has done a ton
• 25:40
  Speaker 3: of great work there and and it's hard to tell
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: now like what Brian's done and what Walter Travis has done.
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: So exactly right. Yeah, that's why it's such a relevant
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: comparison because Brian Schneider has gone out there and created
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: greens using his own imagination that seemed like Walter Travis
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: greens but are not actually restored Walter Travis green.
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: I couldn't agree more. We have a we have a
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: ton of respect for Brian's work, his talent, and like
• 26:08
  Speaker 3: clearly like the clubs that he's been working with in
• 26:10
  Speaker 3: the Travis space, there's a huge inspiration for us. His
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: eighteenth Green at North Jersey was was definitely something that
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: we tried to We took a look at that and said, well,
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: that's that's kind of a cool idea. That's you know,
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: it's it's kind of like a mini beer. It's greed
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: we built. We built one on the fourteenth green of
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: our course that has like it's a little bit of
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: a beer its style. It's a little bit of the
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: sixteenth at North Barrick, you know the two plateaus with
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: the swale through the middle, and we incorporated a dune
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: that like kind of feeds into the green to to
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: create this like you know, this two headed you know
• 26:57
  Speaker 3: terminus for the dune and which makes for just an
• 26:59
  Speaker 3: awesome put surface. It's one of my favorites.
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: This is a little bit like dancing about architecture. But
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: what for you are the characteristics of a Walter Travis green.
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: How would you describe his style of green construction? Because it,
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: I mean it is super distinctive.
• 27:20
  Speaker 3: Yes, he often has steep transitions between plateaus. Often there's
• 27:29
  Speaker 3: knuckles or mounds surrounding the edges of the greens, and
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: irregular patterns you could have like these swales that we
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: talked about, and I believe you know it's like you
• 27:41
  Speaker 3: talk I've heard say before, like if you want to
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: build a cool green, like throw some pebbles around and
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: you know, like those where your mounds will be, and
• 27:50
  Speaker 3: then you know figure out where the water is going
• 27:52
  Speaker 3: to go. And it's almost as if he's constantly you know,
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: moving mounds in asymmetrical ways around the green and then
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: throwing a swale in, you know, doing a maiden style
• 28:03
  Speaker 3: green two shoulders and at Troy has an awesome I
• 28:07
  Speaker 3: think it's the sixteenth green at Troy there's like two
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: shoulders left and right and the green falls away from
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: you with the swale right down the center. Troy blew
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: me away because I felt like that was the place
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: where we saw his work the most untouched. To my knowledge,
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: I don't know if the greens were really messed with
• 28:25
  Speaker 3: at all. And again, like I see in Brian's work
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: some of the ways that Troy has influenced him, like
• 28:32
  Speaker 3: the eighteenth at Old Barnwell being like that dead flat
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: you know, top of the plateau, like nothing fancy, just
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: like this is what it is the eighteenth that Troy
• 28:41
  Speaker 3: is like that, you know, So it's you know, it's
• 28:45
  Speaker 3: good to study. It's good to study. The Masters.
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: Yes, Country Club of Troy is so special because it
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: really has been preserved as opposed to renovated or restored.
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: And that's partly because they've been working with Bruce Hepner,
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: who is not somebody who likes to go in and
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: reconstruct he is he is somebody who likes to use
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: a very light touch. And as a result, you have
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: some very special feeling greens at at Country Club of
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: Troy that then do you can tell their original because
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: because you just wouldn't probably build greens like that anymore
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: in a modern context. And so yeah, that Country Club
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: of Troy just an incredible place to study what Walter
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: Travis might have actually done in Cape Arrundle as well.
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think the ten and Bruce worked at
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: Cape Rundle for a long time. He's worked at Skylar
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: Meadows as a course in the Capital region in New York.
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: And I think the tendency for restoring architects, you know,
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: myself included would be again is to like expand things,
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: get pinning locations bigger. And I think that's a function
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: of green speed. And you know this, you know usability
• 29:59
  Speaker 3: of the golf course, you know, getting more cup locations,
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: spreading out where like all necessary things for the modern game.
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: But you know kind of problems born by green speed.
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: And so I think when you go see the greens
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: at Great Dunes, we're not anticipating the greens that are
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: going to be all that fast. So we were able
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: to build some smaller greens, nothing crazy small, like we didn't.
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: Our smallest green is like forty eight hundred square feet
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: to Part three or fifth hole. But what we had
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: to work with there before, I mean, Garrett, I mean
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: the Moon's surface couldn't have been more than nine hundred
• 30:37
  Speaker 3: square feet. And even if we like went out to
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: like the fhillpad, it was going to be you know,
• 30:44
  Speaker 3: twenty eight hundred square feet of actual green like our
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: client would never We just couldn't build a green that
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: small for a public resort. So it's it's very site specific,
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: like what you do. And but I don't think we
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: we have a variety of green sizes out there, and
• 31:00
  Speaker 3: the stuff that we amplified, like I said, the few
• 31:03
  Speaker 3: greens that we thought were worth preserving, we we were
• 31:07
  Speaker 3: very cognitiant of that of just like, hey, let's let's
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: keep this under control here. No need to make everything
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: ninety five hundred square feet.
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: So now that you've kind of done this deep dive
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: into Walter Travis, like tried to become inhabit Walter Travis,
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: you know, like get get his get as close to
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: him as possible methodical. What excites you about about his
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: architectural style as compared to his his contemporaries.
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: I mean, he's just so well known for the intricacies
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: of his greens.
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: Uh.
• 31:41
  Speaker 3: You know, I get really excited thinking about East Potomac Links.
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: You know, the reversible course, and I've seen the green
• 31:47
  Speaker 3: plans for that. Mike mccarton from National Links Trust showed
• 31:50
  Speaker 3: me the greens plans for that, and so yes, his
• 31:55
  Speaker 3: the way that the golf course works, especially so from
• 31:59
  Speaker 3: the green back. Uh. In terms of Travis's style. And
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: then yeah, thinking golf is you know Travis that was
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: his the term that he coined and and about you know,
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: uh strategy and you know the shot values and penalty
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: and and you know, I think he wasn't afraid to
• 32:19
  Speaker 3: make you take some take your medicine. If you hit
• 32:21
  Speaker 3: it in a bunker, you know, hit it behind a
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: chocolate drop. You know, the game was not meant to be.
• 32:28
  Speaker 3: I don't think he was a very I think he
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: was a little of a gruff guy, and I think
• 32:34
  Speaker 3: that is reflected maybe in his architectural style certainly, like
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: if you look what if you go to Garden City
• 32:40
  Speaker 3: golf Club, like what he did to Emmett's golf course.
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: You know, he really really tough in that that he's
• 32:46
  Speaker 3: stiff in that golf course up from you know, Fairway
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: bunkering to the to the greens themselves.
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: Just the fact that his nickname was the old Man,
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: and I think he got that nickname when he wasn't
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: really that old, That's right. I think that tells you.
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: That tells you a little bit about what his persona
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: might have been.
• 33:06
  Speaker 3: A cranky, scratch golfer.
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, when I look at Travis's
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: architecture and think about how it can be applied to
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: a modern context, it's exciting to me because he didn't
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: do wall to wall reshaping, and not many architects of
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: his time did. Obviously, you know, Donald Ross maybe did
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: that a little bit. SETH. Rayner got close on some projects.
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: Certainly the Lido was was just created from whole cloth.
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: But Walter Travis's courses really leave most of the natural
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: terrain completely intact, and from tee to green, especially there's
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: just not that much alteration of the natural landscape. There
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: might be some chocolate drops, but you can there's a
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: kind of transparency about where the manufacturing happened. You can see, Okay,
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: that chocolate drop was manufactured, but the rest of it
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: is completely lay of the land. Okay, the green is
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: highly manufactured, obviously manufactured, but everything around it is natural.
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: And for me, that's that's almost the best of both worlds,
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: where you get the natural terrain, but you also get
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: some really interesting architecture and not everything is blended in,
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: so you can actually see where some of the work happened.
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: And for me, that's a that's a compelling combination.
• 34:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think there's another layer to that in
• 34:35
  Speaker 3: that Travis edited a lot of people's work and added
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: on to others golf courses. Wayne Styles did a bunch
• 34:43
  Speaker 3: of this in New England where he took nine holes
• 34:46
  Speaker 3: and added another nine in and you know, didn't necessarily
• 34:49
  Speaker 3: move a lot of earth other than creating the green sites,
• 34:54
  Speaker 3: you know, digging some bunkers and things of that nature.
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: So I think it is very site specific, like at
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: North Jersey that you know, they probably had to blast
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: a lot of rock or you know, and and it's
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: a pretty severe sight as well, so they would have
• 35:07
  Speaker 3: had to, like, you know, do some significant fills. But
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: the way that he blended it in h is very
• 35:15
  Speaker 3: much in the same way that uh Travis's contemporaries did.
• 35:19
  Speaker 3: And and the thread here for me is between McDonald, Rayner, Travis,
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: and Emmett. I think they were all so closely related
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: in the time that they were creating golf courses, and
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: you can just see how they borrowed ideas and the
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: style and methods of construction from one another. And you
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: could almost confuse an Emmett and a Travis sometimes or
• 35:42
  Speaker 3: like a Rainer and an Emmett. Uh very you know,
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: it's it's it's not too far fetched.
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: And they were all buddies, right, so it kind of
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: makes sense they were. They were all sharing ideas with
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: each other and and maybe even consciously emulating each other
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: and competing with each other about Yeah. All right, so
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: the Great Dunes Project, I want to get into some
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: macro questions about it. Okay, would you call it a restoration?
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: Do you have a do you have a term for
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: what you did here?
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: I think at first we approached it like, hey, we're
• 36:18
  Speaker 3: going to restore this golf course. And then the more
• 36:21
  Speaker 3: that we got into it was it was just clear,
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: like how much new that we were building out there.
• 36:29
  Speaker 3: You know. Certain we didn't mess with the routing, We
• 36:31
  Speaker 3: didn't mess with Travis's routing, but there were just there
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: wasn't anything. There wasn't too much recognizable. Like if we
• 36:40
  Speaker 3: just like dusted it off, stripped the side, and like
• 36:43
  Speaker 3: put it back, I think people would think that we
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: were crazy and they would be very very much disappointed.
• 36:49
  Speaker 3: You know, people were being promised a Walter Travis restoration, right,
• 36:53
  Speaker 3: but most of that cool stuff had been obliterated either
• 36:57
  Speaker 3: in the hurricanes and storms on the Back nine, or
• 37:00
  Speaker 3: it had been obliterated by you know, saying irrigation renovation
• 37:05
  Speaker 3: in the nineteen seventies or whatever. Right, because we did find,
• 37:11
  Speaker 3: you know, these kind of platforms of dirt in the
• 37:13
  Speaker 3: center of these film pads. They were like ten to
• 37:15
  Speaker 3: twelve inches, like our famous the famous May West hole,
• 37:18
  Speaker 3: the our fourth hole. Like the green feels like it's
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: sitting in a hollow in a punch bowl behind these
• 37:26
  Speaker 3: two dunes. But then there's like this little pyramid on
• 37:29
  Speaker 3: in the middle of the green, and we're like, this
• 37:31
  Speaker 3: doesn't make any sense, you know, you know, this is
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: not what the green shape would be. So we really,
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: in all honesty, we restored as much as we could.
• 37:42
  Speaker 3: We had historical photographs of that particular green site. We
• 37:46
  Speaker 3: have some of the stuff on the back nine, but
• 37:49
  Speaker 3: there's there's more than half of this golf course that
• 37:51
  Speaker 3: is you know, newly created from you know, putting ourselves
• 37:55
  Speaker 3: in walter shoes. Between Brian and I.
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: You know, this is an interesting to me because in
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: previous conversations I've heard you express the view that there
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: might not really be such a thing as pure restoration.
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: M H.
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: Could you explain that that position to me and how
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: it might have led to your approach to this to
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: this project.
• 38:19
  Speaker 3: Well, yeah, in the most doctrinal sense, like purely restoring something,
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: you would have to have one hell of a record
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: or it would take you an ungodly amount of time
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: to like archaeologically peel back and figure it out. And
• 38:37
  Speaker 3: you know, we tried to do that certainly. On that
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: may West Green. We went down all the way to
• 38:43
  Speaker 3: the to the native sand layer and to see how
• 38:46
  Speaker 3: deep was the soil layer that was built up upon
• 38:49
  Speaker 3: that and by far and away. That green was filled
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: more than any of the other greens. It was a
• 38:55
  Speaker 3: very unique green site. Some of the other greens we
• 38:57
  Speaker 3: found a little bit of consistency, maybe there was you know,
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: eight to ten inches of soil, but it was just
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: so inconsistent what we were finding in the ground. We're
• 39:07
  Speaker 3: just like, well, how can we possibly just restore? There
• 39:10
  Speaker 3: was no there was no like consistent way or method
• 39:13
  Speaker 3: that we could find to get to the actual like
• 39:17
  Speaker 3: elevation that we thought it would be. So what is
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: what is restoration? I'd have to think a minute of
• 39:26
  Speaker 3: you know, how you could which golf courses have actually
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: been restored. You know, I'm working with Hooper Golf Course
• 39:34
  Speaker 3: right now, and this is a bit of a hot topic.
• 39:37
  Speaker 3: Like the first green at at Hooper is you know,
• 39:41
  Speaker 3: the members would love to have backpin positions there, but
• 39:47
  Speaker 3: and the green, to anyone's knowledge, has never been altered.
• 39:50
  Speaker 3: But the question is did they ever have back positions
• 39:54
  Speaker 3: on a green that was sloping you know six to
• 39:57
  Speaker 3: eight percent sometimes ten percent in place?
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: Six Oh yeah, the whole that's not that's not pinnable,
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: Just just to clarify to people.
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: But it may have been pinnable when the greens were
• 40:09
  Speaker 3: running out of five.
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: That's the thing is that like, Okay, at what point
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: can it really ever be a restoration if green speeds
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: are what they are?
• 40:20
  Speaker 3: Right? So you get you getting into this massively gray
• 40:23
  Speaker 3: area of are we restoring the intention and the playability
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: of the original hole? Are we you know, are we
• 40:31
  Speaker 3: going to just turn back the clock and say no,
• 40:33
  Speaker 3: we want to play Victorian style golf. You know, we
• 40:36
  Speaker 3: think that's cool. We're going to hickorys and cop mounds,
• 40:40
  Speaker 3: you know, And I don't believe that's where we're going,
• 40:43
  Speaker 3: you know, in the next decade or more in the
• 40:47
  Speaker 3: golf restoration game. I think more people we clearly have
• 40:54
  Speaker 3: you know, been changing classic designs. Like you know, I
• 40:58
  Speaker 3: work at the you know, the lower course at Balterstral
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: with Gil, and and I don't Gil in all honesty,
• 41:08
  Speaker 3: Gil did not change many of those greens at all.
• 41:12
  Speaker 3: But there were certain instances where we we literally had
• 41:15
  Speaker 3: to change stuff. They were like clo there were uh,
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: you know, closed contours in greens where water was settling,
• 41:22
  Speaker 3: and in one instance Gil actually left that contour. He said, no,
• 41:26
  Speaker 3: we're not touching it. This thing is perfect. We're not,
• 41:29
  Speaker 3: you know. And then another instance where we decided to
• 41:32
  Speaker 3: you know, cut you know, cut three four inches out
• 41:34
  Speaker 3: of the back of the green to let water flow
• 41:37
  Speaker 3: flow out. So, you know, of all my people, I've
• 41:40
  Speaker 3: worked with guys who are the best in the business.
• 41:42
  Speaker 3: Like it's always there's always a judgment call to be made,
• 41:44
  Speaker 3: you know, and maybe Bruce Heppner is a guy who's
• 41:47
  Speaker 3: like not willing to make that call. And then on
• 41:50
  Speaker 3: certain stages like championship golf courses, members and architects are
• 41:55
  Speaker 3: much more willing to make those calls for the same
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: of continuing the tradition of championship golf.
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, well, Balthus roll Lower is an interesting comparison
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: because they're a lot of historical evidence was used, as
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: you obviously know, like Gil loves to use historical photographs
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: and really try to precisely get back what was there.
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: But in the end, those greens were dug up and
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: you know, high tech infrastructure was put under them, and
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: then they were reconstructed.
• 42:33
  Speaker 3: Well they were scanned, you know, they were scanned to
• 42:35
  Speaker 3: a very high degree of accuracy. The greens were certainly
• 42:40
  Speaker 3: expanded around the edges, and like I said before. They
• 42:44
  Speaker 3: they look amazing. They're also expanded around the edges to
• 42:48
  Speaker 3: improve pin locations because they want championship golf and the
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: greens running at twelve plus and the members want to
• 42:55
  Speaker 3: play that every day. You know. It's like Wainfoot, same deal.
• 42:58
  Speaker 3: You know. That's what's so was the experience there is
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: playing US Open Golf PG Championship golf. So it's it's
• 43:08
  Speaker 3: really tough. Like I'm one like going back to Hooper,
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: you know, I sympathize with like regular members who don't
• 43:14
  Speaker 3: get to experience like the full dynamism of that hole
• 43:19
  Speaker 3: at Hooper. It's such a cool hole. The second it's
• 43:22
  Speaker 3: a short par five, and the idea is, okay, if
• 43:26
  Speaker 3: the pin's in the middle of the green or in
• 43:28
  Speaker 3: the back of the green, how dare do you get
• 43:32
  Speaker 3: close to that pin? Because the danger like ratchets up
• 43:36
  Speaker 3: the more club that you take. These days, the pin
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: can only be laid in the front third of the green.
• 43:43
  Speaker 3: You're always sure of the bunkers, you never feel like
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: you need to take extra club, and the strategy becomes
• 43:50
  Speaker 3: you know, dull. So then you say, okay, what do
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: we do? Do we just slow all the greens down,
• 43:56
  Speaker 3: or do we, you know, take take a few inches
• 43:59
  Speaker 3: off the back and restore the playing strategy. And that's
• 44:03
  Speaker 3: the opinions vary wildly.
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: Oh I'm sure. I'm sure it's a lively debate. But
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: these are the questions that I think more and more
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: architects are going to need to confront going forward in
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: renovation and restoration projects. And I think part of the
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: reason for that is that a lot of the great
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: courses that could be restored through less interventionist methods or
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: with more historical accuracy have been restored, maybe even multiple times.
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: At this point, they've they've been restored supposedly right, And
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: so what's left is courses that have either been altered
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: beyond recognition so that very little remains to be restored,
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: or courses that maybe weren't very good to begin with.
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: And so the architect is put in the position of
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: trying to introduce some of their own idea is and say,
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: this is what I think good golf is. If we
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: want to make this a good golf course as opposed
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: to just a restored or historically authentic golf course, then
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: here are some of the things that we need to do.
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: And so how do you how do you get to
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: that point where you have enough guts basically to say
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: this is what I think would best serve the golf course.
• 45:23
  Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I mean it just you got to build
• 45:26
  Speaker 3: up a lot of trust with your client. And you
• 45:30
  Speaker 3: know here right behind me where you know, I'm sitting
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: in the office at essex Fell's country Club right now,
• 45:34
  Speaker 3: it's a it's a job that I'm working on with
• 45:36
  Speaker 3: Jim Orbina's who's done a lot of this restoration work.
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: And you know, we could open up that conversation about
• 45:42
  Speaker 3: you know, Posit Tiempo is too as well, like where
• 45:45
  Speaker 3: they did a lot of archaeological type construction method. But
• 45:49
  Speaker 3: here at essex Fell's this is kind of a mishmash
• 45:53
  Speaker 3: of architects coming through here throughout the years. You know,
• 45:57
  Speaker 3: we have record of SETH. Rayner coming through and he
• 45:59
  Speaker 3: did did a survey as built drainage plan, and then
• 46:03
  Speaker 3: we have another plan of Tilling Hast drawing green sketches
• 46:08
  Speaker 3: in the margins of that drainage plan. Rhees Jones has
• 46:13
  Speaker 3: been through the golf course and and now Jim and
• 46:16
  Speaker 3: I are here doing just exactly what you are alluding to,
• 46:21
  Speaker 3: is like creating good golf, you know, usable space.
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: Uh.
• 46:26
  Speaker 3: You know one thing that we you know, we didn't
• 46:29
  Speaker 3: really thought, we didn't really feel like fit the style
• 46:35
  Speaker 3: of the golf course here at Essex Fells is you know,
• 46:38
  Speaker 3: the Jones group brought a lot of dirt in around
• 46:41
  Speaker 3: the greens to I guess kind of create the sense
• 46:45
  Speaker 3: of difficulty when you really didn't we didn't think you
• 46:49
  Speaker 3: really have to do that. So we're kind of undoing
• 46:52
  Speaker 3: some of that, removing the extraneous soil and creating some
• 46:57
  Speaker 3: of those sharper features and and fall off that. You know,
• 47:01
  Speaker 3: tilling Hast has shown us a lot of his original work,
• 47:04
  Speaker 3: and we believe tilling Hass did some original work here. Uh,
• 47:08
  Speaker 3: you know, it's just some of it is beyond recognition.
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And you're using your own judgment to put it
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: back together, your own knowledge of what telling Hast might
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: have done or what he could have done, and not
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: necessarily needing to fall back on historical evidence to justify
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: your moves. And that sometimes a little bit scary, I
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: would imagine.
• 47:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, sometimes the evidence just isn't there anymore. It's just
• 47:33
  Speaker 3: it's just been you know, warmed over. Uh and and
• 47:37
  Speaker 3: a lot of the bunkers get crowded into the side
• 47:40
  Speaker 3: of the greens, and that's what create you know, they
• 47:42
  Speaker 3: create these like these false roles that clearly were never
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: on the side of the greens. And you can see
• 47:48
  Speaker 3: that in the when you take it apart, you can see,
• 47:52
  Speaker 3: you know, what materials were used, so you can see, Okay,
• 47:55
  Speaker 3: somebody did something here, So let's the first step is
• 47:57
  Speaker 3: just take it away and tie into what they didn't touch, right,
• 48:01
  Speaker 3: and so that you know, so your powers of intuition
• 48:04
  Speaker 3: are just by being very careful about how you go about,
• 48:09
  Speaker 3: you know, deconstructing things sometimes that and then you have
• 48:12
  Speaker 3: to know when to stop and maybe that's you know,
• 48:15
  Speaker 3: that's where our expertise comes into play.
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: M hmm.
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: Personally, I think these projects are really exciting because you
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: need to make some of these judgment calls. And so
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: I'm actually very really anticipating that that the restoration and
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: renovation game is only going to get more interesting as
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: we go on because the projects, a lot of the
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: projects do exist in this gray area.
• 48:42
  Speaker 3: Mm hmm. Yeah. And I think, like everything is that
• 48:45
  Speaker 3: we're always approaching like our work and thinking how can
• 48:48
  Speaker 3: we improve this area? You know, how can we make
• 48:51
  Speaker 3: this shot value a little bit better? How can we
• 48:54
  Speaker 3: make this uh, you know if if there's too many
• 48:57
  Speaker 3: bunkers that's often happens like too many bunkers pinched the
• 49:00
  Speaker 3: front of a green right, how can we create an
• 49:03
  Speaker 3: angle by removing a bunker and maybe shifting one in
• 49:06
  Speaker 3: the other direction, opening up locations and things. So it's
• 49:11
  Speaker 3: a very fun exercise. And again you're putting on your
• 49:14
  Speaker 3: architectural hat and you know whether it be Tilling, Hass,
• 49:17
  Speaker 3: Travis or Emmett, and you're doing your best to incorporate
• 49:21
  Speaker 3: their design principles into the way into the lens of improvement,
• 49:26
  Speaker 3: design restoration.
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: Jeff, it's been very fun talking to you. Thanks for
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: spending the time.
• 49:33
  Speaker 3: I really appreciate it. Garry a lot of fun as well.
• 49:35
  Speaker 3: Hope we can do it again soon.
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: Absolutely. This episode of Designing Golf is brought to you
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: by Perfect Practice and specifically Perfect Practice's new product, chip Shot.
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: This is the first chipping that on the market with
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• 51:02
  Speaker 1: let's get to my interview with Clyde Johnson. Clyde Johnson,
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast.
• 51:13
  Speaker 2: A right good to be honest.
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: So I wanted to make sure to speak with you, Clyde,
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: because you've recently been doing a kind of restoration work
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: that is pretty rare right now, but I think might
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: become more common in the coming years, and that is
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: the restoration of links courses. So, first of all, why
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: do you think links courses in Great Britain and Ireland
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: have generally not done restoration projects.
• 51:41
  Speaker 2: I think generally is that there's an attitude towards golf
• 51:44
  Speaker 2: and Great Britain mind as you know, we certainly not
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: precious about the history of our golf courses. I don't think,
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: you know, golf courses have evolved a lot, especially over
• 51:54
  Speaker 2: you know, from the mid eighteen hundreds to the nineteen thirties.
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: You know, golf courses, even the great golf courses like Mirfield's,
• 52:01
  Speaker 2: evolved a bunch over over that fifty thirty seventy year period,
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: depending on the age of when the golf course was
• 52:11
  Speaker 2: initially laid out and developed. Yeah, so I don't think,
• 52:16
  Speaker 2: you know, there's this there's not that same preciousness towards
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: the work. And you know, if we're talking about restoration,
• 52:22
  Speaker 2: it's really difficult to take a fixed point and time
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: to restore a golf course too. So yeah, I think
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: that's a lot of it. Really.
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: In Hoursty you mentioned that a lot of British links
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: clubs don't really seem to think of themselves as having
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: like significant architecture that needs to be preserved right there.
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: They instead kind of view their courses as grounds for
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: the game, and those grounds evolve as time goes on.
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: And that's okay, I've heard you make that point before.
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: It's a really interesting point of difference between between say,
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: UK golf and American golf, where a lot of people
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: in the American golf community are now kind of obsessed
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: with the history of architecture and bringing back things from
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: the Golden Age exactly as they were. There's there's not
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: as much of that ideology I guess that you find
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: at especially older UK links clubs. Do you think that
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: perception is changing now and and do you want to
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: change it?
• 53:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah? I think I think, I think yeah, I think
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: I think it definitely. It definitely is more recognition of
• 53:29
  Speaker 2: you know, a golf course is history and past and
• 53:32
  Speaker 2: how it's evolved, you know, partly, you know, I think
• 53:35
  Speaker 2: most of that really comes from American influence in terms
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: of coverage of golf course architecture, you guys, and you know,
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: almost talking about this type of stuff more readily. And
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: I think, you know, I think British architects as well
• 53:54
  Speaker 2: have seen what's been done in America as well, you know,
• 53:59
  Speaker 2: in the reference for the history, and you know, wanted
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: to incorporate, incorporate that certainly into certainly into thought processes
• 54:08
  Speaker 2: an execution of of work over here, you know. But
• 54:11
  Speaker 2: you know, it's it tends. It tends to be you
• 54:14
  Speaker 2: know when when we I think when clubs look at
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: the past, but you know, when it comes to doing work,
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: they use it. They're looking at the past for you know, ideas,
• 54:26
  Speaker 2: you know, ideas to grab onto as opposed to wholesale
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: and exact restoration to that to that certain day. So yeah,
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: certain there's there's certainly more value. There's certainly more value
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: and knowledge near today history about history our clubs, and
• 54:43
  Speaker 2: I think I think that's generally a good thing. You know,
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: it's not it's not restoration for the sake of restoration.
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: But if there was a good idea that you know,
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: if it looked to be a good idea it was
• 54:52
  Speaker 2: one hundred years ago and it helped solve a prone
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: or it makes some more interest in golf today, why
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: why not look at the past and use that for
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: inspiration and bring that back into into you know, some
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: of some of our golf courses today. And you know,
• 55:03
  Speaker 2: often you know no thing, you know golf courses, all
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: these you know linkxy features links, you know, links in
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: the general lynx environment. You know, it's continually evolving more
• 55:14
  Speaker 2: than any type of any of the type of golf
• 55:16
  Speaker 2: course really, you know, so there's there's generally a reason
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: why golf courses have evolved, and there's not massive big
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: blowout e sand scraping bunkers anymore. So you know, when
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: you are thinking about, you know, recapturing and reusing these
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: historic features, you know, you kind of got to have
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: a fairly pragmatic and practical approach and think how you
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: can lean on those, but also think how it might
• 55:38
  Speaker 2: work and exist today, because you don't want to put
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: them back and then watch them being done again or
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: filled in in five or ten years time.
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: Some of these factors that you're talking about are part
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: of why the idea of British links restoration is so interesting,
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: because because it's kind of a more towards the beginning
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: stages of that movement than a lot of American Golden
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: Age clubs are, where restoration has been kind of a
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: fixed reality of those clubs and what they're doing for
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: you know, thirty years now. And so it's I'm excited
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: to get into some specific examples with you of projects
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: that you've done at links courses. So, first off, over
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: the past four years you've helped with some projects at
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: North Barrack Golf Club, the famous and very wonderful Links
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: course in East Lothian, Scotland, famous as the home of
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: the Radan Hole and the pit hole and Perfection and
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: many other holes that have kind of served as an
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: inspiration for later golf golf architects. And you know, I
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: think there's been kind of a rediscovery of North Barrack's
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: brilliance over the past decade or so. It's really risen
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: in prominence, I think, or in at least in frequency
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: of discussion as far as I've been able to see,
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: So have what have just broad strokes what have your
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: projects at North Barrick Ben over over the past three
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: years or four years.
• 57:03
  Speaker 2: So it's it's kind of funny really, you know, on
• 57:06
  Speaker 2: some of the stuff we talked about earlier, as as
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: Northbury Bay has become more recognized and fought more fondly
• 57:14
  Speaker 2: of over the last decade fifteen years, say, the architectural
• 57:22
  Speaker 2: presentation of the golf course until four or five years
• 57:24
  Speaker 2: ago was actually going in the opposite direction. Fair Ways
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: were shrinking greens were shrinking. Bunkers. Bunkers were massively shrinking.
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: You know, you know when you rebuild, when you rebuild
• 57:37
  Speaker 2: a revetted or sod wall bunker, you know, normally you'd
• 57:40
  Speaker 2: chased back in you know by you know, mostly by hand,
• 57:45
  Speaker 2: uh you know, shovel out of the old revet wallers
• 57:47
  Speaker 2: that decayed, say between three and seven years have been
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: the the average lifespan of a revetted wall, depending on orientation,
• 57:55
  Speaker 2: exposure to win, amount of traffic, et cetera. You know,
• 58:00
  Speaker 2: you know, rather than rather than the older ready wall
• 58:02
  Speaker 2: being chased out and the new wall being built in
• 58:07
  Speaker 2: the same position, as they're really careful to do at
• 58:09
  Speaker 2: the old course in Beuerfield was being built on the
• 58:13
  Speaker 2: inside of the old wall. And you know that happens
• 58:15
  Speaker 2: over a twenty to thirty year period soddenly something the
• 58:18
  Speaker 2: bunker becomes half the size. So you know, a lot
• 58:23
  Speaker 2: of you know, a lot of the work has been
• 58:25
  Speaker 2: to remedy, remedy therese remedying. The fairway lines were really
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: shrunk in. For fairway, for example, was maybe about fifteen
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: yards wide. Four or five years ago. As Kyle's Grugshanks,
• 58:37
  Speaker 2: the superintendent was taking over and we've slowly been able
• 58:41
  Speaker 2: to push that out to thirty thirty five yards kind
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: of back to where it used to be. Picking up
• 58:46
  Speaker 2: so some of the cool old features that are on
• 58:49
  Speaker 2: the right, on the seaside side of the whole. The
• 58:54
  Speaker 2: same same with green expansions too, just just getting those
• 58:57
  Speaker 2: back as far as irrigation will allow, and then assisting
• 59:00
  Speaker 2: Kyle with a lot of the you know, you know,
• 59:03
  Speaker 2: he's he's had a four or five year program for
• 59:07
  Speaker 2: vetting the bunkers that you tend to tend to do
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: North berks, not particularly bunker heavy golf course in Link's terms,
• 59:15
  Speaker 2: probably seventy twenty bunkers so I remember correctly, but you know,
• 59:18
  Speaker 2: rotating those on a five year program, so twenty is
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: twenty ye ish bunkers a year, and then just really
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: helping him to recapture the original size of those while
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: also dealing with you know a lot of them. You know,
• 59:33
  Speaker 2: so there were Dwanhill, for example, the famous or not
• 59:36
  Speaker 2: the famous book with the lamb the lamb bunker on
• 59:38
  Speaker 2: the left, on the inside of that one that tilts
• 59:40
  Speaker 2: away that that become it was maybe three yards three
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: yards deep in terms of you know, from the green
• 59:47
  Speaker 2: side back to the direction to play floor was floor
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: was tilting really hard towards the base of the revect wall,
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: which meant, you know, the ball would generally have become
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: trapped right at the face and you know, the floor
• 59:59
  Speaker 2: to bunker and also deepened with times versus where it
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 2: used to be. So not only did not only did
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 2: it look inconsequential or not be fitting of hold the
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 2: scale or statue of the redown, it was also become
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 2: really playable and difficult for the average golfer. So it
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 2: was remedying stuff like that while thinking about, you know,
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 2: improving the maintainability of those features as well.
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: There have obviously been many versions of North Barrick over
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: the years, and so yeah, one of my questions is
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: always like what how do you settle on a version
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: of the course to go back to When you're doing
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: things like working on bunkers on the Radan hole, you know,
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: what kind of historical evidence do you look at and
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: then how do you make a decision about what's the
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: best version of that bunker that we want to bring back.
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 2: Well, listen, there's some great obviously his pretty famous holes,
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: some great old photographs. There was a nineteen twenty nine
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 2: areals that really helped, like an aerial photograss. There was
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: a nineteen twelve plan sketch that actually talked about how
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 2: deep the faces of the bunkers were. So the lamb
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 2: bunker was six foot deep. We worked on the Raddan
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 2: got the color ra Dan bunker, which is the pair
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 2: of bunkers at the front forty to fifty yards short
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: of the green. This went that was seven foot deep,
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: for example. But then the bunkers on the right of
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 2: the green, which are now free today and have been
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 2: free in number since nineteen nineteen thirties, I think around
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 2: that time, but a long time anyway, that you know,
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: in that sketch were only actually two bunkers, so had
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 2: a bunch of great ground photographs. So one you know
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 2: some of the really some of the late eighteen hundreds
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: early nineteen hundreds pictures. You know, the rare Dan was
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 2: stabilized by a sleeper wall, for example, but you know
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 2: with time that became a sod walls. So you you're basically,
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 2: you know my approaches, you're kind of thinking about the
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 2: problems that you're trying to solve that exists with the
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 2: existing bunker off feature, and then you're kind of interpolating
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: all of the different imagery that you've gotten, coming up
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 2: a solution that kind of fits the problems that you're
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: trying to address with, you know, a nod to how
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 2: the bunker used to look and how the bunker used
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 2: to play. So, you know, on the lamp on the
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 2: lamb bunker left of the green, we kind of restored
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 2: that sold wall to the you know, to six foot high,
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 2: really really cut it tight or as tight as possible
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: to the green, squaring off the corners. You know, that
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 2: kind of you kind of give that old you know,
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 2: you look at you know, modern revetted softwall bunkers of
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 2: you know tend to people a little bit rounder, and
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 2: that's I think that's really driven by maintenance and wanting
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 2: to get you know, the triplex mo as close as
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 2: close as possible and riding over and tight to the
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 2: top of those lips. And then you know, also also
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 2: raising the floor, also tilting the floor back up towards
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 2: the green, you know, in the old in some of
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 2: the old folk or actually you can clearly see in
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 2: both versions where it was either timber, timber faced or
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 2: so on faced. You know, the floor was climbing up
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 2: into the far car, up the bunk and the wind
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 2: which just doing its thinging like blow around, and it
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 2: kind of looked cool, easy to access, easy to access,
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 2: an easier to play out, while also of looking visually
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 2: pretty intimidating.
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so let me let me know if this is
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: like a good distillation of what you're saying about your approach.
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: You're you're kind of you're you're coming in there to
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: solve current some current problems with whatever version of the
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: course currently exists, problems that numbers are having, or or
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: just you know, maybe esthetic problems or problems with the
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: architecture in general, and you are looking at some historical
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: evidence to find, you know, possible solutions to that problem.
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: You're not necessarily saying like nineteen nineteen was the best
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: version of North Barrick and that's what we're going to
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: bring back, which is a very common approach in the
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: US where where where where you know, fed the line
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: by by many clubs that you know, this particular year
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: is the course that we think was ideal, and we're
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: going to do everything we can to get the course
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: back from from that year. It seems like this is
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: a more complex process where where you have to go
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: through a number of different options, see different iterations of
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: the feature and kind of decide all right, this this
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: is the one that best serves our current needs.
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I tend to have a fairly tragmatic approach to
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 2: certainly consulting golf cost design. But really it's kind of
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 2: kind of thinking of you really just create, you know,
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 2: problem solving in a creative way, you know, with with
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 2: the nod to history. So you know, you kind of
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 2: especially at place as historically significant as North Barrick, you know,
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 2: you've got to view your role as a custodian. You know,
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 2: you're only you're only there for you already working there
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 2: for a short moment in the golf course's history of
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 2: the golf course has evolved. What you kind of want
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 2: to make sure the pieces or your impact on the
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 2: golf course is sensitive to what's gone before, but also
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 2: can hopefully stand the test of time. So you know,
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 2: you know, I was going to say, you know, going
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 2: back in and recreated a cool feature that was one
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 2: hundred years old that obviously didn't last beyond a certain
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 2: period without thinking about the consequences of that. It's a
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 2: it's a surefire way to have to have to redo
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 2: your work pretty soon, pretty soon after. And there is
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 2: only you know, there is only a lifespan. There is
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 2: only a certain lifespan to a revetted bunker, you know,
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 2: So you've kind of got you know, you kind of
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 2: you're accepting that the next person to build that's probably
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 2: going to be the you know, the greenkeeping team without
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 2: any put from an architect or a designer. That's the
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 2: assumption that you're going to make. So you kind of
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 2: got to set them in the right place. And you know,
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 2: if you do get if some thing doesn't quite turn
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 2: out right, you know, then it's you can you can
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 2: force be a little bit more risky, I think when
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 2: in the links environment, and and you know, building reverted
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 2: bunkers partly because they've only got a short lifespan, and
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 2: you know, constructions relatively easy in the sound, and you know,
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 2: often the materials you're using coming from the sites that
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 2: they've got their own turf now sort of they're using
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 2: for reverted walls, et cetera. So you know, if you
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 2: don't quite get the walk, you know, you lead the
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 2: walk in a little steep because that's what it used
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 2: to look like in the old photographs, but it doesn't
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 2: quite work as you think, or the wind blows and
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 2: the roads more in a certain direction. You can theind
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 2: of just that wall, just to just hold the sandal
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 2: a little bit more. Next time around you do it.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 2: You know, you look at the mut Field's got a
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 2: mate got putting the best reveeted bunkcause anywhere in the world,
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 2: and they, you know, they've evolved really over seventy eight years,
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 2: whereas North Berwick because of the north the reflect the
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 2: neglects it kind of had, which is perhaps a bit
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 2: of an fair word, but you know the bunkers really
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 2: were because of that neglect over the last thirty years. Say,
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 2: you know, you kind of starting against well a lot
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 2: on a lot of those books, rather than you know,
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 2: having had that dialed in or refined final bunker, if
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 2: that makes sense.
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: So, just a couple of days before I'm talking to
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: you right now, Clyde north Barrick actually announced that it
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: had hired Gil Hants as its new consulting architect. So
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: you and north Barrick are parting ways. I just wonder
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: when when you kind of reflect on your work there
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: now that it's now that it's kind of a complete
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: four years of of interventions at North Barrick and tweaks
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: and adjustments and things like that. What overall effect you
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: do you hope that your work there had had on the.
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 2: Course and really well so it's been a privileged to
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 2: how a golf course like North Beric ando into have
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 2: the opportunity to really recapture and you know, bring back
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 2: the gory some of the most famous holes in the
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 2: in the world of golf course architecture. But I really
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 2: just hope that we've been able to show the members
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 2: what they have and the potential for North Berrick still.
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 2: You know, there's still there's still plenty of bunkers out there.
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 2: We've worked particularly focus was helping Kyle and the Greek
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 2: keeping team on the bigger bunkers that they weren't able
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 2: to really work on themselves. But you know, just to
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 2: recapture the scale of some of those features and just
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 2: you know, just to be able to, you know, just
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 2: show what North Berrick should. You know, there's some, there's
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 2: some and there's still some. There's still plenty some more
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 2: of a low hanging fruit to recapture. Once the ons
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 2: in the club installing new irrigation system, the next couple
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: of years. The third Greek, for example, used to be
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 2: used to be massive, used to go tied to the
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 2: wall on the right of that green and back towards
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 2: a bunker short of the green that we've kind of
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 2: just reinstated or restored somewhat that used to connect all
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 2: the way throughout prove to the beach. Believe it or not,
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 2: but we we kind of did a a sensible version
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 2: of that one that kind of went half of the
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 2: way back to the beach and is revetted. But yeah,
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 2: I really really just hope, yeah, that we're well, I'm
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 2: just glad to have you know, shown shown the potential
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 2: of what North Barak should be once again. You know,
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 2: so have got some coastal erosion issues that they're looking
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 2: to deal living and looking for a robust plan, you know,
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 2: conveniency plan really to hopefully address something that no one
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 2: wants to really contemplate, which is, you know, we've been
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 2: a loss of some of the most famous holes in
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 2: Scotland and the world.
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: That would be a very difficult architectural project trying to
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: you know, if holes get lost or altered, how how
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: in the world do you do you design something that
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: that can replace it. I would imagine that would be
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: a very tricky problem for the club.
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, No one who wants to think about losing
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 2: the pit, green, harp, per section, greens or you know,
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 2: you know some of those some of those great those
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 2: great features and holes. But I'm sure, I'm sure it
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 2: will be a sensible, sexible solution from coastal erosion from
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 2: the from the council before them.
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: All right, so let's talk about another course that you've
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: been working on recently. As I understand it, uh, the event,
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: correct me if this is not not the arrangement, but
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: I think you're helping Tom Doak or helping Renaissance Golf
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: Design implement a master plan at Saint Anadoc Golf Club
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: in southwestern England. Of course that people should more people
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: should should know about because it just looks it looks amazing.
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: Is that the arrangement right now? First of all? And
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: then second of all, can you tell me about the
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: big project that you completed there recently?
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 2: So say ana doc Golf Club hired Tom to do
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 2: a consulting report in twenty sixteenth I think it was
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 2: the twenty sixteenth, Okay, So I went I went down
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 2: with Tom when we're doing some or we're just planning
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 2: for the work, and his restoration worked at Woodhollspark in Lincolnshire.
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 2: So I headed down with Tom for that consoling visit
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 2: with the idea that i'd help the plumb emplum implement
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 2: that over the next however many years. Yeah, it's one
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 2: of Tom's favorite golf course, is one of my favorite
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 2: golf courses, a golf course that really relies on some
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 2: amazingly diverse and amazingly interesting topography and artificial features within
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 2: the golf course, historically artificial features within the golf course.
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 2: So yeah, really, you know, Tom completed that report twenty sixteen,
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 2: twenty seventeen, club sat on it for a for a while,
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 2: did a little bit of work twenty nineteen and head
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 2: greenkeeper at a time after that, wanted to try and
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 2: implement some of the work himself over the next few years,
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 2: and then that wasn't successful as the club would have liked.
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 2: So since then been you know, back into continue to
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 2: implement more for Tom's ideas really plus some plus some
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 2: of my own where where needed, but trying to say
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 2: as faithful to Tom's report as possible, you know, the
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 2: big the big feature. You know, it's it's that'sn't that's
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 2: that's another. It's such a great golf course. A lot
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 2: of the issues there that they have, like I said earlier,
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 2: are about getting traffic around the golf course. Very popular
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 2: holiday resort, second home village and area for people from
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 2: generally from stereotyping, generally from the southeast, from London. So yeah,
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 2: so you know, the big the big project this year
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 2: was to restore the famous Himalayas Bunker to something of
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 2: its form of law, because it really was a shadow
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 2: of what it used to be in the early nineteen hundreds.
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: Okay, so the Himalayas Bunker's bunker. Which hole is it on?
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: And could you kind of describe the feature, like the
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: landform that it's cut into and the scale of it.
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: Just give people a picture of this.
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So it's the it's the current it's the current
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 2: day six hole. So you kind of you kind of
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 2: tear off from a high high june platform. You can
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 2: kind of you know, there's about tour and fifty yards
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 2: down the hole as a massive let's call it twenty
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 2: thirty meters high sand dune. I'm useless, I'm useless of
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 2: getting the scale of elevated features like that, but.
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: It's it's it's big. Basically, Yeah, if you, if.
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 2: You, if you like, if you, if you're thirty yards
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 2: short of that, you've still got one hundred and eighty
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 2: yards probably ish at least one hundred and fifty into
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 2: the green and you and you're laying back on as
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 2: much club as you think you can get on it
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 2: to get over over this enormous dune that's an exposed
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 2: sand feature. From the tee, you kind of you kind
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 2: of you kind of kind of see the green just
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 2: poking out behind, so you know, you kind of know
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 2: what the task ahead is. But you know there's a
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 2: road that runs down there and some rough and the
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 2: last of that there's a low marshy area. So you
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 2: basically got to you kind of got to hug the
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 2: left side of the fairway as much as possible and
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 2: took the natural topography of the fairway can't take it
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 2: into that position. But you know, it's still he going
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 2: over the toe of that june. It's still plenty to
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 2: think about. It's amazing how many people actually end up
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 2: pretty much if it's the intimidation fact or it's the
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 2: need to get the elevation over the June but end
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 2: up in the in the face of that amazing sound feature.
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: So how had the Himalayas Bunker evolved over time? What
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: did its earliest version look like? And then what did
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: it look like when you and Tom came in and
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: started working at the club.
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 2: There's there's actually some there's some great there's some great
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 2: photos in the locker room actually that give the paint
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 2: a pretty good picture of the history and you know,
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 2: a bit like they're's not quite as prevalent as Dane,
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 2: but there's lots of there's lots of historic phogra historical
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 2: photographs out there over time. Because of the nature of
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 2: the feature, it might be maybe great Britain Island's greatest
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 2: links bunker feature. It's certainly the greatest in terms of
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 2: scale of any surviving feature that I can think of.
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 2: But you know, in the in the early nineteen hundreds,
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 2: it was essentially a dune ridge which on the near side,
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 2: on the Tea side of the of the whole was
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 2: evolving sand dune, you know, some of marin clumps. Nature
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 2: was you know, it was it was barely stabilized, kind
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 2: of exposed somewhat to the prevailing wind from the west there,
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 2: but not completely depending you know, if it was flipping
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 2: around to the south or to the north, you know,
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 2: but bye. By nineteen thirty seven, it really evolved to
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 2: the point where the right side of it was kind
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 2: of you know, it was stretching out quite a long way,
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 2: so you know, it's maybe a forty fifty yard plus
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 2: expanse of sand, you know, and went beyond the height
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 2: of the of the buk itself. But that was kind
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 2: of stretching out to the right, and it's kind of
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 2: been started to stabilize on the right and on the
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 2: left side. It certainly appears like there was some kind
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 2: of effort to at least stabilize, you know, the feature,
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 2: because the feature is kind of like a big at
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 2: that point. By the nineteen thirty senn was like a
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 2: big high ball, and then like a flare, you know,
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 2: like a tail that kind of wrapped all the way
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 2: down to ground level and stretched to the toe of
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 2: the dune on the left side. And then you know,
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 2: by the nineteen eighties it really become you know, it
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 2: was really just high ball that was left a sound
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 2: which was still still a pretty still a pretty impressive feature.
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 2: And you know, if you've got Tom Dobe's Confidential Guide,
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 2: the latest or the reading we did were the Great
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 2: Britain Island to kind of kind of looked like that
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 2: was the you know, you know, the painting in the
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 2: front of that book. And then at some point, you know,
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 2: it's no no photographs from the from that period, and
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 2: you know, the committee within the club haven't given me
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 2: a definite avant on this, but at some point there
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 2: was also a pot bunker that was established to where
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 2: the tail on the left used to go. You know,
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 2: so there's a really puny little poplunker on the left,
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 2: this enormous expanse of sand on the high side, which
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 2: was kind of a really weird juxtaposition, and then you know,
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 2: in the late twenty in the late twenty tens, that
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 2: was filled in, so we're kind of back just to
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 2: or you know, left with this high, high expanse of sand,
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 2: but you know, nothing, you know, a really poor reflection
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 2: on what feature used to be. The greenkeeping team over
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 2: the last ten to fifteen years had tried tried really
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 2: hard to contain the sand at the top, so they'd
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 2: use chicken wire to hold that in which was you know,
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 2: was saidible the sand didn't quite climb as high as
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 2: it used to be, maybe a couple of meters down
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 2: from from the very top. But yeah, it was a
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 2: it was a that was a sensible solution to at
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 2: least the top edge. But you know, the tail in
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 2: the lower half of the bunker were completely lost.
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: So what did you end up restoring or building there
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: on this feature?
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 2: You know, so on so one of the rigs. So there's
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 2: probably two reasons for two reasons for why the bunker
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 2: had been allowed to get to that state. One was
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 2: foot traffic. You know, all the foot traffic had to
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 2: go round the tail of the bunker on the left
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 2: to get to get towards the appafeat of Green and
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 2: there was a bowl shot that's that made you know,
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 2: that made traffic really squog. You know, there's there was
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 2: a dune on there was a dune that flag the
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 2: left of the fairway that tied in too, uh, tied
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 2: into the near side of that feature, so really new
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 2: like a five ten yard wide piece of space that
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 2: near enough every golfer had to channel through. So that
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 2: was a problem and it was you know, it was
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 2: also you know because of the depth of that bowl
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 2: short of where the tail of the bug he used
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 2: to go. Also, you know maybe six seven eight feet
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 2: deep made it really difficult for the lady golfers. That's
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 2: really really lazily say, it's the lazy golfers that are struggling.
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 2: But the weaker golfer to to play, to play around,
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 2: you know, to lay up into that space, and it
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 2: was it wasn't a great shot from there. So you know,
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 2: my solution was to take off take off the backside
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 2: of that dune on the fairway. He used that material
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 2: to raise the bowl to give the give the weaker
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 2: player a little bit of a flatter space to lay
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 2: up to, you know, if you if you can't get
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 2: around the feature into while also creating some more space
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 2: for the walk for the golfers to get around. So
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 2: that space and twenty thirty yards, but you know it
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 2: would look exactly the same from the fairway and the
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 2: teas it did before because it was all the blindside. Yeah,
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 2: and that gave us, that gave the opportunity in the
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 2: space to then recapture the full tail of the bunker
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 2: looks maybe extending twenty yards down to the left like
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 2: it did in nineteen thirty seven. We had to get
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 2: the practicalities right to be able to sell the cool
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 2: part of the job, if that makes sense. So the
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 2: cool part of the job is obviously seeing that bunk
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 2: look as great as it used to. But if it didn't,
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 2: if it didn't work, the question would be how to
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 2: play this? Why we did this right?
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: Function and artistry had to had to be matched, and
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: you know, I would I would advise that people go
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: to Clyde's Instagram account and take a look at the
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: at the bunker that Clyde produced out of this process.
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: It is really interesting looking and obviously much better looking
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: than than what they what they had before, but also
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: from the sounds of it, you know, serves the kind
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 1: of functional needs of the golf course. And I think
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: this is kind of a representative story in a lot
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: of ways, because a lot of bunkers at British Links
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 1: courses have evolved in this way over time. As the
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: courses became more settled and more used. What were these
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: initially very wild gouges of sand in the Lynx Land
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: kind of turn into smaller and more formalized shapes, and
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: now we see an awful lot of just like straight
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 1: up circular pop bunkers with rivetted walls, and that's a
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: very common look at Scottish links courses. But if you
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 1: looked at these same courses in nineteen hundred, obviously you
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 1: would have much much more kind of random sand shapes
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: on these courses. And so, you know, I guess the
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: question is when you bring back a kind of more
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: intricate shape for a bunker like you did at sant
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: Anadoc here, is there some kind of assurance that this
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: is going to last, that this is going to be maintainable.
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 2: We're certainly very pragmatic in terms of the upper section
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 2: of the bunk, and you know, we didn't want to
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 2: didn't want to really disturb the stabilize efforts that had
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 2: gone before. And you know, it was kind of a
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 2: shoulder on the left that could have that we could
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 2: have opened up. It would have looked cool and made
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 2: the bunk look exactly like it did on old photographs.
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 2: But that was that was doing a that was doing
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 2: a product, that was that was doing the job of
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 2: you making the bunk. The upper section of the bowl
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 2: really sam swirl around route that blows straight out. So
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 2: I think, you know, that's part you know, that comes
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 2: from experience of just being able to well leaning on
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 2: the experience of the green keeping team that you're working
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 2: with ball, so the experience of being able to read
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 2: and understand Link's features and how things evolved in nature.
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 2: But you know, the perception, you know, the tailor the
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 2: tail of that book actually sits relatively low down the
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 2: face of the dune, so we can be what can
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 2: be more confident that the bunker is going to be
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 2: more sheltered and not blow out as quickly or you know,
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 2: a road. But you know, there's also there also needs
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 2: to be you know, there's there's you know, there's also
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 2: an awareness as well that there's no no bunker is
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 2: ever maintenance free, you know, so we we we've we've
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 2: left a we've left a small RAVET four three fourth
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 2: vet high step on the leaning edge just to stabilize
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 2: that and you know, to stop that collapsing and going
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 2: away really quickly with time. And then I think, you know,
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 2: I think there's an understanding that if you know, if
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 2: the bunker, if it does, if the newly cut bunker
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 2: does start the road in an odd place, then there's
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 2: nothing wrong with having to stabilize that with a couple
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 2: of rows of revet, and you know, like they did
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 2: in the in the turn of the cential, the early
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 2: Unite hundreds, where it's just really practical, you know, just
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 2: like the bunker roading care. Let's let's short that up
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 2: with sleepers or throw some turf down and look cool,
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 2: it's quite cool.
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 1: I want to widen out the lens a little bit
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 1: here and just talk about kind of what's going on
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 1: in the British golf industry and British golf course renovation
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: and restoration in general. You know, my understanding is that
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: a lot of links clubs, including North Beric and Saint Enodoc,
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: have historically not had the kind of financial wherewithal to
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: do big, ambitious restoration and renovation projects. Would you say
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: that's that's changing right now?
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 2: I think I think certainly. I think certainly the top
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 2: end golf courses is definitely. I don't I don't know
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 2: if it's partly there's more of an appreciation for golf
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 2: course architecture in the UK these days are great Britain
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 2: Island these days, you know, you know, has gonna be
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 2: really easy to ero type. But outside I mean even
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 2: the very best golf course. It would just be like
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 2: committee would decide what was what would what what should
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 2: be done. The head green keeper would be responsible for
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 2: implementing it. But then job, job's done, really and I mean,
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 2: and that's part that's partly why golf courses was so
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 2: well preserved from the nineteen thirties until the court of
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 2: let's say the two thousands on the twenty tens, was
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 2: because because of that attitude, and you know, so you know,
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 2: there's definitely, know, there's definitely there's definitely much more work
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 2: being done now to golf courses. Whether that needs to
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 2: be done, whether as much needs to be done has
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 2: been done, This is is really up to personal taste
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 2: and personal preference.
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 1: Royal Dornick, Higher, King Collins, Dormer. We've seen North Berrick
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: obviously higher gil Hands. We've seen englansh Inland English clubs
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: start to start to do some more projects as well.
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: You know, when when you think of shifting from the
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: old approach that you're talking about the kind of more
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: preservation focused approach or just you know almost kind of
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 1: like hands off, let's deal with this in house and
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: and just maintain the golf course. If there if there
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: is a shift from that to maybe something else, do
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 1: you think there are any dangers that come along with.
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 2: That wink skulls specifically, I think it's I think it's
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 2: really important to have great understanding of link skulls when
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 2: you're working on golf courses because you know, really the most,
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 2: really the most important part of a links golf course
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 2: is that you know certainly when they play, they don't pray.
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 2: Golf courses could be regage systems don't play quite as
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 2: firm and as fast as perhaps used to, but still
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 2: that that's thirty yards in front of the green also
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 2: is just as important, you know, for the average golf
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 2: for certainly maybe not the best player in the world,
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 2: but the average golf that that's really where the most
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 2: interest or most important lies, because that's kind of where
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 2: you thinking about lagging you ball, you know, in you know,
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 2: depending on wind conditions, and then also also being able
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 2: to read you know, and understand how much the wind
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 2: can change and how strong it can blow, and how
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 2: you know you know you might see a bunker that
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 2: you might drive past or not even give consideration to.
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 2: Ninety nine times out one hundred times you played the
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 2: golf course in one day, the wind's doing something. I
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 2: didn't realize that bunker was there, but it was actually
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 2: really in a great place and there's kind of a
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 2: reason for that. And you know, understanding understanding that the
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 2: vagaries of links golf, and yeah, the importance of the
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 2: shapes around the greens and how they impact recovery shots
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 2: into the greens that I think is is probably an
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 2: acquiet taste, not that it can't be learned by people
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 2: that haven't spent as which time around links golf, but yeah,
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 2: I think I think that I think that's important and
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 2: just an understanding of, yeah, the evolution that golf courses
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 2: have been on in Great Britain over the last hundred
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 2: years and why, you know, understanding why golf course are
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 2: involved in knowing when knowing when to trust the past
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 2: or when you can take you know, where you can
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 2: think about bringing or you know, introducing new ideas or
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 2: bringing old ideas into the new. Yeah, it's just it's
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 2: that experience I think is really valuable.
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 1: All Right, Well, Clyde, thank you so much for coming
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: on the podcast. It's been fun talking to you and
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: uh and good luck with your with your future work.
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 2: Thank you it was a pleasure.
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 1: This episode of Designing Golf was produced by Will Balsam.
• 1:28:55
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